Opinion: What Is ​“Powder Farm” Can Be ​“Six Lakes”

Since I was a small child, I have thought about the lack of access to open space in the Newhall community. Southern Hamden is, for the most part, overdeveloped with the exception of a few spots of green spaces. There are just a few places where someone could sit under a tree and get respite from the sun. 

But what if there was a 102.5‑acre oasis sitting in our backyard? What if the long-dormant ​“Powder Farm” became a public space with walking paths?

This is what a group of Hamden community members is hoping to do with the help of the town government and state and local partners.

Local control and community input are the keystones to whether this project can be successful. That’s why, if the opportunity comes up to have a parcel become a public park, community input needs to be centered. 

The property is owned by Olin Corporation, and this is a chance to have restorative justice and undo the harm done by environmental pollution on the property. 

For years Olin dumped battery cells at the foot of the ponds, piled ash and construction debris around the property, and had target practice on the property, leaving countless gun shell casings about the property. Let us not forget the leaching of lead all around the property, and lastly burn piles where they burned all types of materials, all of this done in the middle of a residential neighborhood, creating water, air, and soil pollution. 

Clearcutting of street trees creating a heat island effect, redlining and under-investment, and building a community on a literal landfill and former town dump didn’t just happen to this community; these were policies done to this predominantly Black and Afro-Caribbean community purposefully in a time when discrimination was frontward facing and tolerated. 

Finally, past projects in this neighborhood have happened with a great deal of frustration from the Newhall community, as they felt that their voices weren’t heard or centered during the planning and building. 

Now is a time for restorative justice, when we can undo some of the harms of the past and create opportunities for equity.

A park could be possible sooner rather than later as Olin starts soil testing this spring and hopes to begin remediating the property in the next year or so. 

Newhall is full of potential, but only if we invest in it. Returning the ​“Powder Farm” to the residents is an opportunity to invest in the Newhall community and allow southern Hamden to have healthy open space. 

It is no secret that neighborhoods like ours suffer from high asthma rates, gun violence, heat island effects, and a lack of access to open space. There’s the opportunity to tackle all these things by transforming the dormant space that the ​“Powder Farm” inhabits into a recreational oasis. It’s the perfect location to connect the existing Farmington Canal bike path with accessible walking paths. If the saying is true that it takes a village to raise a child, then it follows that it takes community input to build a community.

Olin has the opportunity to be a champion to the Newhall community by providing the rarest asset to this community – public open space. Partnering with the town and Olin, I’m sure much success can be found. Olin can undo past harm done to this property and community that has waited for justice for the past 92 years. The way to undo the harm they’ve caused is to make good on their responsibility to clean up the site as required by a 1987 Consent Order from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP).

The first step would be to conduct testing on the site and get a complete picture of contamination that still exists on the property this, of course, needs to be done with a community auditor or a second-party investigator, then create a site remediation plan informed by a multitude of community meetings on what the best end use could be for this property. This is what restorative justice would look like.

While we can’t do anything about the past, we can move forward and have an amazing and unique space that can address some of the issues mentioned above not only for the present but for generations to come. I have faith that the leaders of today will undo the harms of the past and take hold of a brighter future, one that has the ​“Powder Farm,” or rather ​“Six Lakes,” as a public park. 

There’s going to be a public forum on June 29, at 11 Pine St. from 6 p.m. to 8p.m., and everyone from Hamden and the surrounding region is invited to attend.

Justin Farmer represents District 5 on Hamden’s Legislative Council. Click here for the Zoom link for Thursday’s meeting.