Six Lakes Coalition Tours The Perimeter

On Sunday afternoon a crowd of nearly 100 people, from citizens to activists to numerous elected officials, converged on the parking lot of ACES Whitney High School North on Leeder Hill Drive in Hamden. The purpose of the visit was the land behind the high school — 102 acres of forest, lakes, and wetlands, closed off from the public for decades because of its use as a place to test firearms and munitions and dispose of toxic waste. 

The Olin Corporation, which owns the land, was given a court order in 1986 to remediate the property. This summer, Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) announced that, after decades of stasis, it and Olin were returning to efforts to make good on that order. The assembled crowd was there to try to make sure that actually happened — and to begin charting a course for what can happen next to turn the 102 acres, known as the Powder Farm and hopefully someday to be known as Six Lakes, into a public park.

The event was organized by the Six Lakes Park Coalition, an ​“alliance of concerned neighbors and supporting organizations seeking to restore and conserve for public use the 102 acres of forest and wetlands in Southern Hamden commonly known as Olin Powder Farm,” as the group states on its website. ​“SLPC seeks both to ensure thorough remediation of site contaminants and to align the property’s eventual use with the needs and interests of the Newhall neighborhood and the wider Hamden community.” Its member organizations include the Hamden Land Conservation Trust, Save the Sound, Congregants Organized for a New Connecticut (CONECT), Connecticut Land Conservation Council, South Central Regional Land Conservation Alliance, the town of Hamden, and representatives from the Newhall neighborhood. 

Among the public officials to attend the gathering — which included a walk around the perimeter of the property — were Hamden town councilperson Justin Farmer, who is also on the Six Lakes Coalition steering committee; state senators Martin Looney and Jorge Cabrera; state representative Josh Elliott; Hamden Mayor Lauren Garrett; and fellow town councilpeople Sarah Gallagher, Abdul Osmanu, Ted Stevens, and Laurie Sweet as well as councilperson-elect Rhonda Caldwell. 

Farmer began the event by explaining that he would lead a walk around the property, which remains closed to the public. He would give some history of the property, explain the current situation, and allow opportunities to ​“dream about what this property could be,” he said. Those who couldn’t or didn’t want to go on the walk could proceed directly inside ACES, where they could write letters to state legislators and regulatory agencies to ​“keep up support and move this project along.” The letters would urge legislators to ensure that DEEP remain funded at the level needed for it to do its work, and to stay on DEEP to continue with Olin in running tests and proceeding to remediation.

“This is a potentially beautiful public space,” Looney said of Six Lakes, noting that in Connecticut a parcel of land of its size — 102 acres — was at this stage quite rare. ​“Senator Cabrera, Representative Elliott and I are pledged to try to make sure the state supports this project. I think ultimately it needs to be added to the state system for maintenance and preservation, and I think that is something we can all work together on.” Six Lakes is ​“really a gem, and we need to have vision on this.” He singled out Farmer for thanks for bringing it to his attention. ​“With the advocacy of this group here today, and the attention and support of all the elected officials in the town of Hamden and those who represent Hamden in the general assembly, I think the future is bright for the Six Lakes property.”

The group then headed south out of the ACES parking lot to begin its perimeter tour, gathered around Farmer, who gave a history of the property and its management (see a previous Independent article about that) through a bullhorn. Since the June DEEP community meeting, Olin has been on the property to begin testing, collecting data on the ​“areas of concern,” said Kathy Czepiel, land protection manager at Save the Sound, which is part of the Six Lakes Park Coalition and is on its steering committee. Those areas include places where arms and munitions were tested as well as places where Olin dumped chemicals and construction materials. The data will be available in the wintertime and, as Czepiel understands from communications with DEEP, will be made public. ​“We’ve asked DEEP to come to another community meeting and give us an update when they have information to share.” 

The speed of data collection and gathering of results is, so far, on target with what DEEP promised at the meeting in the summer. ​“It’s quite possible they will take a look at this data and say, ​‘now we need some more.’ There could be another round of testing. This is a very long-term project — but hopefully not another 50 years.”

Along Leeder Hill Drive, the walkers got their first glimpses into the property.

On Putnam Street, Farmer pointed out a gate that he said would likely be one of the main entrances to Six Lakes should the land become a park open for public use. The entrance served as a trailhead for system of paths, some of them paved; the trails, Farmer said, were still in pretty good shape for ​“not having been touched for 50 years.”

Farmer also drew the walkers’ attention to a yellow pipe protruding from the ground within the enclosed property. This, he explained, was the site of one of Olin’s testing sites, where it was collecting data on the level and type of contamination that might require remediation. ​“That is where the new testing has started to be done,” Farmer said.

From Putnam Avenue, the tour turned north onto the Farmington Canal Trail. The elevation of the trail over the Six Lakes property allowed some of its grandest views yet. Farmer answered questions from walkers about how the testing was going and whether any results were available yet. They were not, Farmer reported, which made further concrete plans as yet impossible. 

“We don’t know what we don’t know” as yet, Farmer said of the testing results. But ​“we’re confident that Olin is making a good faith effort” to run the tests needed to gather data to inform what scope and type of remediation might be needed. ​“At this point, we’re not concerned,” he said, though he held out the possibility of ​“sticker shock” when the data are finally released. The tour made its way north to Treadwell Street, passing by the memorial for murdered teen Elijah Gomez, roughly where the Farmington Canal Trail and Treadwell meet. It continued on Treadwell and turned south again on Leeder Hill Drive to complete its circuit of the Powder Farm.

“Kudos to all of you for going on this walk to see the beauty and potential of this property,” Farmer said.

The idea of a long-haul environmental and community improvement project is familiar to Elizabeth Hayes. The 74-year-old Newhall resident is an established community activist who is also on the Democratic Town Committee in Hamden and on the town’s wetlands commission. She got involved in environmental issues two decades ago, in the effort that led to the remediation of Newhall’s soil after it had been found to be contaminated with pollutants related to New Haven’s arms industry. She attended conferences to educate herself (“You can’t advocate for something if you don’t know anything,” she said), got involved with the Sierra Club and the Green Party, and crossed paths with lawyer and activist Charlie Pillsbury. She formed the Newhall Environmental Health Coalition to organize ​“people who were willing to help” and ​“put themselves out there,” pressuring the state to take action. 

She was drawn into the Six Lakes effort by Farmer and Curt Johnson of Save the Sound, who wanted her there because she ​“knew the community” and because she was good at organizing. She walked the property as part of a guided tour. ​“I saw it and I said ​‘count me in.’ ”

For Hayes, turning Six Lakes into a park is an economic development opportunity as well as an environmental one. In Newhall, ​“the values of property have been decimated because of remediation,” she said. Even as the effort itself draws to a close, and many properties have been remediated, the blemish on the neighborhood’s reputation remains. Having a natural recreational area so close by could help ​“increase the value again” and help ​“dispel the stigma.”

Today, she said, ​“we are dismissive of recovering the value” of the community, and that should not be. ​“Because when I’m gone, someone else is going to come, and still have the same problem if we don’t fix it. I look at the more global picture. I don’t look at today.”

After decades of no change to the Powder Farm, the recent activities to remediate it give her reasons for optimism. ​“Things are starting to move,” she said. ​“A year or so ago, I didn’t know where we were going.” But today ​“we’re on a better track. The pieces are starting to come together.”