Storm Prep Choice: Wires vs. Trees

Hamden has a new draft of a once-in-a-decade plan, which prompted debate over a tricky question: Should the town remove trees that threaten wires? Or should it move or bury the wires?

That debate occurred at a town Planning and Zoning Commission called to review of the first draft of Hamden’s new Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD) (read it here).

The POCD lays out a set of goals for planning and zoning that will guide development and zoning practices for the next ten years. (Read more about the 2019 POCD here).

Part of the draft deals with the problem of trees and downed wires.

Downed trees have been a major problem in Hamden for many years. The town is still reeling from the storm in May that has kept Sleeping Giant State Park closed for nine months.

Commissioner Michele Mastropetre spoke at the commission meeting of how in the most recent ice storm, she lost power for 28 hours. She ended up having to check into a hotel. Her next-door neighbor, who is in her 90s, had to be evacuated because she had no heat.

“We’ve had a lot of problems in the last couple of years with trees coming down on the wires,” she told the commission. The town needs a plan to prune and cut down trees that threaten electrical wires, she said.

The Trees Or The Wires?

Glenn Chalder, a consultant from the Planimetrics firm who wrote the draft, pointed at the commission meeting to two sections in the document that deal with trees. In the section on protecting natural resources, on page 39, the document suggests that the town ​“develop strategies to protect and enhance Hamden’s tree canopy in order to reduce runoff volume, reduce erosion or soils and improve the water quality.” Mastropetre’s suggestion could accompany the language about protecting the tree canopy, he said, or it could go in the section on utility infrastructure, on page 83. Matropetre said she thought the latter would work best.

Commissioner Maria Garriga had a different way of looking at the issue. She said that rather than thinking about how to remove the trees that will threaten wires, the commission could think about how to place the wires in a different way so that they aren’t in constant danger of branches and trunks falling on them. Perhaps the commission should look into putting some wires underground, she said.

Matropetre replied that putting wires underground is too expensive. She also clarified what she had meant: she doesn’t want to clear-cut trees. She just wants to make an inventory of trees that need to be removed or pruned.

Town Planner Dan Kops told the commission that he had thought about possibly collaborating with the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science to create such an inventory. He also said that putting electrical wires underground is not always out of the question. Wires leading from the main electrical lines to individual sites, he said, now have to be put underground.

The exchange symbolized one of the main challenges in writing a new POCD — Does the conservation or the development part come first?

That is, how do you balance environmental and economic concerns when it comes to updating infrastructure?

“I really think that we’re in environmental crisis, and survival of the Earth [should be] the driver” of town planning, said Diane Hoffman, a member of the Hamden Alliance for Trees.

Hoffman was one of the few members of the public who showed up to observe the meeting. She said that she understood the impulse to say that economic concerns should be the main consideration when it comes to the POCD, but that people need to recognize the importance of trees for the environment and for human health.

She said called putting electrical wires underground a long-term solution to the problem of storms repeatedly taking down wires. ​“We get frightened by the cost,” she said, but if the town spreads it out over many years, it could be feasible.

“We will be protecting a resource that’s as precious as air,” she added, referring to trees.

Development Areas

At the beginning of the month, the town contracted the firm Great Blue to conduct a phone survey of residents to get feedback on a range of issues that could be incorporated into the POCD writing process. When the surveyors asked residents what they would change if they could change one thing about the town, the most common answer was lowering taxes.

Planning and Zoning departments, said Chalder, are not equipped to solve a town’s fiscal issues. Yet they can help by encouraging economic development, which increases the town’s tax base. 

On the survey, residents showed overwhelming support development along Dixwell Avenue; 84.7 percent said they would like to see the town encourage development of the ​“Magic Mile” (the area on Dixwell around Skiff), and 86 percent wanted to see more development along southern Dixwell.

Section 3.2, ​“Promote Economic Opportunity Areas,” shows the places that that Chalder and the commission think should be focus points for economic development. The section discusses in detail four specific areas of town that have potential for greater development: Hamden Town Center at the corner of Whitney and Dixwell, southern Dixwell Avenue, the Magic Mile, and the proposed Ivesville/Mount Carmel village along Whitney Avenue north of the Route 40 Connector.

Commissioner Robert Roscow said that he wanted to focus on the area from Home Depot south to Treadwell. He explained that he was concerned with the types of businesses that have come to Hamden recently.

“We’re getting overrun by all these non-job buildings taking over our prime real estate,” he said. ​“The town is ending up a bunch of liquor stores, pizza parlors, and storage places, and that’s not going to cut it, especially this close to Yale.” He said that one solution would be a ​“mechanism by which independent parcel owners [could] put their properties together.” Ultimately, said Roscow, his goal was high-paying jobs.

The main tool that the Planning and Zoning department and commission have for encouraging economic development is the town’s zoning regulations.

The POCD itself does not introduce or change existing regulations. It is simply an expression of goals that the Planning and Zoning department and commission will use to guide their work for the next ten years, at which point state law requires that it be updated.

After the commission adopts the new POCD in September 2019, it will update the zoning regulations so that they comply with the POCD.

Section 6.1, ​“Implementing The POCD,” includes six specific recommendations for updating the zoning regulations. The first two aim to make zoning regulations more comprehensible to the public.

The next two aim to update Hamden’s ​“T” zones. ​“T” zones are types of ​“form-based” zones that emphasize mixed uses and regulate based on the form of development rather than the use of development. The POCD draft recommends that the commission undertake a survey of the town in order to determine how to update the zone boundaries, and that it revisit the uses and standards of the zoning districts.

The last two suggestions aim to improve the process of approving applications. Suggested changes include allowing staff to issue some approvals and permits that are currently the responsibility of the commission. The draft also recommends creating a ​“Planned Development District” where property owners could apply for zone change approval that would change the zone of a single property ​“only modifying one or more of the standards of the form-based code.”

Chalder will make changes to his draft based on the suggestions of commissioners, and he will present a new version to the commission in March. The commission will then hold a meeting in April for members of the public to give their input.

All documents related to the 2019 POCD can be found here.