Open-Housing Q: What About Water/Sewer?

Should multi-family housing in the ​‘burbs be limited to parts of town with public water and sewer lines?

Or can septic tanks and private wells withstand more than single-family use?

Those questions hovered over the most recent online special meeting of the Woodbridge Town Planning & Zoning Commission.

They also get at a core debate that has played out for months during the contentious public hearings and deliberations around a two-pronged zoning proposal seeking to make it easier to build multi-family affordable housing in every residential district in the large-lot, single-family-home-dominated leafy suburb. 

The case has inspired the attention and participation of New Haveners interested in the regional roots of racism and segregation, and in how those two social ills relate to municipal land use law.

That ongoing debate has hinged on more than just the potential environmental risks of adding more housing to a relatively undeveloped area with limited access to public water and sewer utilities.

It has also raised the question: Are volunteer local land-use boards really the best government bodies to make definitive decisions on the environmental and public health impacts of denser residential development? Especially when such bodies in towns like Woodbridge continue to give preference to single-family mansions over all types of more affordable multi-family housing?

Leaning Towards Multi-Family Where Public Water & Sewer Exist

The Woodbridge land-use commissioners did not take any votes at the meeting, held this past Thursday night. The topic at hand was a proposed zoning amendment and town Plan of Conservation and Development (POCD) update submitted by a group of civil rights attorneys and Yale law students.

The six suburban zoners present did make their preferences clear in their bid to seek a third way towards zoning reform.

Led by Commission Chair Rob Klee, the zoners charged the commission’s hired planning consultant, Glenn Chalder, to draft a proposed zoning change that would make it incrementally easier to build more than just single-family homes — but only in parts of Woodbridge where there is already easy to access to public water and sewer lines.

Backed by the support of all of the commissioners present, Klee asked Chalder to draft modifications to the original Open Communities Alliance (OCA) zoning proposal that would permit the development of two-family homes with mandatory affordable housing set-asides in all of the parts of Woodbridge that already have access to (or are nearby) public water and public sewer infrastructure.

That includes the T3‑D, T3‑C, T3-BB, B, and parts of the A zones — making up roughly 230.1 acres of land in town.

For proposed residential developments larger than two-family homes in those municipal water and sewer infrastructure-adjacent zones, the commission asked Chalder to draft a proposed regulation that caps the density of new developments at 15 units per acre, that requires 20 percent of new housing units be set aside at affordable rental rates — 10 percent for families earning no more than 80 percent of the area median income (AMI), 10 percent at 60 percent AMI — and that limits the impervious coverage of newly developed lots to no more than 20 percent.

The Woodbridge commissioners also specified that they would want all new multi-family developments in public water and public sewer-adjacent areas to be subject to some kind of town zoning commission hearing and approval, either in the form of a site plan review or special exception application.

The civil rights attorneys and law school students pushing the rezoning amendment have sought to permit multi-family housing in every part of town as of right — that is, with no local public land-use hearing required — so long as the proposed development complied with all of the bulk requirements currently laid out for single-family homes.

Klee described the parts of town that already have access to public water and public sewer lines as ​“a good starting point for this type of more dense housing development,” as the availability of that municipal infrastructure would result in ​“less of an impact on environmental concerns.”

Where the commissioners appeared to disagree was in what changes to make — if any — to the zoning laws that cover the remaining roughly 10,725 acres in town that do not have access to public water and sewer lines, and that rely in whole or in part on private septic systems and private wells.

Klee and fellow Commissioners Yonatan Zamir and Larry Greenberg expressed interest in permitting some kind of limited multi-family development — mostly likely two-family homes with mandatory affordable set-asides — in those areas as well.

“Given the sophistication of septic systems and well water, I struggle with other parts of town not sharing in the obligation to hold different types of housing,” Greenberg said. That is: why continue to limit these large swaths of Woodbridge to single-family housing only?

Commissioners Andrew Skolnick and Jeff Kennedy, meanwhile, pushed back against allowing anything more than the currently allowed single-family homes in those parts of town without access to public water and public sewer.

“I would not be supportive of further expansion” outside of recommendations to come forth from the town’s newly formed affordable housing task force, Skolnick said.

“That’s my position also,” added Kennedy.

Commissioner Paul Schatz added that he is generally opposed to any kind of zoning change that the commissions might put forward that has not been reviewed and commented on by the Woodbridge public.

Klee nevertheless asked Chalder to draft a proposed amendment allowing for two-family homes with affordable set-asides and impervious coverage caps in parts of town that do not have water and sewer infrastructure in place, even with Skolnick’s and Kennedy’s apparent opposition.

The commissioners will discuss and debate those specific proposed zoning updates at another special meeting to be held on May 24. They’ll then take a vote at their next regularly scheduled commission meeting on June 7.

Rebuttal: Don’t Let Utilities Limit Development

While last Thursday’s commission meeting featured only deliberations among suburban zoners, the civil rights attorneys and Yale law students behind the open-housing application frequently weighed in on this very topic of residential development, public water and sewer access, and private well and septic tank capacities during the first five months of public hearings on this proposed land-use update.

In an April 1 letter submitted to the commission, attorneys Erin Boggs and Anika Singh Lemar offered detailed rebuttals to the notion that multi-family housing must be limited to area with public water and sewer lines because of environmental and public health concerns.

Their argument hinged on the fact that there are multiple regional and state regulators that already oversee those types of impacts, and that local land-use commissions should not artificially limit housing supply due to concerns best taken up by experts elsewhere.

“Several residents have expressed their concerns regarding wastewater disposal and water supply, arguing that multi-family development should be limited to the small portion of Woodbridge where there is public water and public sewer, which happens to be adjacent to New Haven,” the attorneys wrote in that letter.

However, they insisted, there is already an ​“extensive public health and environmental regulatory program in place” to keep those development-related concerns in check.

“Because our proposal requires compliance with the Public Health Code (PHC), only multi-family housing that has adequate on-site subsurface disposal systems and protected well systems would be permissible under our proposed zoning amendment,” they wrote. 

“New on-site septic systems are regulated by the Quinnipiack Valley Health District, the state’s Department of Public Health (DPH), or the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, depending on the volume of the design flow of the system. Any of these regulators will deny septic permits if the proposed systems do not comply with the DPH’s Technical Standards, which take into account lot-specific factors including but not limited to soil type, depth to groundwater slope, whether the lot is within a public water supply watershed area, and whether there are wetlands and watercourses.”

The public health code also takes into account more intensive use that may be associated with multi-family rather than single-family housing, they said. ​“For example, for multi-family homes, the Code’s Technical Standards requires adding 150 gallons per bedroom per day to the septic capacity after the third additional bedroom, while the Code reduces this requirement to half for single-family homes.”

As for concerns around public water line access, there are also plenty of state regulators already in place to enforce public health-related issues there, too.

“DPH enforces detailed regulations on on-site water systems for multi-family housing,” they wrote. ​“For small multi-family developments using private wells, developers must receive approval from the Quinnipiack Valley Health District Large-scale community water systems — i.e., systems that have more than 25 users or 15 service connections — can only be built with a Certificate of Public Convenience & Necessity from the DPH.

“However, as we showed in our March 18 presentation, the DPH has effectively stopped approving such community water systems. Therefore, it is very likely that only small-scale multifamily developments will be built under our proposal. In any event, developers will have to comply with PHC standards to build them. If some residents are still concerned that the PHC is inadequate, they may further pursue the issue before the DPH or the legislature.”

And in that same submission, the attorneys responded to a March 1 Regional Water Authority letter expressing concerns about the potential impact of new, denser residential developments in public supply watersheds.

Again, the advocates argued, there are regional and state regulations already in place to protect the environment and that do not require the absolute preclusion of multi-family housing in such areas.

“Any development within 100 feet of wetland soils is subject to a separate review by the Inland Wetlands Agency,” they wrote. ​“Small multi-family development still requires approval from the Quinnipiack Valley Health District for well and septic proposals. Any developments with 25 or more users would require a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity for a community water system from the Department of Public Health. Any development with flow rates from 2,000 – 7,500 gallons per day requires approval from Connecticut’s Department of Public Health. Any flow rate over 7,500 gallons per day requires approval from the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. If densities of over six bedrooms per acre are reached, DPH recommends submission of a nitrogen analysis to account for potential offsite impact. Our Opportunity Housing amendment does not change any of these protections.”

Overall, the attorneys stated, lack of access to public water and sewer lines is not a satisfactory reason for excluding multi-family housing from a large swath of Woodbridge and for granting preferential treatment for large single-family dwellings.

“The Town must immediately act to remedy its failure to promote affordable and multi-family housing by accepting our zoning and POCD amendments,” Boggs and Lemar wrote. ​“The amendments before the Commission are actionable steps the Town can take to bring itself into compliance with the law. It is unacceptable for the Commission to admit that it has failed to meet its burdens and willfully pass the problem off to an advisory planning commission when it has the power right now to remedy the Town’s ongoing violations of housing and civil rights law.”

See below for previous coverage of this Woodbridge rezoning proposal.

• Suburban Zoners Seek Third Way
• Housing Debate Pivots Again Towards Race
• Suburb Housing Quest Enters New Phase
• Suburb Housing Pitch: Ditch Hearings
• Urban Lawyer/Suburban Zoner Seeks Right ​“Balance” In Housing Controversy
• Open-Housing Debate: Define Racism
• Open-Housing Quest Critics Champion Local Control
• Suburban Zoning Debate Gets Personal
• City, ​‘Burb Clash On Open-Housing Quest
• Urban Housing Lauded; Suburbs Challenged