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Justin Farmer |
Jun 23, 2023 10:39 am
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Contributed photo
Butler Street in Southern Hamden.
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?
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 22, 2023 1:28 pm
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(4)
FEMA Flood Hazard Information map; areas of 1 percent annual chance flood hazard shaded in blue.
Thomas Breen file photo
City Plan Director Laura Brown: "The closeness of water that makes the city vulnerable also makes it desirable."
Rising sea levels. More hurricanes. More intense rainstorms. As a coastal city, New Haven has had to think about all that water more than many other places in the country, especially when that water has ended up submerging its streets.
This has resulted, recently, in greater coordination with neighboring towns and state and federal agencies. It has also made waves in a few of the city’s development projects — most notably Long Wharf and Tweed — as the city balances its immediate economic needs against the coming climate challenges.
by
Kian Ahmadi and Asher Joseph |
Jun 21, 2023 12:39 pm
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(19)
Paul Bass File Photo
City climate czar Steve Winter: e-bikes are a "big step to fill gaps in our transit system"
Eco-minded New Haveners looking to get out of their cars and onto two battery-assisted wheels will soon be able to apply for up to $1,500 in state-subsidized vouchers to help cover the costs of purchasing a new electric bicycle.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 16, 2023 10:56 am
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Brian Slattery Photo
Jamila Hokanson, Sasha Lehrer, Jordan Sloshower, Damian Paglia, Stephanie Kilpatrick, in West Rock Wellness's art gallery.
A team of clinicians and wellness instructors has opened a new mental health center in Westville, offering everything from psychotherapy to mind-body medicine to ketamine-assisted psychedelic therapies.
This panoply of offerings is unified by their greater aim to create connection and community.
Kishaun Jenkins: Celebrating "the coolest spot to be."
A Boston-based affordable housing developer has dropped its plans to buy a Kensington Street public park and construct 15 new apartments in its stead — prompting the Elicker administration to move to end a related years-long lawsuit on the grounds that the contested public greenspace will remain public and green.
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Kian Ahmadi |
Jun 14, 2023 3:19 pm
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Kian Ahmadi Photo
DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes at Wednesday's Edgewood Park press conference.
John Cavaliere saw reason Wednesday to hope that water won’t stream into Lyric Hall in future rainstorms, now that state money is on the way to plan how to protect the heart of Westville from future floods.
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Thomas Breen |
Jun 14, 2023 11:14 am
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New England Golf Cars photo
2019 model New England Golf Cars cart: Gas for now, electric soon?
Seventy-five gas guzzling golf carts are rolling towards another three-year deal for New Haven’s municipal green links — with green energy plans in the works to go electric when the course’s clubhouse renovations are complete.
All aboard one of the many new flights leaving from Tweed.
Brian Slattery photo
Tweed Director Tom Rafter: "There's a number of different ways this could go."
It’s time to wait and see what the feds decide.
Tweed New Haven Airport Authority Executive Director Tom Rafter urged that patience and provided other process updates as he told a crowd of roughly 100 people at a contentious annual meeting that federal regulators should weigh in later this summer on the potential environmental impacts of the Morris Cove airport’s planned expansion.
Wildfire smoke still hovering over downtown Wednesday.
Update: The municipal office building at 200 Orange St. will be open from Wednesday at 6 p.m. through Thursday at 7 a.m. as a city-designated “area of refuge” for people needing a place to be indoors to escape the poor air quality, according to city spokesperson Lenny Speiller. On Thursday, all five city libraries will serve as areas of refuge during their normal business hours.
You might want to dust off that pandemic-era N‑95 mask — as New Haven’s air quality remains dangerously unhealthy for the second day in a row thanks the smoke of still-raging Canadian wildfires.
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Brian Slattery |
Jun 6, 2023 3:38 pm
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Environmental advocate Aaron Goode, of the New Haven Bioregional Group was grateful the weather had held out Sunday evening for a group of about a dozen hikers to explore Sandy Point, which he called “one of the unique, special places in the bioregion.” It was also, as it turned out, a place where one could see New Haven and West Haven grappling with climate change and environmental stability nearly in real time.
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Maya McFadden |
Jun 6, 2023 9:43 am
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(3)
Maya McFadden photo
Lila Kleppner: Not going to eat that? Into the compost it goes!
When Wilbur Cross High School senior Lila Kleppner saw a classmate walking toward the cafeteria trash bin, she leapt into action — with a five-gallon bucket in hand, intent on diverting that student’s food scraps from a landfill-bound pile to a community compost heap instead.
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Allan Appel |
May 26, 2023 11:50 am
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Allan Appel photos
Neil Geist with local oysters in hand and a fleet of student-built sharpies behind.
Freshmen Alex Spruill and Dan Lopez, who worked two months on restoring Tenacious's decking.
As a student at the Sound School in the 1980s, Neil Geist helped to build a full-size model of the historic New Haven oyster boat, a 35-foot sharpie called Tenacious.
The Tenacious was so perfect and sailed so well the folks at Mystic Aquarium wanted to exhibit her. But the sea gods were not as protective on land. En route the boat slipped off the trailer, on I‑95, and broke in half.
ESUMS junior Leah Mock gives the board a D for its work on reducing waste.
Class was in session for the Board of Education, and the assignment was to help save the earth.
A report card handed out by student-graders about the school board’s work on energy efficiency, reducing food waste and transportation emissions, and investing in a healthy and sustainable future looked pretty bleak: three C’s, one D, and an F.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
May 25, 2023 1:16 pm
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Thomas Breen file photo
Now-retired ex-public works head Jeff Pescosolido.
Long-time city servant and public works director Jeff Pescosolido has stepped down, leaving Deputy Chief Administrative Officer Rebecca Bombero to fill his post until the Elicker administration finds a permanent replacement.
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Maya McFadden |
May 18, 2023 3:28 pm
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Contributed photo
Ella May with her food share cart capstone project.
Sound School senior Ella May is on a mission to help her school cut back on food waste — with the help of a cart and a nudge to her peers to place their uneaten, unopened foods on a share “table” in the cafeteria.
"Mass timber" apartments underway at Dixwell-Munson-Orchard.
Beulah's Darrel Brooks (right) celebrating the ongoing development with his father, and faith-based developer visionary, Theodore.
As a crane lowered wood panels made from Central European trees, officials celebrated 69 new “mass timber” apartments taking root in a long vacant lot — and envisioned a construction-industry revolution where carbon-capturing materials can be grown and processed closer to home.
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Maya McFadden |
May 11, 2023 10:44 am
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Maya McFadden Photo
Sixth graders Tiranke Keita, Grace Sherman, and Issac Oliver in Barnard's garden bed.
Barnard sixth grader Tiranke Keita dug a hole in the bed of her school’s garden, Grace Sherman filled it in with a handful of rich compost, and Issac Oliver nestled in a starter plant of lettuce — kicking off the Derby Avenue PreK‑8 school’s latest effort in hands-on, hands-in-the-dirt learning.
Digging up "worms" at Reggie Mayo school's new garden.
The romaine, zucchini, and radishes were going in, along with bright orange marigolds.
So were plastic “squooshies” of worms, lime-green butterflies, black-dotted ladybugs, and other creatures that pre-schoolers can now bury in the dirt and then dig up, not months hence at harvest time, but within seconds, and then call out a loud “surprise” at the remarkable re-finding of the object.
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Allan Appel |
May 9, 2023 11:12 am
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Allan Appel file photo
Armory Community Garden founder Nadine Horton on Saturday.
Seven years ago and displaced from their long-time site on Carmel Street, Whalley/Beaver Hills community activist Nadine Horton and her gardening friends went looking for a new dirt-and-greens home.
When she came upon a narrow rectangular plot of overgrown grass, half a block long, tucked between the New Haven Correctional Center and the Armory, she fell in love — with a place, a symbol, and a possibility.
Medina, now getting ready to leave Peels & Wheels' longtime composting home at Phoenix Press in Fair Haven.
A Facebook farewell.
“Now I feel I’m more like a waste hauler than a visionary composter,” said New Haven’s pioneering organic-scraps-repurposer and eco-idealist Domingo Medina.
That’s because Medina now has to find a new place to make mulch thanks to the pending sale of the Fair Haven farm site that he and his pedal-powered composting colleagues have long called home.
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Thomas Breen |
May 4, 2023 2:34 pm
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Thomas Breen photos
Pastor Wilkins with city climate czar Steve Winter (right) at Thursday's presser.
Solar panels powering Wilkins' Westville home.
Want to save roughly $900 a year on your electricity bill while also doing your part to wean off of planet-destroying fossil fuels?
There’s a solar panel for that — and a new city-backed campaign to get more such sun-powered equipment on the roofs of New Haven homeowners and landlords, with the help of a New Orleans-based company that promises energy cost savings through long-term solar panel leases.
Marta Quinones loading up rescued food from Haven's Harvest.
Sister Luisa Villegas stopped at a Peck Street food rescue operation to fill her Toyota up with bags of avocados and several gallons of milk to help make sure that Fair Haven immigrants don’t go hungry — and that excess food doesn’t end up in a landfill.
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Brian Slattery |
May 3, 2023 11:56 am
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Thomas Breen photo
The Trelleborg plant at 30 Lenox St.
A fabric-coating chemical manufacturer on Lenox Street has been fined over $305,000 for allegedly violating a federal air-pollution law — and must now clean up its act, or shut down entirely, by this summer.
by
Nora Grace-Flood |
May 3, 2023 9:19 am
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(17)
Nora Grace-Flood photos
Save The Sound's Roger Reynolds joins enviro allies in lamenting the still-polluted state of English Station (pictured above).
Local environmental advocates gathered in front of a graffiti-laden gate cutting off the contaminated former English Station power plant from the public — and lauded a recent move by the state’s attorney general pushing United Illuminating to finish cleaning up the site or pay a $2 million annual penalty.
