Shoreline Walk Reveals The Gray & The Green

A walk by the New Haven Bioregional Group followed part of the route through Morris Cove of the proposed Shoreline Greenway Trail, which will connect the Farmington Canal Trail to the shore. In the process, it revealed a complex history of land use, and the ways that the push and pull of industrial use versus green spaces have shaped — and continue to shape — the neighborhood.

A previous walk in April outlined both the actual path the Shoreline Greenway Trail is set to follow through Morris Cove and a perhaps more idealized possible path that would incorporate Lighthouse Point Park and the Pardee Seawall into Fort Hale Park. 

Sunday’s walk contained no hypotheticals: participants followed the route the trail is slated to take through Morris Cove, from Fort Hale Park through East Shore Park and on to Long Wharf. 

The walk was originally slated to traverse the entire 3.5‑mile stretch from Fort Hale Park to Long Wharf, but inclement weather suggested that stopping at the end of East Shore Park was wise; the remaining segment through the Annex to Long Wharf will be covered on a future walk.

There was plenty to talk about in any case. The walk began on Forbes Bluff, with its view of the harbor even in the rain. Aaron Goode of the New Haven Bioregional Group and Chris Ozyck, associate director of Urban Resources Initiative, outlined the ways that the creation of the Shoreline Greenway Trail cut across several historical and ongoing issues, from the legacy of acquiring land from the Quinnipiac nation, to the perennial tug-of-war between creating space for parks versus industry, to the security concerns involved with having a military presence in New Haven’s harbor. 

Goode encouraged participants to ​“think about how we can make the best of a somewhat challenging environment for the building of a trail,” to create ​“the best possible experience” for people using it.

Goode (pictured above) began by summarizing the work that got the trail-building effort to this point, from the city’s rolling out of a a plan in March to connect the Farmington Canal Trail to the shoreline trail, gathering $9.3 million to do it, including $7 million in federal money and $2.3 million in Connecticut bond funds. Ozyck reiterated that the trail plan isn’t a new idea; it has been a part of the conversation about New Haven’s development since the beginning of the 20th century, and he personally has been involved in it since the 1990s.

“It’s innate,” Ozyck said. ​“It’s not anybody’s idea, but it has taken lots of individuals working over time to make it happen.” With the securing of funds and city support, Goode said, ​“the long-held dream” to create a path connecting New Haven to the shoreline and points further north ​“has taken a dramatic leap forward in the past several months.”

But, Ozyck said, ​“I’m still worried that, until we build that trail, it’s not going to be there… We’re at a magic moment” in how closely within reach a trail is. ​“But we’re not there yet.”

Getting there, Ozyck continued, would involve working with the community and the various authorities involved to balance the needs of the present and a vision for the future. ​“A lot of trail building is ​‘yes, and,’ not ​‘no, but,” he said. A successful plan would have to ensure that ​“it all fits together nicely.”

Passing by the Coast Guard’s base along the shore was an obvious reminder of the military and security concerns regarding the harbor. Goode pointed out that, because aircraft fuel is shipped to New Haven harbor to then be transported to Bradley International Airport, the harbor is a strategic target and appears on maps of Soviet attack plans from the 1970s and 1980s. The various facilities in New Haven harbor ​“could have been military targets in the event that the Cold War became a hot one,” Goode said.

“Probably we’d get bombed,” Ozyck agreed. He further pointed out that when the Q Bridge was rebuilt over the harbor, it was required to be high enough for a battleship to pass under it, to be able to hide in the mouth of the Quinnipiac River if needed.

The harbor has a long military history, as the existence of Fort Hale attests. A detour off the trail’s route to the site of Fort Hale revealed a part of the shoreline crossed by trails and streams. Signage in the park mentioned that the area has been the site for four forts. The first (unnamed) fort was built on the site in 1657. Black Rock Fort followed in 1775, but was partially destroyed during the Revolutionary War. Its replacement, Fort Nathan Hale, was built in 1807, and this fort was expanded to become Fort Nathan Hale II in 1863, during the Civil War. It was partially demolished afterward. The site has also seen the effects of climate: Hurricane Irene destroyed the original fishing pier in 2011, Goode mentioned, and the city rebuilt it in 2018 for $2 million.

Entering East Shore Park, Goode mentioned that the fingerprints of park designer Frederic Law Olmsted were visible in the landscape (Olmsted’s firm recommended the park’s creation). East Shore Park has ​“signature Olmsted elements,” Goode said, such as ​“a mix of passive and active recreational spaces” and ​“curving carriage road-style paths.”

The 90-acre park, Goode said, was owned by the Townshend family, who bought it from the Quinnipiac in 1798. The Townshends harvested salt hay from its marsh, which it then sold to the Sargent Hardware Company — one of the manufacturers that employed successive waves of immigrants to New Haven — for packing material.

The Townshends sold the land to the city in 1923, when then-Mayor David E. Fitzgerald proposed turning it into a park. The family stipulated that the land had to be used only as a park, a restriction that was tested in 1957 when the city tried to sell the land for industrial use. A committee of Morris Cove residents, including family representative Henry Townshend, Jr., prevented the sale. With federal and state funding, the present-day park was finished in the 1980s.

A significant stretch of the park was filled with meadows and wildflowers, with an undeveloped coastline.

At the park’s northern end, volleyball teams had taken over fields big enough for soccer.

At the edge of those soccer fields, the 500-megawatt Harbor Station power plant loomed, a clear sign of the park ending and the heavily industrial section of the harbor beginning. The port, according to Goode, is possibly the ​“most polluted area of the entire state”; in addition to the Harbor Station, it contains a 115-oil tank farm, a sludge incinerator, concrete and cement batching, and a sewage treatment facility. With federal funds, the Army Corps of Engineers is ​“in the process of dredging the whole harbor to make it deeper,” Ozyck said, noting that some of the material is filling a deep hole off the Pardee Seawall made when Long Wharf needed fill to construct I‑95.

Leaving East Shore Park at its northern end at Connecticut Avenue was an abrupt change, even if the road aligned just so the top of East Rock was clearly visible in the distance, even on a rainy day. Ozyck mentioned that, originally, ​“it was designed to be a parkway” — just one of ​“a lot of clues here about the history and ecology of our bioregion, if you know where to look,” Goode said. The bike path on this road is slated to run along one side of it, with a protective barrier separating it from car traffic.

Harbor Station, a gas-fired (originally oil-fired) power plant, is over 50 years old and was ​“permitted just before the Clean Air Act” went into effect, Goode said. It thus enjoys a ​“vastly more permissive legal regime for pollution controls” and ​“was grandfathered into a much more lax set of standards, much to the detriment of the respiratory organs of children in surrounding neighborhoods.” Today its older boilers are inefficient and don’t run except at times of high demand. Three new boilers added in 2010 are more efficient and less polluting. But that didn’t stop it from being the target of environmental justice campaigns against both it and English Station in the early 2000s, campaigns that ​“were successful in some ways and not in others,” Goode said. (The Bioregional Group walk on Sept. 9 will focus on English Station and the Mill River.) New owners have recently acquired the station as its permits have come up for renewal; that change, Goode suggested, ​“could be something positive.”

Ozyck added that the beach nearby is potentially a great habitat for fish and birds, except that the wastewater treatment plant sometimes emits raw sewage. Some of this happens during intense rainstorms; Ozyck advised not swimming in the harbor for a few days after a hard rain. But the plant also releases raw sewage in the winter ​“because they don’t think there’s anyone swimming,” he said.

Goode informed the walkers that the city used to own the sewage treatment facility, treating only New Haven sewage. Twenty years ago, however, a tight budget led the city to save money by joining a regional sewer authority, including Hamden, East Haven, and Woodbridge. Selling the plant gave New Haven the funds to balance its budget. But now the plant processes sewage from four municipalities, in addition to other places — some as far away as Groton — that the plant has contracts with.

Lynne Bonnett (pictured above), an East Shore resident, gave more information about the Greater New Haven Water Pollution Control Authority. Two decades ago, ​“it made sense” to regionalize, as the city was in effect already treating some of the surrounding towns’ sewage. In addition to the budget shortfall, the city worried about the liability that raw sewage runoff was creating. But the increased volume of sewage has meant a tighter margin for overflow. When the facility is operating normally, the water is ​“pretty clean by the time it reaches the Sound,” Bonnett said; the treatment includes removing nitrogen that leads to algae blooms. But ​“when it’s raining,” she said — adding to what Ozyck had said earlier — the east-to-west current in the harbor carries water pollution from the facility all the way to West Haven and beyond. ​“So West Haven’s going to be dirtier than Lighthouse, by and large.” 

Meanwhile, living next to the WPCA facility has proved difficult, as prevailing westerly winds carry fumes from the sludge incinerator into the neighborhood. This air pollution isn’t just ​“particulate matter”; it also includes hydrochloric acid (which causes asthma), asbestos particles, and ​“volatile, cancer-causing” compounds, ​“none of which is regulated” currently, Bonnett said. The WPCA is aware of the issues but, following a study by its own consultant, argued that ​“it’s doing the best it can do,” a stance it has maintained despite continued community pressure.

This was an effective segue to a larger point Ozyck (pictured above) made about the history of land ownership and use in the Annex. The parkway of Connecticut Avenue, as originally intended, was to have been parkland. Starting in the 1920s, the prevailing trend was to slowly lease out parcels of the land along the avenue for industrial use, with permission from the city’s parks commission. This eventually led to the creation of the city-run New Haven Port Authority in 2003, which could ​“take and receive the land,” using ​“the income from the property to do port service improvements.”

The efforts over past two decades to create trails and byways through the area have been ​“up against” the industrial facilities along Connecticut Avenue, Ozyck said, as they negotiate with the Port Authority to find a workable route. ​“All these entities,” Ozyck said, referring to the companies currently using the land, ​“really want to not see people in here, and they’re pushing from the background.” Since 2003 — thanks to a FOIA request Ozyck submitted — ​“you can see the influence of all these big actors, pushing upon the city, trying to make sure that they get their hands on this piece of property” while ​“keeping people out.” He described how port security on Water Street has grown tighter, with cameras and patrols. ​“If you pull up and park, somebody talks to you. That’s a city street.”

“Right now, we have this opportunity, and I think it’s going to be great,” Ozyck continued. But ​“there’s always this tension, this push, of who’s in control, who’s making decisions,” and which industrial facilities can lean on city officials to stymie the work of putting in a trail. ​“We’ve got to make this happen” while the financing is in place to create a trail, ​“before there’s too much pushback internally. It’s going to be a fantastic thing, when it happens.”