Petition Demands Private Oasis Cleanup

Hamden environmental groups and Newhall neighborhood leaders are renewing a push for the state to force Olin Corporation to clean up, remediate and open a 102.5‑acre forest and wetlands site so that residents can finally enjoy the closed-off land.

That site of contention, which sits in the heart of Southern Hamden, nestled between the Dixwell Avenue shops to the west and the Newhallville neighborhood to the south, is called the Olin Powder Farm.

It includes over 100 acres of meandering paths through mature oaks, hickories, and pines, and ponds teeming with aquatic life.

And it has been privately owned and fenced off from the public since the late 1880s.

A coalition led by Save The Sound, CONECT, and the Hamden Land Conservation Trust is petitioning for Commissioner Katie Dykes of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to prioritize ​“the environmental cleanup and remediation of the Olin Powder Farm in southern Hamden and issue a new remediation order for the Olin Corporation.”

“How did most people in this community not know that a hundred acres of land with forests, four beautiful lakes, a path, existed in our own backyard?” asked Hamden legislative councilman Justin Farmer, who grew up in the Newhall section of the town, during a Thursday public forum about the site.

The natural gem has suffered from waste contamination for decades. It was first owned by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, which used the site to store gunpowder. When the company now known as Olin Corporation took over from a bankrupt Winchester company in the 1930s, the new owners used the site as an industrial dumping ground for batteries and solvents.

The state Department of Environmental Protection issued a remediation order for Olin to clean up the property in 1986, but 34 years later, the remediation is still not complete.

“As a result, an entire generation of parents and children from the surrounding neighborhoods have been prohibited from accessing and enjoying this beautiful property,” said Kirk Wesley, a community organizer for Congregations for a New Connecticut (CONECT).

The property was described as ​“an ecological gem” and the ​“lungs of the community” by Curt Johnson, president of Save The Sound, an environmental non-profit group. A resident in the greater New Haven area, he has visited the property numerous times over the decades.

“It’s a remarkable hidden oasis of quiet forest and ponds,” he said. There is a floating bog on one of the five ponds, an unusual feature for the environment of southern New England.

Farmer has been advocating for the Powder Farm to be turned into a public park at least since January 2019.

“When you’re on the property, it is uniquely quiet, it is one of the most serene places I have ever been to.” He said that it would be a welcome juxtaposition to the nearby urban community, which he described as ​“industrial”, a ​“food desert”, and the result of ​“white flight and capital flight.”

He added that this parcel of land, if made public, could have ​“the ability to right all the wrongs” this community has endured due to decades of housing segregation and environmental injustice.

Representatives from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and from Olin Corporation did not respond to email requests for comment by the publication time of this article.

The Town Dump

In the first half of the 20th century, a racially restrictive real estate market prevented people of color from buying homes in the Hamden neighborhoods of Spring Glen and Whitneyville. Black families were instead sold ranch homes in the town dump of Newhall, which used to be malaria-ridden swampland and was then filled with toxic waste.

For years, residents in the Newhall neighborhood, comprised largely of first-time Black homeowners and Winchester Repeating Arms workers, lived on what was essentially a massive landfill. Car batteries, shell casings, and unstable swamp land were buried beneath the foundations of their homes.

It cost many, including Farmer’s family, their homes, when foundations sunk so severely into the ground that the houses had to be demolished. As he spoke on Zoom video during the forum Thursday, Farmer gestured to an empty field behind him. It is where his childhood home used to stand until it had to be torn down.

In 2010, the town witnessed the largest residential environmental cleanup in Connecticut history when the state began a $50 to $70 million remediation effort. The neighborhood lost a middle school in the process when it had to be relocated. Like many other buildings, it sat on decades of arsenic, lead, heavy metal and other chemical waste that were to be removed from the soil.

“It’d be remiss if we cannot put this contextually with all the demonstrations and protests that have taken place; it’s not just about police accountability, it’s about environmental justice,” said Wesley at the Thursday forum.

Martin Dodd, chief legal director of Save The Sound, highlighted the direct link between the contamination of the Newhall neighborhood and that of the Olin Powder Farm. The two problems were discovered around the same time.

Remediation of the Olin property would be a first step in remedying the decades-long damage wrecked upon the nearby neighborhoods, said speakers at the event.

A ​“Relatively Simple” Clean-Up Effort

A six-to-ten foot chain-link fence, armed with barbed wire, encircles most of the forested property, although there are breaches in some areas where intrepid hikers and adventurists have cut the fence.

The last public walk of the Olin Powder Farm was in 2013, organized by the Hamden Land Conservation Trust. Johnson said that he has requested permission from the Olin Corporation to explore the site again in the past 16 months. But the requests have gone ignored.

Until the state issues a clean-up order and Olin completes the remediation efforts, the property will remain fenced off and unavailable for public use.

Everything about the site points toward how it would be perfect for a public nature park, said speakers at the forum. The old Winchester road ring used to transport gunpowder that circles the pond could easily be converted to a walking trial.

Schools could organize educational field trips for students, as six ponds and several wetland areas on site serve as pretreatment basins for the Lake Whitney reservoir which serves as a water source for the Southern Connecticut region. It is also within walking distance of nine schools.

A 200-page Yale forestry school study from 2004 provides an extensive management plan for how the site could be transformed into a public park.

Furthermore, Johnson, president of Save The Sound, explained that the contamination on the Olin Powder Farm is more localized and less extensive than in the Newhall community. The main source of contamination in the Powder Farm is battery waste and solvents that were dumped in a particular two-to-five-acre parcel at the western corner of the property.

Dodd said he expects the clean-up to be ​“relatively simple” and could be done ​“relatively quickly”, nothing like the multi-million dollar project to clean up pollution in the Newhall community.

“What is key is that DEEP and Olin have done virtually nothing since 1992 or so, onward of 30 years now,” Johnson said. ​“We need to get the DEEP to issue a clean up order. Without a clean up order, nothing is going to happen on that property.”

The clean-up order is necessary so that the remediation study can be completed and the extent of the contamination properly assessed. Under state and federal law, Olin is responsible for the clean up, but until the order is issued, they cannot be forced to do so. 

Dodd added that the 1986 order for Olin to clean up the site followed the far more relaxed environmental standards of the 1980s.

“In 1986, environmental remediation was really in its infancy,” said Dodd. It was not until 1996 that Connecticut adopted the Remediation Standard Regulations, which is the definitive document that specifies the remediation of soil and groundwater pollution in the state.

“The law has changed, the standards have improved, the technology for remediation has improved, so you just need to make a fresh start on this thing,” he said.

Standing in front of the barren field that was once his childhood home before it was lost to the sinking ground, Farmer called for viewers to sign onto the petition and start the envisioning process of restoring relationships between the Newhall and Hamden community and their natural environment.

“I have a vested interest because my family has bought into this community,” said Farmer. ​“My mom emigrated here 30 years ago, my house, like many other people, [I have] put tens of thousands of dollars into this. If we don’t seize this opportunity to make the change that we need, we are leaving people out.”

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