Volume 19, Number 25 Serving Durham, Middlefield and Rockfall
Committee works on bathroom plans at athletic facility By Stephanie Wilcox Town Times It’s been close to a year since the dedication ceremony of the new athletic complex at Coginchaug High School, and the football team has just taken to the artificial turf field for its second season. But the facility is not quite complete. In fact, the unfinished bathrooms have made a lot of folks unhappy. After a lawsuit filed by
Durham resident Karen Cheyney in 2009 to stop the athletic complex from being built, the settlement required, among other things, that the work be finished no later than 18 months after the settlement date. But RSD13 had not completed the permanent restroom facilities within the 18 months, and Board of Education members and district officials found themselves at
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Friday, September 28, 2012
Rehabilitation of White’s Farm underway Residents invited on site to watch progress
See Athletic, page 10
Durham receives bat house donation
The bat house on Town Hall. Photo courtesy of Ultimate-Kids.com
By Stephanie Wilcox Town Times
Durham resident Noah Ventola thinks bats are “pretty neat animals.” “I’ve done a lot of research
on their nesting habits, migration — they are really interesting,” he said. Unfortunately, Ventola knows most people aren’t as fond of these flying mammals as he is. “When people hear the word bats, they get the heebie-jeebies,” he said. And Ventola wants that impression of bats to change. In the last four to five years, Ventola said, 80 to 90 percent of all bats in the State of Connecticut have been killed by a fungus called the white-nose syndrome. “Bats have come under a tremendous amount of pressure from white nose syndrome that is killing them off at an extraordinary rate,” he said. “Now more than ever they need clean, safe homes.” And this is where Ventola can help — and has — by donating a bat house (essentialSee Bat, page 15
Sediment removed from Allyn Brook is stockpiled on site. By Stephanie Wilcox Town Times Flooding at White’s Farm was so bad over recent years that the town was unable to use the farm in the way it was meant — primarily for passive recreation. “Unfortunately, too many years of neglect caused flooding that is prohibiting any meaningful use of the property as well as encroaching on private property,” First Selectman Laura Francis wrote in an April 2012 Town Times column. “As property owners, we have an obligation to mitigate the damage.” This statement came after contentious selectmen meetings and public forums in 2011, where residents were irritated by the town’s neglect of the property that was deed-
ed to it from the White family in 1966 as part of open space inventory. The land, damaged by flooding of Allyn Brook, which runs through the property, where dead trees and sediment filled the bank, became a marshy, muddy field. Last year, disappointed in the town’s handling, the White family proposed legally transferring the open space from the town back to the family, but that proposal flopped. Since then, the town worked out a plan to restore the Maple Avenue property, and the restoration has finally begun. The eight-week project to restore the wetlands involves excavating the channel back to the way it was originally. “We’re putting it back exactly where it was, following the meanders of the stream,”
Photos by Stephanie Wilcox
said Town Engineer Brian Curtis. “We’re telling {the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection}, where to dig and how far to dig.” The process began in early September, after protective areas and the streambed were staked out, the area was brushed out to be excavated to determine the grade, and trees in danger of falling into the brook were removed. Now the heftier work is underway — dredging and rechanneling Allyn Brook, from Maple Avenue to Route 68, to prevent future flooding at the property. According to Don Hargraves, a wetland restoration specialist with DEEP and a Middlefield resident, about
See Rehabilitation, next page