Protect the Partrick Wetlands
and our Community


Cranbury Task Force meeting Monday


By ROBERT KOCH
Printed in the The Norwalk Hour

Westport and Wilton planners will attend Monday the Mayor's Cranbury Neighborhood Task Force, as the group resumes its discussion of a proposed sewer line, the White Barn Theater and other development plans.

Mayor Alex Knopp formed the task force last October to review the impact of developments in the Norwalk-Westport-Wilton border area.

They include a proposed Newtown Avenue sewer line to serve Poplar Plains, a 22 single-family home development planned off Partrick Road in Westport and a plan to build 13 single-family homes and a cultural arts schools at the White Barn Theater that straddles the Norwalk-Westport border..

In forming the task force, Knopp stressed that development in one community affects neighboring communities. With that in mind, city officials have invited planners from Westport and Wilton to Monday's meeting.

Wilton Town Planner Bob Nerney said he will discuss nearby Wilton zoning, which he said is "largely zoned residential and mostly developed." "We will give an overview of the zoning in that part of town and also share what our Plan of Conservation and Development recommends," Nerney said. The meeting "is a positive thing ... these impacts are often regional in nature." Westport officials confirmed Friday that Planning and Zoning Director Katherine Barnard also will attend the Norwalk meeting.

Also coming from Westport is Matthew Mandell, director of the Partrick Wetlands Preservation Fund, which opposes Poplar Plains and the proposed Newtown Avenue sewer line to serve it. "The ability to stop over-development is first having regional cooperation among the bordering towns and city, and this is the first step," Mandell said. "We're going to have some people there. We want to watch and listen to the questions." Save Cranbury Association Co-Director Gail Wall, a task force member, hopes to leave the meeting with information about traffic, wetlands and sewer performance.

"This is the second meeting. Hopefully we'll have some of those documents prepared, studies on sewer failures, the amount of wetlands, and also traffic studies," Wall said. "We'll have the information in front of us, and then we can take that back, go through it and evaluate it." The Mayor's Cranbury Neighborhood Task Force is scheduled to meet Monday at 5 p.m. in third-floor Room A300 of Norwalk City Hall, 125 East Ave. The meeting will end between 6 and 6:30 p.m.