The Central Naugatuck Valley Metropolitan Planning Organization was awarded funds from the US Department of Transportation under its RAISE discretionary grant program. The project will complete the environmental assessment and design plans for sections of the Naugatuck River Greenway Trail.
The NVCOG Equity Explorer is a unified platform for tracking socioeconomic and environmental indicators to ensure that fairness, justice, and sustainability remain essential components in all decision-making processes.
This study will analyze existing waste management practices among the 19 municipalities and recommend paths to regionalization. One possible outcome is the formation of a Regional Waste Authority, which could engage in shared services & staff, collaborative purchasing, and regional programming.
The U.S. Forest Service awarded NVCOG a grant to research and catalog priority Open Space parcels across the region. The major deliverable of this project will be a GIS map layer of OS with detailed attributes including ownership, acreage, level of legal protection, public access status, and more.
CT DEEP’s Climate Resilience Fund awarded NVCOG a grant to develop and advance culvert replacement and drainage system improvement projects in nine municipalities. This regional effort aims to reduce stormwater flooding, repair infrastructure, and incorporate elements of LID. Deliverables will include a preliminary designs and draft grant applications for federal implementation funding.
The U.S. Forest Service awarded NVCOG a grant to assess, map, and characterize tree cover across the region. A robust tree cover mitigates high temperatures, filters air pollution, and can improve property values and quality of life in urban areas.
The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants (CPRG) are a five-billion-dollar federal program to help state and regional governments reduce greenhouse gases. NVCOG towns are split among several planning regions, each of which is conducting its own GHG assessment and planning GHG reduction measures.
For nearly two centuries, migratory fish have been blocked from most of the Naugatuck River by Kinneytown Dam in Seymour. That continues today, with the facility no longer producing electricity and serving no useful purpose. Now, a project is underway led by NVCOG in partnership with Save the Sound to remove Kinneytown Dam. Removal will open miles of restored habitat to shad, alewife, lamprey, river herring and other anadromous fish, and will also reduce flood risk, remove a safety concern and eyesore, and reconnect communities to recreational opportunities along the Naugatuck River.
After the longstanding failure of a fish ladder at Kinneytown Dam came to light in 2019, the Naugatuck River Restoration Coalition was formed to advocate for the restoration of fish passage on the Naugatuck River. Consisting of NVCOG, the Naugatuck River Revival Group, and Save the Sound, the Coalition has worked with state and federal regulatory agencies to shed light on the failure to pass fish as required by Kinneytown Dam’s federal license exemption and encouraging the dam owner to remedy the situation.
It has become clear that restoring hydroelectric generation while providing safe, timely and effective fish passage at Kinneytown Dam is not economical, and removal of the dam is the only way to fully restore fish passage at the site. In partnership with Save the Sound, NVCOG applied for and received funding through the NOAA Restoring Fish Passage Through Barrier Removal grant program under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) in 2022 for the acquisition and decommissioning of the facility, and for the design and construction work leading to the dam’s removal. The project is supported by municipal leaders, state and federal regulatory agencies, the CT federal delegation, environmental advocates, and the current dam owner.
The Coalition has developed an Interactive Story Map to explain the issue. Project details will be continually added here and on the Story Map, so please check back often!
View questions from the community and answers from the project team.
Watch the video recording of the first public meeting held at the Ansonia Senior Center on August 28, 2024,
This interactive storymap details the effort to restore migratory fish to the Naugatuck River, the longstanding issues at Kinneytown, and the current plan to remove the dam.
The Towns of Thomaston and Watertown received a federal Recreational Trails Program grant through the CT Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to design and construct a trailhead parking area and short section of Naugatuck River Greenway (NRG) trail in Thomaston and to design critical features along the future NRG route in Watertown.