What is a Plan of Conservation and Development and Why Does it Matter for Ecological and Social Regeneration?

By Zbigniew Grabowski, Executive Director - Alliance for the Mystic River Watershed

As both Stonington and Groton are currently revisiting their 5 year plans of Conservation and Development, we believe it is valuable to lay out just how these plans might contribute to the regeneration of our watershed.

Plans of Conservation and Development (POCDs) are created by towns in Connecticut to define their priorities for both conserving and developing lands over a 5 year window. Enabled by section 8-23 of the CT General Statutes, they are required for towns to access statutory funding from the state as well as many federal and foundation funding sources. Basically, if a town seeks discretionary funding for land and development related projects, the POCD is often required to access that funding, and defines where and how it should be spent.

In this context, a POCD is a key arena for spatially defining what lands should be conserved, as open space, working farmlands, forests, riparian buffers, etc.. and which land should be developed, for housing, commercial use, infrastructure, industry, or other uses. While this binary thinking runs somewhat counter to the paradigm of regeneration - in that all land uses and relations are important to consider as a whole and in relation to one another - it is still a useful avenue to implement key regenerative concepts like a working and conserved lands overlay, municipal and watershed wide green infrastructure, meeting housing needs by using locally available materials, supporting local food systems, and regenerating degraded lands.

What do we mean by a working and conserved lands overlay?

The town of Granby CT’s POCD explicitly identifies a working and conserved lands network across the entirety of the town to insure a sustainable local food and timber supply, protect water quality, reduce flooding, and create a coherent and continuous network of trails and active transit assets. This area is formally defined within the town’s zoning regulations, which is ultimately required for a POCD to be effective. 

How does this relate to a town’s Green Infrastructure System?

As we wrote about a few weeks ago, Green Infrastructure is a planning concept that focuses on the connections between different types of ecosystems and built infrastructures to meet social needs for goods, services, and a desired quality of life. In this sense, we focus on the overall connectivity of trails and open space networks, as well as how their functions depend upon connectivity - for example, restoring migratory fish population depends upon ensuring adequate connections between the ocean, stream and river habitats, wetland habitats, and lake and pond habitat as well as connections between land use and water that affect water quality. This same idea - that function depends on connectivity - is true for many other needs, like improving flood resilience, reducing fire risk, having active transportation routes and trails, and connecting businesses and services to where people live.

Making sure our communities are conveniently and safely connected to each other and the environment through the POCD requires an overall vision and sense of a communities priorities, which leads the POCD process. With such a vision in place, communities will have to undertake additional work to understand and analyze the costs and benefits of different strategies and projects.

In order to be effective, POCD priorities need to be implemented in a town’s Capital Improvement Planning Process (CIP) as well as reflected within a town’s regulations (e.g. zoning) and standards (e.g. site specific standards for stormwater controls). 

To summarize, the POCD provides a vision for appropriate land use and land relations, the CIP should identify the costs and benefits of implementing POCD projects, and a town’s zoning and standards provide the substantive guidance for how land can be related to (including its use for agriculture, forestry, allowing water infiltration, recreation, etc…) or developed for housing, industry, etc…. It should be said that developed parcels can also have significant value for wildlife and ecological services, if the standards require them to do so - e.g. by having biodiverse green stormwater facilities, green roofs, landscaping standards or buffers, and/or requiring planting and management of vegetation adjacent to watercourses and wetlands.

Ultimately Town Councils or Boards of Selectpeople (depending on how a town has been set up), approve the Plan of Conservation and Development, oversee the budget for a CIP, and decide upon amendments to town ordinances, regulations, and standards. In CT, while the state legislature does create some requirements for towns, it does not provide general templates or guidance, making each town’s zoning and standards somewhat unique in a bit of a free for all. Because of the lack of centralized planning authority and guidance, most towns rely on consultants to develop their POCDs, review zoning regulations and standards, making them seem even more voodoo than they already are, seeing as they are often written in very formulaic legalese which can be hard for your average citizen to parse.

Standing town committees also can have input on the POCD, the CIP, zoning, and standards, which is also somewhat independently established by town ordinance, in terms of which committees and departments have regulatory oversight vs. just consultative and/or review power - for example, some towns have professional staff which do this work - such as a planning and/or public works department, and others rely on ad hoc committees - such as a economic development agency or finance/budget committee. One exception to this voluntarily established structure is that the CT legislature has required each town to establish an Inland Wetland and Watercourses Agency, which has the power to review development proposals that impact wetlands and watercourses, but due to a lack of support, oversight, and relevant training, has been seen by many to fail to restrict inappropriate development, including the CT council on Environmental Quality - see here for a 2008 report - although training is being updated, none of the other issues have really been addressed. IWWA regulations are still perceived by many as unreasonable restrictions on development rather than as a way to make sure we are putting buildings in flood prone and unhealthy (e.g damp and moldy) areas, and making sure that by building in one place we are exacerbating flooding issues elsewhere. 

To be truly effective, a POCD should have an implementation committee tasked with providing updates on progress, as well as finding internal and external funding for improvements and projects, and incorporating these into the town’s CIP process, zoning, and standards.

For Green Infrastructure (GI) and Nature Based Solutions, there are many opportunities to fund initiatives identified in a town POCD. These include internal funding mechanisms for a town’s budget for public works, the creation of stormwater utilities (see here for a UConn CLEAR report and guidance from the EPA), quality of life bonds, or GI specific bonds. Until recently there were also numerous state, federal, and private grant sources, including funding for trails and open space acquisition. 

The adoption of a high quality POCD identifies these funding sources early on. GI systems are also composed of many private lands, and general outreach and education on the benefits of managing private lands for the many ecosystem services it provides are also part of a holistic GI strategy. Ultimately, the benefits of GI are directly tied into who participates in planning, designing, implementing, maintaining, and having access to different forms of GI (www.giequity.org), and as municipalities around the world and US are proving, well designed and maintained GI systems, like other infrastructure systems, are vital parts of a livable urban and town future. 

Both Stonington and Groton are currently updating their POCDs, and we are sharing the details as best we can on our Alliance Calendar. Stonington is still developing their schedule of neighborhood meetings and Groton has an online platform to solicit input for priorities and potential projects. 

Addressing cross jurisdictional conservation goals and resilience challenges has always been difficult as towns are on different schedules and often inwardly focused - highlighting the importance of regional land trusts like our allies at Avolonia, our watershed level efforts, and new enabling legislation that was just passed at the state level to create multi-jurisdiction resilience districts.

We will be addressing these overall needs into our Watershed Regeneration Action Plan - as always, stay tuned for ways to get involved!