This is Politics at work. There is a struggle going on in the little town of Bethel. Bethel is a great small charming town and the struggle over keeping Terre Haute preserved as open space. There is a lot of misdirection and it has taken me about six months and a lot of conversations to try to understand the issues. The property is part of a larger chain of open space stretching from Bethel through Danbury’s Tarrywile Park, Wooster Mountain State Park and Ridgefield’s preserved lands. You can check out this site for maps and boundaries www.ctpath.org.
Terre Haute was set aside for thirty years and over the years developers have wanted to put a golf course and the community has fought against it. Today, the situation is that there is 208 acres of the property that are owned by Bethel, yet lie within Danbury’s city limits. A new proposal from State representative Jason Bartlett would provide Danbury with state funding to “buy back” the Danbury portion of the land and preserve it as open space. The State of Connecticut would place a conservation easement on the property, prohibiting future development and better yet Bethel would receive a multi-million dollar windfall in their general fund.
You may ask yourself what is the issue? Mr. Burke, Bethel Town Selectman has sent out a flyer of misdirection and does not want to sell back the land to Danbury. He would like to possibly develop the land for future mining and logging. This is the interesting thing - it is not zoned for those purposes and the town of Danbury does not want the land developed. In fact it is their top priority to preserve it. That is the struggle. If you want to see the land there is a hike on October 14th. More details will be posted.
