Power Outages and Connecticut's Trees: Feb. 28 Citizen Forum

The Fairfield Forestry Committee and Fairfield League of Women Voters, along  with nine other southern Fairfield County chapters of the League of Women Voters and tree-focused groups, will sponsor an educational forum “Power Struggle: Balancing the Needs of People, Power and Trees” on Tuesday, February 28 from 7:00-9:00 PM at the Darien Town Hall, 2 Renshaw Road (snow date March 7). 

The forum will consist of  talks by five stakeholders representatives including the following: CL&P,  the Governor’s Two-Storm Panel,  the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection,  the Connecticut Forest and Parks Association and a representative from the Concord, Mass. Municipal Light Plant,  a municipality that has buried their power wires underground; all of whom will address from their perspectives this all -- important issue of powers outages, past and future, and what can be done to reduce their frequency and duration. A Q&A will follow their presentations.

The goal of this timely forum is to inform Connecticut residents on all aspects of this continuing problem that so profoundly affects us. The Connecticut General Assembly legislative session opened on Feb. 8 and will be taking up legislation designed to address the reliability of our power supply. Residents will gain information and insight so that they can form educated opinions on the proposed solutions.

Handouts will be available at the forum including contact information of state officials so the attendees, armed with accurate information, can voice their opinions and suggestions based on what they learned at the forum.

This forum is sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Darien, Fairfield, Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, and Stamford, and Greenwich Tree Conservancy, Fairfield Forestry Committee, Stamford Tree Foundation and the Tree Conservancy of Darien.

We encourage all to attend so they can learn and influence the proposed solutions to these power outages.

For more information, contact Mary Hogue: maryhogue@optonline.net.