While the Republicans running for their party’s presidential nomination can’t seem to stop talking about how bad environmental protection is for the economy (see this story in Thursday’s Times), the elected officials and business leaders who showed up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on Monday to show their support for the SoundVision plan were saying just the opposite:
If you protect Long Island Sound, not only will you preserve an incredibly productive ecological resource, you preserve an extremely valuable economic resource as well.
SoundVision is a two-year action plan to restore and protect the Sound, created by the Long Island Sound Study’s Citizens Advisory Committee. It is being unveiled this month in a series events organized by Save the Sound, SoundWaters, the Norwalk Maritime Aquarium, and others. Visit LISoundVision.org for more information, a link to the action plan itself, and a schedule of remaining events.
In the broadest sense, the Sound contributes $9 billion a year to the economy of Connecticut and coastal New York (that’s an inflation-adjusted number based on a 1990 study that showed the Sound’s economic value to be $5.5 billion).
But more specifically, Paul Brady, executive director of the American Council of Engineering Companies of Connecticut, said that the work to repair sewage plants and sewer pipes along the Sound would create an estimated 6,000 jobs.
In other words, cleaning up Long Island Sound is good for the economy in the very real sense that it puts people to work. And for those who wanted to look, the need for that work was evident on Monday.
The SoundVision event was held at Captain’s Cove Seaport, a combination marina-restaurant-tourist attraction on Black Rock Harbor. It is well-kept, prosperous-looking, filled with boats, docks, boardwalks, eating areas with all-weather tables, and an odd array of shops housed in colorful buildings built on a tiny scale. It is also next to a pipe that is part of Bridgeport’s combined sewer overflow system (CSO), and as speaker after speaker talked about the importance of a clean Long Island Sound, the pipe discharged raw sewage into Black Rock Harbor.
