The Long Island Sound Study (LISS) Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC), in cooperation with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Connecticut and New York; the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection; and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, on Tuesday unveiled an ambitious plan to improve the environmental health of Long Island Sound over the next two years.

The CAC’s “Action Agenda: 2011-2013” — which was introduced during a rainy afternoon event at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club in Greenwich — contains 54 actions to “improve water quality, restore habitat, conserve land, maintain biodiversity, and increase opportunities for human use and enjoyment of the Sound.” The Agenda, which is in keeping with the CAC’s SoundVision Action Plan, is organized around four main themes: “Waters and Watersheds, Habitats and Wildlife, Communities and People, and Science and Management.”

Specific goals include further reducing the amount of nitrogen discharged into Long Island Sound; reducing non-point source pollution; preserving and protecting more natural habitat; installing more fish ladders on rivers and streams; mitigating the impact from storm drainage systems; and improving the health of the estuaries that are part of the Sound’s ecosystem.

In addition the Agenda calls for making Long Island Sound a "no discharge zone" for boater waste. New York and federal environmental officials said beginning Thursday, boaters are banned from discharging their gray water into an additional 760 square miles on the New York state portion of the Sound. (The ban has been in effect on the Connecticut side since 2007.) The expanded zone includes New York harbors, bays and tributaries, as well as part of the East River.

The Agenda also aims to restore 200 acres of coastal habitat and reopen 80 miles of migratory corridors to fish. What’s more, a number of actions target restoration of eelgrass, which plays an important role in establishing habitat for shellfish and juvenile fish.

In addition to representatives from the aforementioned groups, Congressman Jim Himes (R-4); state representatives L. Scott Frantz and Terrie Wood; and Greenwich First Selectman Peter Tesei, as well as representatives from Save the Sound, The Audubon and the Maritime Aquarium, were also in attendance. Almost all commended the CAC for establishing a successful, multi-jurisdictional consortium of federal, state and local entities that all work together cooperatively toward a common goal of improving the environmental health of the Sound.

“I want to thank Save the Sound and the CAC, who have come together to help make Long Island Sound cleaner, more economically viable, and just a better place to be,” Himes said, adding that a healthy Long Island Sound  “is good for the economy of this region — it is good for our quality of life.”

“I live on the Mianus River, where the fish ladder was installed, and it just dramatically improved the bird life,” Himes said, as boats peacefully glided by in Greenwich Harbor, as seen through the windows of the club. “My two daughters are on Long Island Sound all summer long.”

Himes said one of the best pieces of news he heard about the Sound came two years ago “when they reopened the clam beds here in Greenwich to oystering — last winter I must have eaten 20 dozen of them last year myself — so keep up the good work.”

Curt Johnson, co-chair of the CAC, explained that the group has 38 members — 19 in New York and 19 in Connecticut — representing a diverse range of entities.

“These are not just environmental groups, they are also business groups, and they are municipal groups,” he said, adding that the CAC not only focuses on how to improve the Sound’s environmental health, but also how it can be better utilized as an economic engine.

Johnson said about a year and half ago, members of the CAC, recognizing that significant progress had already been made in improving the Sound’s health, asked “What is next for Long Island Sound? We’ve made some progress but where do we go now?” The group then set about creating the proposed Action Agenda.

A major piece of the four-point Agenda is improving water quality: “This is not just about the traditional pollution we’re used to discussing,” Johnson said. “It’s about controlling and managing things like geese populations, because they poop into our waters… and there’s a whole bunch of complicated issues surrounding non-point source pollution.”

Another major component of the Agenda, he said, is “creating safe and thriving places for all Sound creatures.”

“This is about making the places around the Sound healthier for all kinds of creatures — from five-year-old kids, to [dolphins] that are returning to the Sound, to the world record, 81-pound striper that was caught about three weeks ago.”

Johnson said the CAC is a great example of building “communities that work.”

“This is an investment in the Sound — that brings people to the Sound — and stirs all kinds of economic activity, attracts all kinds of talent to this area,” he said. “It’s critical that we invest in an economically vibrant Long Island Sound.”

Nancy Seligson, co-chair of the CAC in New York, agreed, saying “the beauty of this group is that we are all in alignment. The citizens really need the federal and state agencies to push this agenda forward."

Mark Tedesco, director, LISS, EPA Long Island Sound Office, Stamford, said CAC helped improve the SoundVision process by allowing the people and groups who use the Sound to have a stronger voice in the environmental actions being taken.

“The key is not to have management in the abstract — rather that you’re really responding to the people who vote along Long Island Sound, the people who fish or go swimming or just like to walk along its shores,” Tedesco said. “This group came together to see what everyone wanted… on the local, state and federal level… and worked in a coordinated way to realize that vision.”

Curt Spalding, EPA Region 1 Administrator, said he was impressed with the Action Agenda’s comprehensiveness.

“These goals speak to the whole sound — not just a piece of it — and that’s a true innovation,” he said. “Our environment and our economy are really the same thing, looked at through different prisms. In fact, you build your economy on your environment.”

Spalding said environmental change — he cited the recent increase in rain and floods — means the Action Agenda will need to be flexible.

“Bottom line is the climate is changing and it’s going to affect the Sound in dramatic ways,” Spalding said. “So as this plan moves forward, it’s going to have to change, it’s going to have to be dynamic.”

Spalding said environmental groups have made progress toward improving the health of the sound in several ways during the past two decades.

“The fact that fish from this area can once again run up and down these rivers — I don’t think any of us who got into this game decades ago thought ‘we’ll see a day when herring will be re-introduced into these rivers,’ because they were so polluted no one could envision it,” he said. “But now we are. We’re seeing fish ladders being installed on our northeast estuaries. So some very powerful things are happening that are reconnecting these estuaries to their communities — not just along the coast, but upstream — and there are new ideas out there, in terms of how we can utilize our water.”

Daniel C. Esty, the newly-appointed commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), said “a “great amount has been accomplished during the 25 years that the Long Island Sound cleanup efforts have been going.”

“So don’t say we haven’t made any progress — that’s one of the arguments going on in Washington right now,” he said. “The limited resources spent here, in the scope of overall environmental spending, have done tremendous amount of good.”

Esty said since 1998, the DEP, working with other agencies and groups, has preserved over 860 acres of habitat and restored watersheds in both Connecticut and New York.

“Since then, over 150 miles of migratory river corridors has been restored — we have fish passages that are bringing fish up through the dams in many cases,” he said. “In just the last six years the Long Island Sound Futures Fund has provided more than $4.5 million in grants to communities along the Sound, to restore habitats, to reduce non-point source pollution, to foster a next generation of environmental stewardship.”

George Pavlou, EPA Region 2 Deputy Administrator, also pointed out several milestones, including a significant reduction in the amount of nitrogen going into Long Island Sound through the CT DEP’s Nitrogen Trading Program.

“I’m glad to say that in 2010 LISS partners reduced nitrogen by 8,385 pounds a day from the previous year,” Pavlou said. “That’s the biggest year-over-year reduction since reduction efforts started in the early 1990s. Overall more than 27 million fewer pounds of nitrogen are going into the sound this year compared to when we started.”

In addition “numerous fish passage projects have been successful thanks to the collaborative efforts of local, state, federal and private partners,” Pavlou said, adding that in Smithtown, NY, “all the dams have been removed from the rivers, which enables the fish to spawn and create new habitats.”

And then there’s the return of dolphins to Long Island Sound — another sign of its improved health:

“Back in 1990 one of the visions of the Audubon Society as part of its ‘Listen to the Sound’ campaign, was to see dolphins come back to the sound,” Pavlou said. “Well, lo and behold, a large pod of bottle-nose dolphins, more than 100 in the past summer, have repeated their visits to the Sound, to forage, much to the chagrin of the fishermen.”

“We’ve also seen the return of river otter in the rivers and steams and I believe some people have seen some mink as well,” Pavlou added.

Pavlou said the EPA has compiled data showing the economic return on investment for environmental projects for water bodies such as the Sound. He said every dollar the EPA contributed to Sound projects funded since 2006 “has returned on average $67 — that’s not a bad rate on retur— that’s a Sound investment.”

State Sen. L. Scott Frantz also commended the CAC’s efforts, saying, “with your good work, maybe one day we’ll see an Atlantic salmon coming down Long Island Sound in search of one of our beautiful rivers."

Other speakers included Denise Savageau, head of the Conservation Commission in Greenwich, and Don Strait of the CT Fund for the Environment.

The event was also the last stop of a summer-long "schooner tour" of Connecticut, Westchester County and Long Island, by the environmental groups Save the Sound and the Long Island Sound Study's Citizens Advisory Committee. Although the schooner was docked at Indian Harbor Yacht club, it didn’t go out, as the rain was falling steadily.

Missing from the event was any discussion of where funding will come from to implement the various components of the CAC’s “Action Agenda.”

For more information about the Long Island Sound Study and its Action Agenda, visit www.longislandsoundstudy.net/.

For more information about the LISS CAC’s SoundVision, visit www.lisoundvision.org.