Long Island Sound.
It’s the spectacular backdrop for our lives – a great mixing basin of waters fresh and salt, more of a bathtub than an ocean, surprisingly shallow and therefore particularly susceptible to the pull of the tides and the push of pollution from the millions who live around its edges.
Here in Fairfield County, the coast of the Sound is a constant source of beauty and mystery – beauty too often seen from afar, and mystery because many of us have very few opportunities to see it up close, to know it well. The Sound is much less a workplace than it used to be, much more of a rich person’s private playground than it used to be. The issue of access to recreation on the coastline has been hotly debated in Connecticut for decades, as Neil Vigdor’s story relates Sunday, and it’s certainly not getting any better.
Neither is the health of the Sound. Its biggest threat is not the industry that still dots the shoreline, or even the stubborn toxic residue of the industries of yesteryear. The biggest threat is us. That threat comes in the form of the pollutants that storm water carries from our lawns, roads and drainpipes. Runoff is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, literally on steroids – a turbid mix of all the substances that fuel our modern lives, from motor oil to fertilizer to pharmaceuticals.
So what’s it like up close, the long, crenellated coastline of the county? It’s twenty-some miles as the crow flies, but at least 80 on foot – probably a lot more than that when you figure in all of the tiny inlets and coves and crannies.
Which is where we come in.
In order to answer that question for our readers – what’s it like, up close? – we’re dispatching dozens of reporters and photographers from our three coastal dailies – The Connecticut Post, The Advocate in Stamford, and the Greenwich Time – to walk each step of the coastline. It will take them three solid weeks – and we’ll be bringing you dispatches from the edge every day, starting with Amanda Cuda’s accompanying story today and finishing in early July on Byram Point, where the county meets New York state. For a part of that final stretch, we’ll invite you to come out and walk with us, to celebrate this beautiful place. More on that later – for now, and over the coming weeks, we invite you to share our journey in the pages of our newspapers, and on our Web sites, where we’ll feature a running blog, photo galleries, video and an interactive map.
We hope you enjoy the trip.
David McCumber is editor of the Greenwich Time and the Advocate in Stamford, and is editorial director of the Connecticut Media Group.
