The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has purchased for $900,000 a 38-acre parcel in Haddam from the Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co. to turn into a fish spawning and feeding habitat.
The 38-acre parcel on the Salmon River is adjacent to the 544-acre parcel of land where Connecticut Yankee operated a nuclear power plant.
The nuclear reactor has been decommissioned, although that 544-acre parcel still is home to the facility storing the reactor’s nuclear waste, which is awaiting transport to a national permanent storage facility.
The Fish & Wildlife Service will add the 38 acres onto its 378-acre Salmon River Division of its Silvio O. Conte National Fish and Wildlife Refuge; the agency’s fifth such acquisition for the division since 2009.
The agency says the extensive beds of submerged aquatic vegetation along this tract provide significant overwintering, spawning, and feeding habitats for a significant number of fish, including commercial finfish and shellfish.
The entire Conte refuge takes up nearly 36,000 acres in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Fish and Wildlife Service has plans to acquire 87,500 acres total for the refuge.
Financial terms were not disclosed. The sale closed on Monday.
The 38 acres includes the site of the former home of Venture Smith, the African slave who earned freedom for himself and his family in the mid-1700’s, according to Connecticut Yankee.
Connecticut Yankee still is soliciting ideas for the best use of its 544 acre site, which may be divided for multiple uses. Having the nuclear waste onsite is an impediment to those discussions, as the federal government has set no timetable for moving the spent uranium to a permanent repository.
