The town received a $500,000 check from the state Thursday that will be used to preserve 66 acres of open space, First Selectman Mary Ann Drayton-Rogers announced.
“This is excellent for Oxford. The land has been designated as open space, in perpetuity,” Drayton-Rogers said.
The money, combined with $400,000 from the town’s open space fund, goes toward the $1.15 million purchase price for the land known locally as the Von Wettberg property. Click here for our previous story on the purchase.
The property is inside the 400-plus acre Rockhouse Hill Sanctuary, which is already dedicated open space, and it is part of 1,000 acres of open space connecting Oxford and Seymour.
The Oxford Land Trust played a key role in helping to spread the word about the importance of preserving the Von Wettberg property.
Residential development of the 66 acres would have been a “nightmare to contemplate,” Oxford Land Trust president Peter Petrochko told the Valley Indy in June.
The land is being purchased from the Haynes family. Several old structures on the property have been demolished. The town is cleaning out a part of the property that was used as an old farmer’s dump, Drayton-Rogers said.
The property will be open to the public for hiking and passive recreation.
“The Rockhouse Hill Sanctuary has some beautiful hiking trails on it now in that area. That is due to a great deal of work from the Oxford Land Trust as well as the Youth Conservation Corps through our high school,” Drayton-Rogers said.
The $500,000 comes from the Department of Environmental Protection’s Open Space and Watershed Protection grant program.
It was part of $9.9 million in open space money Gov. M. Jodi Rell allocated this week. Rell’s goal is to have 21 percent of Connecticut’s land preserved as open space by 2023.
Click here to read the governor’s press release.
Drayton-Rogers said that with the Von Wettberg property protected, about 18 percent of Oxford is dedicated open space.
“It’s only 2010 and we’re moving toward matching the state’s goal,” she said.
Oxford was the only town in the lower Naugatuck Valley to receive open space money from the state.
