Through some hard work and help of federal and state grants, Oxford High School students in the Youth Conservation Corps are sprucing up the town’s open space.
Biology teacher Joe Lanier, while teaching at Warren Harding High School in Bridgeport, started the Urban Gardening Club as part of the Groundwork Bridgeport Green Team.
The mission of the non-profit organization has been to convert blighted areas of the city into gardens, parks, playgrounds, and streetscapes.
When Lanier came to Oxford High School three years ago, he applied the Urban Gardening Club concept to the nearly 380 acres of open space purchased by the town in 1998 at the Rockhouse Hill Sanctuary on Quaker Farms Road, overseen by the Oxford Land Trust.
Over the past few years, Oxford High School’s Youth Conservation Corps have cleared and brushed nearly five miles of trails and land improvements utilizing about $150,000 in state grants.
Lanier said a 2007 grant funded fencing and repairs caused by excessive ATV usage along three-fourths mile trail along Quaker Farms Road.
Most recently, the town applied for a $75,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection to continue extending the trail system, which Lanier hopes will connect to the Naugatuck State Forest.
The YCC has also partnered with Groundwork Bridgeport Green Team, made up of students from Warren Harding High School in Bridgeport to learn and work together at Weir Farm Historic Site in Wilton.
“Students from both schools are being introduced to the National Park Service, learning about the environment, and benefiting from working with students of diverse backgrounds,” Lanier said.
Lanier explained YCC provides volunteer and paid opportunities to high school students with an interest in agriculture and outdoor work.
He said interested students are required to volunteer 50 hours of their time to the YCC, at which point they are eligible to be paid $8 an hour working through the summer and weekends.
“The volunteer hours are to see if the students want to pursue the work and enjoy it,” he said.
Oxford High School senior Billy Martin said he enjoys the work because it is not a typical high school job.
“This is doing a lot of good for the town and the environment,” he said.
Volunteer Gabe Armentano looks at the YCC as a great opportunity to get to know his classmates and learn something in the process.
“It is good to get outside and do things,” he said.
Inland Wetlands Commissioner Tom Adamski has been proactive with steering the grants towards the trails project said the initiative started during former First Selectman Augie Palmer’s administration and has continued under First Selectman Mary Ann Drayton-Rogers.
“It is great to see them both on the same page here,” he said.
Adamski added the town has also encouraged Seymour, which owns approximately 250 acres of open space that adjoins the Rockhouse Hill Sanctuary to apply for state and federal grants.
“If the town could connect the trails to Seymour that would be really terrific,” he said.
Ron Skurat, of the Seymour Conservation Commission and former president of the Seymour Land Trust said the town was denied for a state DEP grant which put the project on the back burner.
“Adamski is right, the trails should be extended through Seymour, the town is just not ready to move on that just yet,” he said.
