PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Members of Congress from Rhode Island and Connecticut are celebrating the signing of federal legislation that protects several rivers in the two states.
U.S. Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and U.S. Rep. Jim Langevin, of Rhode Island, and U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, of Connecticut, plan to meet along the Wood River in Exeter, Rhode Island Monday. The Democrats are hailing the new law designating key segments of the Wood-Pawcatuck watershed as part of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
President Donald Trump signed into law a bipartisan public lands package in March that included Reed’s Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The Pawcatuck River marks the most southern part of the border between Rhode Island and Connecticut.
It establishes Rhode Island’s first Wild and Scenic river system and will provide access to federal funding to protect and maintain parts of seven rivers in Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Connecticut has three rivers already designated as ‘Wild and Scenic’:
- Eightmile River, a tributary to the Connecticut River in East Lyme.
- Farmington (Lower) River & Salmon Brook, which meet in East Granby and flow into the Conn. River in Windsor
- Farmington (West Branch) River from the Goodwin Dam in Hartland to the Canton/New Hartford line.
