Government & Politics
U.S. Sen. Murphy Comes to Darien to Learn About the Lobster Population
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Continued use of certain pesticides is what’s devastated the population of lobsters in Long Island Sound, Roger Frate Sr., owner of Darien Seafood Market, told U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy on Tuesday when Murphy stopped by for a visit. Murphy was in town to promote a new bill he’s filed with fellow Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and the two senators representing New York in the Senate — the Long Island Sound Restoration and Stewardship Act. The bill would maintain $65 million in federal funding to improve sewage treatment plants and restore habitats for plants and wildlife along the coast. Frate, president of a lobsterman’s association covering the western part of Long Island Sound, told Murphy that decades of pollution from sewage treatment plants never devastated lobsters as much as the sudden use of some pesticides to fight West Nile Virus in 1998 and 1999. In 1998 and 1999 there was a widespread, sudden collapse of the lobster population in the sound, and it hasn’t entirely recovered since.