After two years of sluggish environmental legislative action, state lawmakers in 2025 passed several big initiatives on climate change. But other environmental measures didn’t make it over the finish line as the clock ran out, and will have to wait until the next session for a chance to be addressed again.
Gov. Ned Lamont on Tuesday signed a bipartisan priority bill surrounding climate resilience into law. Senate Bill 9 seeks to better plan around the future impacts of climate change, with a focus on the impact of flooding and development.
The General Assembly also passed another major piece of climate legislation, House Bill 5004, which would mitigate human-driven greenhouse gas emissions in the state. That bill awaits the governor’s signature.
Here’s some of the progress made on other climate and environmental policies in the state.
Housing and the environment
A bill approved in March adopted the state’s next five-year Conservation and Development Policies Plan, giving municipalities tools to consider potential climate impacts.
The “Work, Live, Ride” provision in this year’s flagship housing bill is also geared towards helping Connecticut’s climate and environment.
The bill would encourage municipalities to build housing near use of public transit. The idea is to build more housing for a state facing a major shortage, but also reduce Connecticut’s reliance on cars, which add more greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
As of Wednesday, it’s unclear if Gov. Ned Lamont will approve, or veto the major bill.
Trash crisis continues in CT
This session’s bill seeking to tackle the state’s waste crisis didn’t get a final vote in the senate after passing the House on the second-to-last day of session. The measure sought to address plastics, and create a food donation policy to shrink the amount of organic waste going to landfills – which creates potent greenhouse gases.
Connecticut’s trash problem got bigger when the state closed MIRA, a waste-to-energy trash incinerator plant in Hartford in 2022. Now, state officials say about 40% of Connecticut’s garbage is shipped out of state.
But there was a glimmer of hope for the ongoing trash problem in Connecticut: the state bonding bill authorizes $15 million for Sustainable Materials Management.
Once again, lawmakers punt on bear hunt
Current Connecticut law allows people to kill a bear in the case of self-defense or defense of a pet. The law also authorizes deadly force if a bear enters an occupied building. But despite being allowed in neighboring New York and Massachusetts, a bear hunt is still not legal in Connecticut. A bill seeking to change that failed this session.
The environment committee’s initial bill would have altered requirements for getting a permit for killing or trapping wildlife that threaten crops. But an amendment approved on the Senate floor later tried to give the governor power to direct state officials to make rules for a bear hunt, if they found bear conflicts pose a public safety threat.
That language was watered down in the House on the last day of session, to instead ask state environmental officials to develop a bear management plan and consider non-lethal methods like bear-proof trash cans. With time running out, it failed to get a second vote in the Senate.
In May, House Speaker Matt Ritter (D-Hartford) said his caucus had significant concerns about authorizing a bear hunt without first requiring non-lethal steps taken by other states to deter human-bear conflicts.
“I'm OK with some sort of limited hunt, to be honest,” Ritter said. “I think there's been some case made, but I also agree with members who say we're idiots. We've done nothing to address it.”
Legal right to a safe, clean, healthy environment
Another bill that failed to make it across the finish line looked to change the state constitution to give all Connecticut citizens the legal right to healthy air, water, climate and environment.
If approved by voters, the proposal would have let people take legal action against the state government in the case of inaction on an environmental issue, and to protect the state’s natural resources.
The effort has been put forth for a few years now in Connecticut, but didn’t get taken up for a vote in either chamber this year after getting committee approval. New York, Pennsylvania and Montana also have such a law on the books.
Efforts to improve water quality alerts fizzle
As climate change continues to fuel more intense and frequent precipitation events, the nonprofit advocacy group Save the Sound is calling attention to a major threat: stormwater runoff in Connecticut’s waterways.
Bill Lucey, the Long Island Soundkeeper, has long advocated for the General Assembly to support the development of a system to send electronic notifications to residents when a nearby sewage spill occurs. This session, state lawmakers proposed that idea, but the measure didn’t make it out of the Appropriations committee.
Lucey said contamination flows from local waters down to the coastline.
“When you have a lot of trash, goose poop, antiquated septic systems, sewage treatment, or we combine rainfall and sewage systems there’s only a few of those left in the state … you get a lot of rainfall, spreading this stuff into the water.”
That runoff is impacting the water quality of Long Island Sound’s beaches, according to a recent biennial “report card” by the group, which notes high levels of fecal bacteria are the most common reason beaches are temporarily closed.
