The Still River is a cultural icon in Danbury. For many years, it was Danbury’s main watercourse and was used for the dumping of industrial and sewage discharges.

This abuse eventually took its toll on the Still River, and it gradually lost its beauty and ability to support life and eventually was considered to be "dead”.

Abuse 

The transformation of the Still River from a natural, vibrant watercourse to a sewer did not occur overnight; it gradually occurred over two centuries. 

The Still River provided an ideal site for industry. As early as 1732 there were factories located here. This area became known as the Iron Works District. There were the factories for making iron. There were gristmills, sawmills, comb shops, carding and cotton mills, a paper mill, knife factory, hat factories, and button factories.

As early as the 1790s, dams were constructed for mill sites along the river, providing the opportunity for water extraction and the development of industries along its shores.

The Hat Manufacturing industry was prominent along the river, and during the Industrial Revolution of the 1800’s Danbury became the “hatting capital of the world”.

Hat manufacturing required a large amount of water, which resulted in the discharge of polluted water back into a receiving stream. The Still River became the “sewer” for hat and other industries that grew up along the river. The discharges were toxic to aquatic life, in addition to turning the river different colors.

Another form of pollution occurred from the sewage discharges of the borough of Danbury. Prior to the 20th century, the disposal of sewage was an individual’s choice - people either built simple cesspools in their yards or spilled their sewage directly onto the ground or into the river.

In 1885 of the 2800 families living in Danbury, 1100 dumped their sewage directly on to the ground or into the rivers of the city (all of which emptied into the Still River). These discharges tainted the Still River with bacteria, viruses, solids and nutrients. It lost its unspoiled character; odors were common and solids were often seen floating in the river.

In 1880, the city fathers proposed Danbury’s first collection of household sewage. It was only a minimum level of treatment - the sewage was treated with lime to control odor.

It took a series of citizen lawsuits to force the city to upgrade the design to include a very simple primary treatment system. Over the years, further improvements were made.

Finally, the urbanization of Danbury resulted in transforming the land in the watershed - the land that once drained into the Still River – was turned into a patchwork of buildings, roads, parking lots, farm fields and lawns. This urbanization changed a large portion of the surface cover from natural floodplain, forest, wetland and open fields to solid concrete, asphalt, and cultivated fields and lawns.

These surfaces channeled runoff from major storm events directly into the river, bringing oils, salts, fertilizers, pesticides and other pollutants along with them to the water.  

Revenge

The next stage of the river’s history is a story of how nature reacted to the massive human impact to its functions. Human abuse of the Still River had taken its toll, and the river struck back.

The most obvious result was flooding. As a result of developing land right up to the shoreline of the river, human settlements along the river became victims of the rivers tendency to flood over its channel during major storms because it’s floodplains no longer existed.

In place of the former floodplains, commercial and residential dwellings found themselves “in the river” during major storm events.   The hurricanes of 1939 and 1955 were examples of the devastation that could occur, as a result of this flooding.

Untreated sewage discharged into the river and created viruses and bacteria that made the water a serious health hazard. Odors and the sight of sewage solids floating downstream ruined the appearance of the river. Industrial discharges of mercury and other heavy metals, oils, organic solvents, solids, and other pollutants tainted the river.

The fish, invertebrates, and fish-eating birds disappeared as the habitat was destroyed. By the middle of the 20th century, the river had one main function - it was a sewer, flushing Danbury’s wastes up to the Housatonic River and into Long Island Sound.

Banishment

Due to the river’s revenge, Danbury had to take steps to live with their past abuses, which infected the river. The most visible result of the rivers banishment were the concrete channels which were constructed downtown after the 1955 floods to prevent future flooding.

This channelization project, built by the US Army Corps of Engineers, took the river out of its natural channel and placed it in a concrete wash that extended from Main and White Street for approximately 1 mile to the location where the Still River crosses Caspar Street.

The concrete channel was wide and deep and designed to hold the flood waters from major storms to prevent them from flooding the businesses and residential dwellings along its shore.

At this point in time the citizens of Danbury also gave up on their past recreational uses of the river. They were no longer able  to use the river for fishing, swimming, or enjoyment of its former beauty. The river was ugly and lifeless, and people resigned themselves to the fact that the river’s only purpose was to convey water through the City and out toward the Housatonic River.

Rediscovery

“New Life for an Old River” became the battle cry for the current chapter of the Still’s tortuous past history.

Sweeping changes were brought about during the onset of the of the environmental age, in 1970’s nationwide, with the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state environmental agencies, including Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection, pro-active environmental health and restoration programs by local governments, strict environmental controls of discharges to waterways, new technologies to clean up water pollution that were installed by local industries and sewage treatment plants and citizen action, spurred on by the first Earth Day of 1970.

Industrial discharges into the Still River were cleaned up and strictly monitored. In Danbury, and other area towns along the river, all discharges had to be pure enough to support aquatic life.

A major breakthrough in water quality of the river occurred in the Danbury area in 1993 when the Danbury’s Plant was upgraded with state of the art treatment technology.

Finally, the City instituted a stormwater management program aimed at reducing the discharge of pollutants washing off of roads and parking areas that end up in the river.

These efforts of the past years between the local governments and volunteers have been a noteworthy success. The water is clear again. It is no longer tainted by toxic pollutants, solids and odors. And the fish are back !!!