The Connecticut General Assembly sent a joint resolution ensuring the “right to clean and healthy air, water, soil, ecosystems and environment and a safe and stable climate for the benefit of public health, safety and the general welfare” to the state senate last Wednesday.
The resolution would add an amendment to the state constitution providing that “The state shall not allow, through government action or inaction, any degradation, diminution or depletion of the natural environment that is avoidable, contributes to significant or widespread environmental harm or results in an unhealthy or unsustainable environment.”
A similar resolution died on the senate floor last year, according to the CT Mirror. Currently, only New York, Montana and Pennsylvania have environmental rights provisions in their state constitutions.
“It’s too easy for the state to shirk responsibility especially with environmental stuff,” said fourth-year Environmental Studies and Political Science double major Dylan Steer. Steer works as a sustainability intern at the University of Connecticut’s Office of Sustainability.
The resolution comes as the Trump administration has cut federal funding to multiple departments, including the Environmental Protection Agency, which handles grants for remediation projects of contaminated sites.
“Any grant funding specifically for remediating things environmental justice related have been cut,” said Steer.
Almost all remediation projects rely on funding from the EPA. “The federal money mostly comes from grants. If those towns applying for those grants won’t have access to those anymore, an amendment like this could suggest that the state is willing to step in in lieu of those federal options,” he said.
Connecticut has over 8,000 contaminated sites across the state that have yet to be the beneficiaries of remediation projects. More than half of the 600 plus sites with environmental use restrictions — orders which limit uses and activities of certain locations to “minimize the risk of human exposure to pollutants and hazards to the environment” according to Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection — have yet to remediated or are currently in the process of remediation. A long and costly process according to Steer.
Despite the failure of last year’s resolution, Steer said he is hopeful about Senate Joint Resolution 36.
“I think it could be different. I’ve heard people are a lot more optimistic for this session. There’s just more time to get it done. But I think there has been more priority put on environmental issues in the current climate,” he said.
Should SJR 36 pass the senate, the amendment will be continued to the next legislative session following elections on Nov. 3, 2026, unless it passes with a three-quarter super-majority in both chambers of congress during the current session. Should the amendment pass the legislature, it will appear on the 2026 ballot as a referendum.