Groton — Protecting traditional uses, including fishing, shellfishing and recreation, and preserving important natural habitats and avoiding conflicts from future projects are among the goals of the first Long Island Sound Blue Plan.

The document, being created in a cooperative effort between Connecticut and New York, will guide what happens not along the shoreline but on the waters and seafloor of the estuary in areas 10 feet or more deep.

“It’s a framework for sustaining the places we care about,” Sylvain De Guise, director of Connecticut Sea Grant, told a crowd of about 125 people gathered at the Avery Point campus of the University of Connecticut on Tuesday for an introductory meeting on the Blue Plan. De Guise is one of the members of the advisory committee for the plan, which will be written over the next two years with input from a broad cross-section of users of the Sound.

“This is all of our plan, for all of the folks who live, work and enjoy Long Island Sound,” said Rob Klee, commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, the agency leading development of the plan.

A draft of the plan is scheduled to be presented to the state legislature by March 2019, he said. The legislature then would have to vote to adopt the plan, and it would be updated every five years after that.

“The focus is on space and spatial relationships, what things happen where,” he said. “It does not mean new regulations, but it supports existing plans and processes to better inform those processes.”

The plan will attempt to map and inventory the most valued locations for recreation, fishing and habitat protection, and consider the best locations for future uses such as renewable energy projects, pipelines and power cables to avoid interfering with the existing uses.

“We want to look at new uses and make them compatible,” Klee said.

Nathan Frohling, coastal and marine initiatives director for The Nature Conservancy in Connecticut and a member of the plan’s advisory committee, stressed that public input is critical to making the plan complete.

“We want to make sure as many of you who care understand what this really is,” he said. “We really need to hear from you about the places that are important to you.”

In addition to hearing from the public at meetings like the one Tuesday, the advisory group also is reaching out to stakeholder groups for their input, Frohling said. He urged people to visit the website for the plan, www.ct.gov/deep.lisblueplan, to learn about it and comment on the visions and goals for the plan thus far.

“If you want to get involved, contact us,” he said.

j.benson@theday.com

To provide input

For more information:

visit www.ct.gov/deep/lisblueplan

send comments online to: www.ct.gov/deep/blueplancomments

send comments by email to: DEEP.BluePlanLIS@ct.gov

send comments by mail to: LIS Blue Plan; DEEP WPLR; Land and Water Resources Division; 79 Elm St.; Hartford, CT 06106