Beach clean up continues after Irene

MILFORD, Conn. (WTNH) -- It's been months since Hurricane Irene made a mess out of beaches on the Connecticut shoreline. With the summer just around the corner, it's clean-up time.

The work should be done this weekend and the beaches of Woodmont should be ready for summer. It looks a lot different from how they were at the end of last summer after Irene hit.

"If you saw it immediately following the hurricane, it was just devastating," said Warden Ed Bonessi. "Well, we lost vertically in some places seven feet of the beachhead."

It wasn't the first time the beach has been devastated by a storm. In December of 1992, a nor'easter hit so hard it blew the sidewalk clear across the street. But that turned out to be a good thing. After that they engineered the beach, putting gravel and bigger rocks called rip rap under the sand. And that helped minimize the damage done by Irene.

"It's specifically there to protect the sidewalks, the public street that runs along the side and the public utilities under the street because in '92 it was completely torn out," Bonessi said.

The engineering helped, but the Borough of Woodmont and the City of Milford in which its located still had to bond out half a million dollars to pay for the beach repair. That was done in March with the hope it would be ready for Memorial Day weekend.
 
"It's going to be ready, hopefully, by this weekend for bright sunny skies on Memorial Day," said Milford Mayor Benjamin Blake. "We're expecting 90 degree temperatures and we're hoping all the folks come down to build sand castles and swim on the beach."

That's something they never could have done a few months ago.