Circle Beach Sand Trucked To Surf Club

Two Sundays ago, Irene tore into Madison's Circle Beach so hard that it crushed one unoccupied cottage in about twenty minutes. A resident in a nearby home watched, horrified. Another home had its front porch clawed off by waves that crashed repeatedly over the cottage, as a resident inside jammed his shoulder against the door facing the water to keep it from collapsing inside on him, his girlfriend, his father and their cats, he later told his neighbors.

After the storm, the few members of the close-knit community who decided not to evacuate before the storm emerged from what was left of their homes. The rest of the neighborhood traveled back to their homes. They started to assess the damage. They were not surprised to find that much of the beach sand in front of and underneath their homes had been shoved back on Circle Beach Road, the town-owned road that runs behind the homes.

Circle Beach Road provides the only access to the small community that has Long Island Sound on one side and the East River on the other, right next to Grass Island and the Guilford town line. Some of the homes on Circle Beach Road are in Guilford. Circle Beach Road also provides access to the East River Boat Launch.

When a bulldozer showed up several days after Irene at 7 a.m., Cynthia Wommack, who lives year round at the top of Circle Beach Road, close to Ridgewood Avenue, says she was both relieved and pleased. Her sense of relief was fleeting, however. She quickly realized that the town, instead of bulldozing the sand into piles so that it could be later pushed back underneath the homes and in front of the homes, was trucking it away.

Sand in the road blocked access, creating public safety issue, town officials say

Town officials say they had to remove the sand because it was blocking the road, creating a public safety problem because emergency vehicles could not get down safely without getting stuck. In fact, the road was impassable to all but the most hearty vehicles. This created issues when the town had to execute a complicated evacuation of some Circle Beach residents, including some who had medical issues, after part of their home was destroyed.

After the storm, the sand was so high that, in some places, the mailboxes next to road had sand right up to neck of the post. Some cars that ventured down the sandy road had to be dug out and towed. Several emergency responders and police vehicles had to park at the top of the road and the personnel had to walk in over the mounds of sand to help with the post-Irene evacuation of several residents, some of whom were ill and elderly. Even after the town ordered an evacuation before the storm, even after police and town officials knocked on their door and asked several times before the storm that they leave, even after neighbors offered to put them up at a hotel or nearby home, these residents could not bring themselves to evacuate before the storm.

During the post-Irene evacuation, responders found a partially filled oxygen tank, which had been torn out of one of the destroyed homes, jammed underneath the foundations of a cottage. Medical personnel had to gently extricate the potentially explosive tank and gingerly carry it past several houses to the top of the road to be taken away.

Residents start with their salvage and repair work

After the evacuation, others in the community started to get to work on the emotionally and physically exhausting task of sorting through belongings that were destroyed, to see if any could be salvaged. The damage to the homes varied, from complete, to very little in some cases.

The morning that the dump trucks arrived, many residents, like many others in Madison, already felt stressed and overwhelmed by the work that lay ahead. When those residents realized sand was being taken away, they said they were shocked. One woman ran out and started screaming at the workers to stop. When that did not stop the work, she ran back into her home and frantically tried calling neighbors, some of whom live elsewhere in town. One resident tried blocking the dump trucks with his car, which created additional issues.

When that didn't stop the work, one of the residents drove down to town hall and spoke with town officials who were convened at the  emergency operations center at town hall. Wommack said Madison Town Engineer Michael Ott, who had been working around the clock for days addressing numerous serious infrastructure problems created by the storm, left a meeting to talk with residents about the sand removal operation.

"It was a shock to everybody"

"I talked with him, he was a very pleasant fellow and we explained where we were coming from," Wommack said. "At the time, it was kind of like, 'it's just sand.' But it's also my property and my beach and I lost a lot of sand ... It was a shock to everybody. The whole storm was so devastating and the one thing we need to rebuild is to have sand under our houses, and to have it hauled off to the Surf Club was so disconcerting."

Charlie Coe, who has had a family-owned cottage on Circle Beach since the 1960's, said he is furious.

"Every time this happened before, they moved the sand to the side, they always bucketed the sand to the side. They are using the excuse that they had to open the road up for emergency access, but before they would move the sand to the side until we could hire a local contractor to put the sand back on the beach where it belongs.

"We want our sand back"

"Instead, the town decided it was going to load the sand into dump trucks and they took it to the Surf Club so they could have a Labor Day Weekend. They had police block access to Circle Beach. Sure, so they could sneak the sand out to their public beach. We have had families there since the turn of the century, we've gone through this before. We've been around a lot longer than some of those town officials. They made a mistake and it's going to get corrected. We want our sand back. We've been wronged, we want them to make it right."

Coe said he's also disappointed because he called several town officials and has not heard back from them.

Both Wommack and Coe say they understand that the town had to plow the road, but that they don't understand why the town took the sand to the Surf Club, particularly because it was loaded with glass, sewage, and remnants of the homes that were destroyed, including chunks of people's latrines and other household items claimed by the storms.

"And you're taking that to the Surf Club?"

"It had toilets in it, and broken sinks, and sewage and other things that were not that pleasant," Wommack said. "And you're taking that to the Surf Club? That's why they told us we shouldn't put it back on the beach. They're taking it away because it is dirty, but they're putting it on the Surf Club beach?"

First Selectman Fillmore McPherson said Tuesday that some of the sand was taken from the road, and was trucked to the Surf Club. But he said it was used to shore up a seawall, rather than spread out on the beach itself.

"Yes, we took the sand to the Surf Club, we put it down under the seawall. So if there is glass, it is well below where people would run into it. Our responsibility is to maintain public safety. Fire, police, ambulance could not get through. We had to clear the road. The sand at one point may have been their beach, but then it ended up on a town road. We could not drop it back on the beach the way it was, so we took it," he said. "It is not the town's responsibility to repair their private beaches."

"It got to be quite the difficult thing"

Wommack said that before and after the storm she was pleased to be receiving automated phone calls from First Selectman McPherson, keeping her up to date about the town's plans. She has an AT&T landline phone and her service never went out. "One day I got a message that Circle Beach was closed, and that they were closing the Surf Club for heavy equipment work and I went, 'cool!' I had no idea they were going to haul my sand down there. It got to be quite the difficult thing."

Wommack added that she is very grateful to town officials for many reasons. She appreciates the updates she got during the storm. And she said it appears that town officials are going to let residents rebuild.

"The town, in many ways, is being great, and very helpful, and we appreciate it," she said. "But it's not just sand. It's our property. We're a very small group, it's a real community down here. They're just regular little cottages we've had in the family for a long time. Most of us maintain them and take care of them. When we have all this devastation, and then we have to go through all the insurance people, it felt like the last straw."

"We don't need to be kicked when we're down"

Coe said he does not intend to drop the issue until the town makes reparations. "We don't need to be kicked when we're down," he said. Wommack said she knows of several residents who are planning legal action. As for Wommack, she said she's beyond exhausted and is not yet sure what the right course of action is at this time.

"There has been so much destruction and people are just exhausted. We just got our power back and that's fantastic. I was so surprised to get it back so early. We were expecting it to be weeks, and it was only six days and we had city water all the way through. And since they are going to let people rebuild, I'm thinking, let the sand go for a while."

Coe said he hopes the town will do the right thing by the residents of the small beach community.

"We didn't come along yesterday. We've been here a long time. Sometimes we feel like we're the red-headed step children of Madison. We don't put our kids in the school, since most of us are not year round, the town doesn't even pick up our garbage, and now this, they take our sand. We feel we've been wronged and we want it made right."