Shoreline Preservation Task Force Meets
AP
Storm surge hits a small tree as winds from Hurricane Sandy reach Seaside Park in Bridgeport, Conn., Monday, Oct. 29, 2012. Water from Long Island Sound spilled into roadways and towns along the Connecticut shoreline Monday, the first signs of flooding from a storm that threatens to deliver a devastating surge of seawater. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
With its membership selected largely from the Legislature, the Shoreline Preservation Task Force is trying to reach decisions on recommendations that will land with the legislature's committees' standing committees.
Its meeting Monday afternoon became a discussion of whether municipal officials or state experts at the The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection are up to the task of protecting properties along the coast.
"There’s a little bit of a political issue in that room and that relates to those more conservative people who basically want the state not to have any direction here. They want to have home rule," said Sen. Edward Meyer, (D) Guilford.
Meyer, co-chair of the Legislature Environment Committee, said he'll pursue rules for setting construction back from the beach regardless of the task force's recommendations.
Andy Weinstein, who lost his beach house in East Haven to Tropical Storm Irene, served on the task force, empathizing with people who testified at the task force's public hearings last summer about their frustrations with DEEP
"DEEP is a problem," he said. "There aren't clearly defined rules and regulations."
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