Sleeping Giant State Park reopens to the public at 8 a.m. Friday after being closed for clean-up from last year’s tornado.
The May 15, 2018, tornado directly hit the two-mile mountaintop park, “completely decimating trees in the lower portion and causing significant damage elsewhere in the area,” according to the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), which oversaw the clean-up.
Volunteers from the Sleeping Giant Park Association ended up doing much of that clean-up work, according to Hamden Mayor Curt Leng.
“They were there within days” offering to help, Leng said of the volunteers Thursday during his monthly appearance on WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden” program. “They were told ‘no — it [is] too dangerous. Somebody could get hurt.’”
But then the state agreed to train and certify the volunteers to handle chainsaws and other heavy equipment. While logging companies came in to cart away the fallen trees, the volunteers put in the work clearing the park’s 30 miles of trails, including the 1.5‑mile “Tower Trail.”
Especially in an era of “shrinking government,” Leng said, the work of volunteers like the Friends “is essential to having a successful community.”
Gov. Ned Lamont also praised the volunteers’ work in a release Thursday. Their “generous work over these many months helped get us to this point,” the release quoted him as saying.
The park lost 2,000 trees, compared with 1,500 in the surrounding neighborhoods, Leng estimated. The state estimated the clean-up cost at least $735,000, about 75 percent of which it hopes the Federal Emergency Management Association will reimburse.
The mayor called the reopening of the park an opportunity for the public to weigh in on its future. DEEP has begun seeking ideas for how to continue restoring the base of the park — whether to allow new trees to naturally replace the fallen ones, or to plant some as well; whether to create more room for parking or for grilling or for nature.
Click on the Facebook Live video to watch the full episode of WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden” with Mayor Curt Leng, which included discussion about the fate of community policing in the upcoming fiscal year budget, improvements at the fire department, the future of streetlights and internet connectivity in town, the role of social media in politics,
WNHH’s mayoral radio coverage is made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.
