Sagging Seawall Threatens East Shore Homes

As the tides eat away at her seawall, Cathy Consolo is faced with thousands of dollars of repairs and a sinking home. She’s asking the state to make good on a 26-year-old promise to help.

Consolo (pictured) lives on Townsend Avenue in Morris Cove. In the last two months, her back porch has sunk by an inch, she said. Cracks have appeared on the walls, and the door no longer hangs straight in the hinges. The source of the problem is erosion under the seawall behind her house. As the wall sinks slowly, he house is falling with it, Consolo said.

It’s a problem, she contends, that should have been fixed 26 years ago, by the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

In 1984, the DEP undertook a project to repair seawalls on Townsend Avenue, but stopped the work before getting to Consolo’s house. Since then, Consolo and her neighbors have been lobbying to get the DEP to finish the job. Consolo produced a letter from the city engineer written in 1984, in which informed her that the state and city would complete the work on her property. She called that a ​“promise.”

Arthur Christian, a supervising civil engineer with the DEP, denied that any promise was made. The department did do work on the seawall in 1984, but the DEP is under no obligation to do any more, he said.

City Engineer Dick Miller criticized the DEP for its inaction. He said that while the maintenance of sea walls is the responsibility of individual property owners, it’s important that the work be done in a coordinated fashion. If one homeowner repairs a wall, and a neighbor doesn’t, it can undermine the integrity of all the seawalls, leaving the area vulnerable to significant damage in the event of a severe storm, Miller argued. That’s why such projects are best done with funding and oversight from the state, he said.

Wearing work boots and cargo shorts, Consolo, a 50-year-old New Haven native, led the Independent on a tour of her property this week. She stepped into the cool shade to recount the history of her sinking home.

Consolo’s Townsend Avenue house is south of Pardee Park, the beachfront promenade in Morris Cove. She asked that her exact address not be published. Like her neighbors’ homes, Consolo’s looks out over the water. At high tide, the Long Island Sound laps against the concrete wall below the rear of her house. For years, that water has been rising higher and higher at high tide and has been eroding the sand under the seawall, Consolo said.

That erosion has caused the settling and cracking on Consolo’s house — a house that she is trying to sell. An enclosed back porch has sunk an inch, causing cracks in the walls a gap in the door. The whole room has to be replaced, at a cost of $15,000, Consolo said.

It will cost another $55,000 to reinforce her seawall, Consolo said.

In 1984, the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) began work to repair the seawalls of the houses in the area.

Consolo produced a copy of a letter, dated Apr. 25, 1984, addressed to her from then-City Engineer Leonard Smith. It announces: ​“The City of New Haven and the State of Connecticut are currently planning the Morris Cove Seawall Project to protect the existing seawalls against undermining. The limits of this project extend from Pardee Park to No. 80 Townsend Avenue. Construction is being scheduled from October 1, 1984 to June 1, 1985.” Consolo’s house is within the scope of addresses identified in the letter.

The letter further states, ​“This work will be performed along the existing seawall on your property.”

Consolo said the city and the state began the work, as promised, at Pardee Park, but they stopped before the work came to Consolo’s house and two of her neighbors’. They said they ran out of money, according to Consolo.

Christian, the DEP engineer, confirmed that the DEP worked with the city in 1984 on a project under a state statute enabling cost-sharing flood and erosion-control projects between the state and municipalities. Christian said he didn’t know why the original scope of work was not completed as planned. He said that seawall work can get very expensive, as the construction conditions are difficult.

“We fixed as much as we could spend money on at the time,” he said.

Seawall repair is not ultimately the DEP’s responsibility, nor is it the municipality’s, Christian said. It’s up to homeowners to maintain their own seawalls.

That’s not the way Consolo and her neighbors saw it. For 25 years, Consolo’s neighbor, Margaret Pastore pestered the DEP to finish the work. When Pastore died last year, Consolo took over as gadfly. She said she’s gotten nowhere with the DEP.

“They’ve put us on the back burner,” she said.

Consolo said her seawall now needs repairs amounting to $55,000. That’s more than Consolo can afford. She used to sell fish to neighborhood restaurants, but she had to stop working recently to take care of her aged aunt.

Her neighbors have paid for costly repairs. A few doors down, attorney Anthony Avallone just got permission from the city to build a seawall to repair the erosion damage he’s seen at his house (pictured in top photo).

In May, Consolo noticed the cracks inside her enclosed porch. She had an architect take a look and was told that the back end of her property had settled about an inch. Her back door no longer closes properly, Consolo said, sticking a hand through a gap between the door and its frame.

“This whole porch has to come down,” Consolo said. She produced a contractor’s estimate indicating that the tear-down and rebuild will cost $15,000.

A few weeks ago, Consolo convinced DEP staffer Krista Romero (nee Fisk) to come take a look at her property. Consolo and Miller walked Romero along the beach at low tide. They started showing her the sea wall, but Romero was distracted by a man replacing a deck without a permit. She ended up talking to him about permits the entire time, while Consolo stood by with her arms crossed, waiting, she said.

“I got ignored,” Consolo said.

She said she called Romero about three weeks later to ask if anything could be done about the seawall. Romero told her, ​“I’ll let you know,” Consolo recalled.

“That’s not an answer!” Consolo said. ​“I’d feel better if she told me to go jump off a bridge.” At least that would be an answer, she said.

Consolo said she still hasn’t heard from Romero.

“After 26 years, don’t you think something should be done to help us?” Consolo asked. ​“We’ve been waiting 26 years. What about us?”

“There’s no sense of urgency from the DEP,” said Miller.

He said he was also frustrated by Romero’s visit to Townsend Avenue. He confirmed that the state official ended up talking to the deck replacer rather than Consolo, the person who had actually called to speak with her. ​“I witnessed that,” he said. ​“I just shook my head and thought where is the care?”

Miller said his frustration with DEP on this issue goes back several years, to when the city was working with the Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro’s office on another project to repair the sea wall in the area. The Army Corps of Engineers agreed to pay about 75 percent of the cost of the project, but only if the value of the property saved was worth the cost of the project, while factoring in the durability of the work, Miller said. He helped come up with a plan that would have put in wall reinforcements at the base of the existing wall.

But when the project went to DEP for permitting, DEP rejected the plan. The agency called instead for ​“beach nourishment” or deposits of sand, Miller said. The Army Corps of Engineers wouldn’t support that plan because it didn’t meet their durability requirements, Miller said.

Christian, the DEP engineer, told a slightly different story. He said the Army Corps of Engineers was in discussions with the DEP in 2005 about a Townsend Avenue seawall project, but the Army Corps never actually filed for a permit. ​“It ended in discussions, not in a slammed door,” Christian said. He said he didn’t know why the project never got going.

As a result of the lack of permitting, nothing happened. ​“This issue was just dropped,” Miller said. ​“Meanwhile, the homeowners have been doing things on their own, some successful some not.”

The danger with this kind of piecemeal seawall work is that the wall will be most effective only if it has overall integrity, Miller said. If one person repairs her wall, but her neighbor does not, that person’s work may yet be undone by erosion.

“That’s a vulnerable area, particularly if the seawall in sections is starting to be undermined,” he said. If a bad hurricane hits, it could destroy homes, he said.