HANOVER — Hanover residents were thrilled to see the town removing unsightly piles of stone from the town beach recently. Earlier this summer, residents were vocal at Hanover Town Board meetings about the large amounts of stone that had piled up on beaches after last winter.

Up until recently, state DEC regulations forbade the removal of any material from the beaches, but it seems the winds of change have brought more than just stones.

Earlier this summer, many residents attributed the large piles of stones to the recent dredging project, which transported several barges of fine and coarse material from the channel into Lake Erie. Steve D’Angelo, Hanover highway superintendent, is hesitant to blame the dredging project, as he worked diligently with the DEC and Army Corps of Engineers to track exactly where the barges dumped the material. He has records of each barge-load, as well as the GPS coordinates of each dump, and believes that the material was dumped too far from the beaches to be blamed for the stone deposits.

“All winter long, we had a lot of wind and a lot of waves,” explained D’Angelo. “My theory is that with the heavy waves that we had, they would come in on the beach quite a ways, up towards the road. When we had those heavy waves, it started dragging the sand out and started uncovering the stones already on the beach. I really don’t think all that stone was brought in from the waves — I think a lot of it was already there.”

Regardless of the source of the stones, D’Angelo is pleased that the DEC gave permission for their removal. According to D’Angelo, “One of the private property owners on the beach got a hold of the DEC, and they came down and looked at our beach.”

Two weeks ago, he said the town received a letter from the DEC, which gave them permission to remove the stones from the town beach.

“From what I understand, the private property owners got the same ‘okay’ that the town did,” D’Angelo explained. “We got the letter a couple of weeks ago, and I responded explaining that we were busy finishing up some paving projects and needed a little time before we could get down there to get it done. They said, ‘How about by Oct. 1?’ We said, ‘Great!'”

Although D’Angelo could not comment on what the private property owners were going to do, he said that the town could not use their equipment on private beaches. “(Sept. 10) it rained and we took advantage to start cleaning it up, and we finished up (Sept. 11). We’ve got a big gravel pile by the highway building, and we’re going to be working on the shoulders on King Road, so we’re mixing all of that stone in with the gravel we hauled in. None of it is going to waste. It was a good place for us to deposit that stone that we got,” D’Angelo stated.