Save The Sound's Beach Report Grades East Haven Town Beach, 200 Others

EAST HAVEN, CT — Let's get right to it. Beaches in East Haven, New Haven, and Branford — along with hundreds of LI Sound beaches in Connecticut and New York — have been graded by Save the Sound.

Here are local results:

East Haven

East Haven Town Beach received an A- grade

Branford

Branford Point Beach received a B grade.

Johnson's Beach received a B grade.

Stony Creek Beach received a B grade.

New Haven

Lighthouse Point Beach: received a B- grade.

How the beach grading process works

Save the Sound's 2025 Long Island Sound Beach Report grades are assigned based on how water samples collected by departments of health around the Sound perform against state safe swimming criteria. Samples are collected throughout the swimming season during wet and dry conditions and are analyzed for levels of fecal indicator bacteria.

The 2025 Beach Report raises concerns about the water quality impacts of rain events driven by climate change, noting an increase in “lost beach days,” and wet weather sample failures, particularly in the western Sound. An increase in sample failures was even noted in several eastern Sound beaches.

Based on a three-year average of annual failure rates, wet weather fails across LIS beaches rose from 11.0% (2020 to 2022) to 13.5% (2022 to 2024). The increase is due in part to the failure rate in the westernmost region of the Sound that combines Westchester County and New York City: 14.9% in 2020–2022, versus 20.8% in 2022–2024. Failure rates in other regions were up, as well, most notably Suffolk West (8.7% rising to 12.1%), Connecticut East (7.1% to 10.3%) and Connecticut West (10.9% to 15.6%). During dry weather, samples overall failed 5.1% of the time, an increase from 4.2% in the 2023 report.

Another way of measuring the impact of water quality is to measure the number of days beaches were closed. Save the Sound analyzed data from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Beach Advisory and Closing Online Notification (BEACON) system. Beaches were closed or under advisories for nearly 10% of possible swimming days during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Beaches will often remain closed for several days after a rain event because of predicted elevated levels of fecal contamination delivered to the beach via stormwater runoff. Beaches can also close or be put under advisory when samples for fecal indicator bacteria exceed safe swimming criteria.

The region averaged 18.3 inches of rain over the last three years, which matches 2011-2013 as the highest three-year total dating back to 2003. Annual rainfall totals are expected to continue increasing, as is the frequency and intensity of severe storms, a consequence of climate change that will impact water quality around the region.

"Save the Sound’s 2025 Long Island Sound Beach Report demonstrates just how urgent it is that we prioritize new investment in sewage and stormwater infrastructure," said David Ansel, Vice President, Center for Water Protection, Save the Sound. "If we’re not proactive, the impacts of climate change will undo so much of our successful past and ongoing work in restoring the water quality of the Sound."