Waterford — More than three months into her post, it seems like Waterford's new director of planning and development has found the perfect job.

"My passion is really in close-knit coastal communities," Abby Y. Piersall, who began working for the town in late August, said.

Piersall, a Madison native, has returned to Connecticut after leaving her job as a senior planner in Hingham, Mass., another oceanside town.

"For me, it's a homecoming," she said. "My husband and I are excited to put down roots and really kind of build things here."

Piersall replaced former Waterford planning Director Dennis Goderre, who left in May to take a job planning and engineering for the redesign of Interstate 84 through downtown Hartford.

Waterford fits directly into Piersall's focus on coastal towns that require careful long-term planning in the face of the uncertain effects of climate change and concerns about aging infrastructure and extreme weather.

As a trip leader at a Massachusetts-based school early in her career, Piersall came to realize that she wanted to learn to protect the natural resources of the New England towns she was visiting.

"I really got interested in ... how do you protect the character of places, the character of communities that are facing all different kind of pressures?" she said in an interview in her Town Hall office last week.

Getting her master's degree in urban and environmental policy and planning from Tufts University and getting to work for local governments in Wyoming, then Massachusetts, made sense.

"I've always been pretty civic-minded, and looked for ways to participate from high school on," she said. "Being able to help guide communities where they want to go, for me, is just super exciting."

In a town like Waterford, which has its fair share of infrastructure challenges, Piersall has her work cut out for her.

She said she has spent her first months on the job listening and learning.

"I think it's really easy to come in with a lot of vision and ideas and to have this passion for certain projects and moving them forward," she said. "But I think my responsibility is to hear from members of the community, to learn what's going on, to make sure I understand before I try to impose something that may or may not fit."

She said her approach will balance responsible economic development and diversity, and protect Waterford's natural resources.

"The great part about Waterford is that it has so many great resources, and it's poised to have some strong steps forward economically," she said. "It's already got a good base."

Piersall said she looks forward to continuing planning work in Jordan Village and Mago Point and in ongoing discussions over the fate of the site of the former Seaside Regional Center, Harkness Memorial State Park and the 90-year-old Cohanzie School property.

The Department of Planning and Development also is set to tackle the challenge of revising the town's zoning regulations, a process she hopes will incorporate input from Waterford residents.

"I want our doors to be open, I want us to be accessible, I want people to feel like they can come in with their ideas and their challenges, and we can kind of work through solutions together," she said. "It's time to ... roll up my sleeves and get to work."

m.shanahan@theday.com

Twitter: @martha_shan