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USA Today
24-07-2025
- Business
- USA Today
Rhode Island country club built an illegal seawall, yet hasn't fixed it in two years
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – State coastal regulators in June gave a North Kingstown country club 30 days to come up with a plan to remove an illegal seawall and restore the shoreline along a 600-foot stretch of protected waters in Narragansett Bay. That deadline came and went two weeks ago without an acceptable plan, and now the Coastal Resources Management Council has granted Quidnessett Country Club another 30 days to come up with something that complies with state regulations. And so the saga over a rock revetment built without state or federal approvals to protect the private golf course's 14th hole from erosion will go on nearly two full years after enforcement proceedings began against the club. The unanimous vote on Tuesday, July 22, to grant Quidnessett an extension left some observers frustrated. 'It's been 694 days, and the council feels they deserve more time?' said Jed Thorp, director of advocacy for Save The Bay. 'After they already issued an enforcement order? What are we doing?' The extension decision comes with an appeal filed by the country club of the council's June 10 decision pending in Rhode Island Superior Court. Nevertheless, Jennifer Cervenka, a lawyer for Quidnessett and past chair of the coastal council, said at the July 22 meeting that the club still intends to comply with the council order. It just needs more time to reach an agreement with staff with the state agency, she said. More: Golfweek's Best 2025: Top private golf courses in every state, ranked Dispute over the type of material to reduce erosion But staff members raised concerns at the meeting about the latest iteration of the country club's plan, which would use bags made of plastic fiber that could be filled with sand or water to stabilize the shoreline. They said that council regulations require the type of system allowed on that stretch of coast to be made of biodegradable materials. Cervenka described the system the club wants to use as 'enhanced sandbagging.' 'We believe that this could be an effective solution on this shoreline,' she said. 'We would like to have an opportunity to have a restoration plan based on this reviewed.' And while council members acceded to the club's request, not all of them were happy about it. Kevin Flynn, who said he was 'reluctantly' voting yes, asked earlier in the meeting why Quidnessett isn't moving faster to take down the wall. 'This is all a discussion about a potential new application,' he said. 'But in the meantime, we have a wall that has to be removed.' Restoration plan in a holding pattern The matter is still effectively in the same place it was more than a month ago when the council granted Quidnessett 120 days to remove the wall, but left the details of a restoration plan unresolved. Council staff met with representatives of the club twice after the June 10 decision, but the two sides were unable to reach an agreement in the time required. On July 9, a day before the first deadline set by the council, Quidnessett lodged an appeal of the council's decision. It wasn't unexpected. At the June meeting, Cervenka urged the council against voting on the fate of the wall. She was adamant that the case, because it was contested, had to be assigned to a hearing officer, per council regulations. But Jeff Willis, executive director of the council, and Anthony DeSisto, the council's attorney, both argued that on the most important issue at hand – whether the club had violated coastal regulations by building the wall in the first place – there was no disagreement. In filings to the council, the club had admitted to the construction repeatedly, they said. Still, the club and the council failed to reach a consensus on fixing the problem. They disagree over how far inland the restoration efforts must go. While council staff want the club to take out more stone and fill, the country club wants to remove less. The line pushed for by council staff would force the golf club to cut into the course and 'lose its 14th hole,' Quidnessett claims in its petition to the court. Willis said Tuesday that the council may relax its stance on the line. Background on the seawall violation The latest machinations are sure to draw out what on its face appeared to be a clear-cut violation of coastal rules that goes back to August 2023, when the council received complaints about a newly built wall on the bay's shore. Staff inspected the site and determined that the club had violated coastal regulations by building the revetment without permission in Type 1 conservation waters, where new permanent structures aren't allowed because of environmental concerns. The council frowns upon the construction of breakwaters, bulkheads and other hard shoreline structures because they cause erosion elsewhere by deflecting waves and blocking the flow of sand. In a separate determination in 2024, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers found that Quidnessett had violated federal rules by not seeking its authorization for the work. The coastal council has come in for criticism as the case has dragged on. In a statement, Topher Hamblett, executive director of Save The Bay, said the group also believes the case should have been referred to a hearing officer and the council's actions on the matter are emblematic of other controversial decisions made by its appointed members. 'Rhode Islanders deserve a coastal agency that protects our natural resources without favor or delay,' he said.
Boston Globe
23-07-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
R.I. country club gets 30 more days to submit plan to replace illegal seawall
'Just further disappointment with the lack of progress here and the continued delays,' said Christopher Dodge, Narragansett Baykeeper for Save the Bay. 'We feel like this long ago should have gone to a hearing officer and that would've set a schedule on these things. There would've been findings of facts. It just an instance of delay after delay.' Advertisement Representatives for the country club have said they have been trying for decades to protect the golf course from erosion and damage. But the dispute has become Get Rhode Map A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State. Enter Email Sign Up But the country club failed to submit an acceptable restoration plan within that 30-day window. And one day before that deadline, the club Advertisement During Tuesday's council meeting, club attorney Jennifer Cervenka said that despite the lawsuit, 'it is still the country club's intention to try to come to an agreement with CRMC staff on an acceptable restoration plan.' Cervenka, a former chairwoman of the Coastal Resources Management Council, said the club met twice with council staff after the June 10 decision, and on Friday it proposed replacing the seawall with The TrapBag barriers consist of bags that are connected together 'like an accordion is stretched out,' she explained. 'And then you can put water or sand into these. There's an envelope with sand or other natural materials inside the envelopes.' Cervenka asked the council for an extension to submit a restoration plan using the TrapBag technology. " We believe that this could be an effective solution on the shoreline," she said. But Rich Lucia, supervising engineer for the council, said the TrapBag technology involves geosynthetics that are not biodegradable — meaning it's not the kind of 'non-structural shoreline protection' the council is seeking. Emily Hall, the council's coastal geologist, said TrapBag technology involves a 'heavy duty, permeable polypropylene fabric.' 'So that's another way of saying plastic, which is not biodegradable,' she said, adding that the definition of non-structural shoreline protection states that it shall be biodegradable. Cervenka said the club has been trying to use non-structural shoreline protection for 30 years without success, and she said there is precedent for allowing a hybrid of structural and non-structural shoreline protection. Advertisement 'I think it's not just structural versus non-structural,' she said. 'I think it's in between those two, and it's something that we would like to address as part of our proposed new restoration plan.' CRMC executive director Jeffrey Willis said the two sides had been making progress in meetings after the June 10 vote. He said staff were looking at relaxing requirements for the slope of the shoreline protection so it wouldn't cut too far into the 14th hole fairway and its 15th hole tee box. But Willis said the staff wanted a restoration plan that met regulations for non-structural soil protection, and he noted staff are concerned that the TrapBag technology is a structural material. After building the seawall without permission in 2023, the country club asked the council to In the lawsuit, the club says the council repeatedly refused to bring the dispute over the seawall to a hearing officer even though state law requires all contested enforcement proceedings and fines to be heard by an administrative hearing officer. At the June 10 meeting, Willis contended that it was not a contested matter because the club has never disputed the charges that it built the seawall without authorization, removed vegetation at the site, or filled tidal waters. Cervenka disagreed, and said the vegetation was destroyed by storms, not by the club, and that the club disputes the location where the council wants the restoration to take place. Advertisement In the lawsuit, the club said it submitted multiple plans to restore the shoreline in 2024 and 2025. But the council rejected the plans mainly because it disagreed with the proposed location of the 'toe of the berm' line — meaning the distance to which the shoreline protection can extend seaward. The lawsuit claims the line favored by the council would require the club 'to cut into its golf course and lose its 14th hole, even though the golf course and the location of the 14th hole predate the agency itself.' And the lawsuit claims the council was 'arbitrary and capricious' it insisting on a line that contradicts a 2013 restoration plan that the council had approved. 'Despite costly efforts over the last decades to protect (the club's) shoreline, the coastal area has been ravaged by storms and eroded aggressively, causing irreparable damage to the golf course and loss of property,' according to the lawsuit. Jed Thorp, director of advocacy for Save the Bay, said the environmental group has been 'pretty squarely on the opposite side of Quidnessett on this issue,' but he agreed that such disputes should go before hearing officers. 'We want to see the wall come down,' he said. 'But the council has to follow their own rules.' Thorp noted that 694 days have passed since the council first issued a cease-and-desist order for the seawall, and he said the matter might already have been resolved if the council had sent the dispute to a hearing officer right away. Save the Bay appreciates the attempt to move ahead on enforcement, Thorp said. 'But if they go about this the wrong way, they run the risk of further delay, which only hurts the public and the environment,' he said. Advertisement Edward Fitzpatrick can be reached at
