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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