On Guard: Public Access to Beaches Tightens
By Frank Carini / ecoRI News staff
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| Access to Quonochontaug Barrier Beach, also called Weekapaug Beach, is a point of contention between three fire districts and advocates for shoreline rights. |
Thomas Micele lives less than 2 miles from what he calls “the most beautiful beach in Rhode Island,” but between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. from mid-June to mid-September he and the vast majority of Ocean State taxpayers have no access. A guard blocks the entrance.
Micele
has written to the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) and the attorney
general expressing his concern about the limited availability to Quonochontaug
Barrier Beach, also called Weekapaug Beach.
In
a Feb. 4 email to CRMC, he noted the Weekapaug Fire District is blocking access
to the beach.
“They
have a guard posted to be sure no one walks across the walkway to the
beach,” he wrote. “Next to their beach entrance is a public right of way that
is blocked by a fence. … It is on town property designated as a road on
older town plats.”
Between
June 15 and Sept. 15, the portion of Quonochontaug Beach owned by the Weekapaug
Fire District can only be used by Weekapaug residents and their guests and by
Shelter Harbor and Shady Harbor Fire District residents and their guests in
leased areas, according to the Quonochontaug Beach Conservation Commission.
The
commission also notes that from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. anglers can access the shore
over Weekapaug Fire District boardwalks for surf fishing, and clammers can
access Quonochontaug Pond for clamming.
During
that three-month summer period, the public can access the “Sand Trail” — a
37-foot-wide private/public path/road that leads to Quonochontaug Beach — and
walk on the beach for nature walks, but “there shall be no swimming,” according
to the commission, which was created to
preserve, in as nearly as possible its natural state, one of the few remaining
undeveloped barrier beaches in Rhode Island.
Micele,
a retired educator, said he has been kicked off the beach because it was a few
minutes past 9 a.m., and he said he has seen up to three guards patrolling the
Sand Trail.
The
mission of the Weekapaug Fire District, according to its homepage,
is to provide fire protection and security to its homeowners and maintain
beaches and roads within the district. The district, however, doesn’t
actually fight fires, at least according to a story published last year by The
Public’s Radio. The organization actually functions more like a homeowners’
association.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The problem of "fake fire districts" is a major factor in Rhode Island's battle over public access to the ocean. They do indeed serve as homeowner associations who own long stretches of beach as well as amenities such as tennis courts, boat launches, social clubs, etc. They sometimes own prime property which is shielded from property taxes. On top of being a tax rip-off, they are also an insult to real firefighters. One solution would be legislation to place a requirement of spending some significant portion of their money into real fire-fighting capability before being granted to call themselves a "Fire District." - Will Collette
It also, at least according to a group of concerned residents, is illegally blocking a shoreline right of way, known as the Spring Avenue Extension, to keep the public from accessing 1.8 miles of what Dan King calls “pristine shoreline.”
A
group called RI Coastal Access was
created to cultivate public awareness and foster civic engagement for the
preservation of the Ocean State’s coastline and state constitutional rights to
shoreline access. One of the group’s initiatives is the controversy
surrounding the Spring Avenue Extension.
In
a document sent to
CRMC’s legal counsel last September, Michael Rubin, a former assistant attorney
general of Rhode Island, outlines what he believes is proof that the Weekapaug
Fire District doesn’t have the right to control this shoreline access
point.
The
Weekapaug Fire District, however, continues to maintain it owns the disputed
right of way. Both sides have filed memorandums with the state outlining their
legal arguments.
ecoRI
News reached out to CRMC about where the Spring Avenue Extension matter stands,
but didn’t receive a response. In her Feb. 7 response to Micele’s email, Laura
Dwyer, CRMC’s public educator and information coordinator, wrote the agency
“has been aware of the issues in the Weekapaug Fire District for more than a
year, and is currently working to address the issue.” She noted such a process
“requires detailed and lengthy legal research.”
CRMC doesn’t
have the authority to create new rights of way, so expanding public access
to the coast requires identifying ones that already exist.
“There’s
virtually no one out there on that beach in the summer,” said King, who surf
fishes off Weekapaug Beach two or three times a week in the early morning,
leaving well before the 9 a.m. curfew. “Look either way and it’s empty.”
This
spot at the north end of Waters Edge Road in Watch Hill is supposed to be a
public right of way to the shore.
Whittled
down access
In
late August, ecoRI News met with Micele, King, and Caroline Contrata on the
back porch of Micele’s home on Quannacut Road. They spoke about the takeover of
Weekapaug Beach by the Weekapaug, Shelter Harbor and Shady Harbor fire
districts. They talked about how overall shoreline access in Westerly is
increasingly being limited by the town, fire districts, and homeowners, to make
summertime residents happy by keeping people like them away.
Besides
Westerly’s two town beaches — Westerly Town Beach and Wuskenau Beach — and
Misquamicut State Beach, they said most of the town’s other public access
points to the coast are being blocked by a combination of practices and by
apathetic town officials.
The
three local residents said the public is largely forced to crowd itself onto
some 500 yards of town beach and a half-mile of state beach, while the rest of
Westerly’s attractive shoreline is essentially walled off for private use.
They
rattled off a list of approaches that have been taken to squeeze access, and
then we donned masks and got into Micele’s beige, 2017 Chrysler Pacifica to
take a tour of the practices the driver said are being implemented to keep “us
peons off their beaches.”
They
said elected officials are bowing to the desires of wealthy property owners at
the expense of the public.
Micele,
a New Jersey native who moved to Westerly nine years ago, said the modus
operandi is to not allow parking near shoreline rights of way. In Watch Hill,
for example, the trio noted that where public access is available, signs are
plastered about that say no parking, stopping or standing, thereby making it
illegal to even drop someone off at a coastal right of way. The fine is $150,
more than many tickets issued for speeding through the affluent coastal
neighborhood.
In
the rare instances where free shoreline parking is available in Westerly, it is
often limited to 30 minutes.
“People
can park in front of my home, but not in front of shoreline homes,” said
Micele, noting that on Sundays the streets and roads around Watch Hill Chapel
on Bluff Avenue are lined with parked cars that don’t get ticketed. “Why can’t
I park there on a Monday?”
A
growing number of security guards and signs warning “No Parking,” “No
Trespassing,” “Cameras In Use,” and “Private Residents Only” are posted along
the roads, streets, and pathways that lead to some of the most desirable
stretches of Westerly’s coastline. Fences, boulders, and vegetation are
used to mark territory, even if they infringe upon a public right.
This
pile of boulders next to a home on East Beach warns beachgoers that someone
else owns access to the shoreline here.
“Private
Property No Trespassing” is painted in red on a pile of rocks next to a home on
East Beach. A sign posted roughly 50 feet from about a dozen public parking
spots at well-guarded Weekapaug Beach alerts anglers, clammers, and walkers
that the snack bar is only for guests of Weekapaug Inn and the Weekapaug,
Shelter Harbor, and Shady Harbor communities. The free public parking spots are
often used by inn guests and fire district residents.
A
public access point at the north end of Waters Edge Road in Watch Hill is
blocked by a fence and overgrown vegetation. At the road’s south end,
there is public access and a grant-funded kayak rack, but parking anywhere near
the right of way is prohibited.
The
trio noted there is limited access to Quonochontaug Pond, a coastal lagoon in
Westerly and Charlestown, despite the fact taxpayer money is used to dredge the
waterbody behind the barrier beach that is off limits to the public for most of
the summer.
At
the Quonochontaug Breachway, also known as the Quonnie Breachway, they said a
fence blocks access to the ocean side of the jetty.
At
East Beach, parking is severely limited. According to the Weekapaug Fire
District’s 2022 beach regulations,
the district owns East Beach, as well as Fenway Beach, and they are for the
“benefit and use” of the district’s property owners and their guests.
At Watch Hill Beach, it can cost up to $50 to
park and it costs $12 per adult and $6 for children 3 and older to access the
beach. Parking for Napatree Point can also be pricey, at least for beachgoers
who don’t come by water.
King
has lived in Bradford, a historic district in the towns of Westerly and
Hopkinton, for 35 years. He said the local squeeze on public access began three
decades ago and has recently picked up the pace.
“Access
keeps getting tighter and tighter,” he said. “It gets more restrictive as the
years go by.”
Contrata,
who grow up in Ledyard, Conn., spent the late 1970s and early ’80s as a
teenager exploring the Westerly coastline. She said much of the access she enjoyed
as a teen has disappeared.
Micele
said government-subsidized flood insurance and federal grants to raise coastal
homes are taxpayer funded, “but we can’t get access to what we pay for.”
“There’s
parking but no access and access with no parking,” he said. “That’s basically
what we have in Westerly. All these beautiful beaches that nobody can get on.”
The
contentious issue of shoreline access, however, isn’t limited to Rhode Island’s
most southerly town. The matter has generated plenty of public interest during
the past few years. A special House commission was
even created to study the issue.
The Rhode Island Constitution guarantees
the right to passage along the coast, but it doesn’t say the public has
the right to walk across the shore above the mean high-water line or on private
property to get there — the issue at the heart of the Spring Avenue Extension
matter and one the House study commission was created to address.
The 12-member shoreline access study commission produced a bill (H8055A) that would have allowed residents to walk along the shoreline 6 feet landward from the identifiable seaweed line. The bipartisan legislation easily passed the House, but never received a committee hearing from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, D-North Providence, didn’t support the bill.
