Weekapaug fake fire district claims it can block beach access
By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff
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| (Rob Smith/ecoRI News) |
For the first time coastal regulators were on hand to accept
comment on the status, history, and local traditions surrounding what’s become
the most contentious shoreline access point in recent memory: the Spring Avenue
Extension right of way (ROW).
Supporters of shoreline access have identified the ROW as
being once owned by the town as recently as the 1940s, with plenty of town
residents recalling using the path to Quonachontaug Barrier Beach, also known
as Weekapaug Beach, as recently as the 1970s. The town, these advocates allege,
owns the right of way and never gave up its rights to the ROW.
On the other side of the issue is the Weekapaug Fire
District, which restricts access and excludes the public from the beach during
the busy summer session from mid-June to mid-September, as well as private
property owners who claim the ROW was never used by the public, and who say the
ROW is privately owned.
It’s a paradox, one that officials at the Coastal Resources
Management Council aim to solve within the next year. The hearing last week, on
a hot Monday evening, was the first in a series of public meetings aimed at
soliciting the opinions and views of local residents and Rhode Islanders on how
and when the right of way was used.
Westerly resident John MacLean said back in the 1970s when he first used the Spring Avenue Extension, he called the ROW “the weeded path.”
“We were told not to use the boardwalk right of way,”
recalled MacLean. “We used the weeded path that went down to the beach, and I
still go down there on a regular basis and use it.”
For others the Spring Avenue Extension ROW is an example of
public beach access restricted across the decades. Westerly resident Steve
Bannon said he was once asked to leave the barrier beach, and been denied
access to it in the past.
“In the 50 years that our family has owned our home, we have
consistently seen beach access choked up,” Bannon said. “There are three known
CRMC access points on the east end of Atlantic Avenue that are currently
blocked. A million-dollar house is a problem; they don’t want [the ROW] opened
up.”
Resident Jim Tarbox said his earliest recollection of the
Spring Avenue Extension was about 40 years prior, learning to fish from
old-timers who used the ROW. He also said he had been arguing with town
officials over maintaining the town ROWs.
“It’s not maintained, they do it on purpose,” said Tarbox of
local ROW obstructions. “There’s trees growing in the middle of some right of
ways, it’s clear that’s not supposed to happen.”
But others remember differently. Weekpaug resident Kerri
Mulligan said she’d lived in the Westerly area her entire life, and the Spring
Avenue ROW was never used, primarily because it was never passable. It was
always fenced off, said Mulligan, and the path was overgrown with vegetation.
The Weekapaug Fire District currently controls most of the
access points onto the Westerly barrier beach commonly known as Weekapaug
Beach. Fire districts, which often function as private homeowners associations
for the wealthy, have come under fire from shoreline advocates for restricting
access to beaches around the state.
“I’ve never once seen anyone cross it, and I don’t know a
single person who has,” Mulligan said. “Even in 1940 when the town conducted
its own study, the committee did not find this parcel to be a right of way, a
finding that still holds.”
Resident Bob McKenna, also invoking the 1940 town study,
told coastal regulators that property rights were sacrosanct, and the Spring
Avenue Extension right of way has been fenced off for decades.
“The town investigated this question with its own highway
commission and determined it was not a public right of way,” McKenna said.
“This conclusion has stood, unchallenged, for 80 years. The town has never
touched the property because it was never the town’s to touch.”
Shelter Harbor resident Ann Thomas said her family had lived
in the neighborhood since 1915, and that the Weekapaug Fire District had always
restricted access to the barrier beach, at least since the early 1960s.
“Even I, as a Shelter Harbor resident, was not allowed to
walk onto the beach,” said Thomas. “I had to walk down the sand trail to get to
Shelter Harbor Beach to get onto that beach, and that goes back to when I was 5
years old.”
CRMC’s ROW subcommittee has been working for the past two
and a half years to get the proceedings around the Spring Avenue Extension to
this point. Westerly town officials referred the matter to CRMC in 2020 as a
potential ROW to be investigated by the agency, which has jurisdiction over
coastal access.
Starting in 2023, attorney Michael Rubin, working with
resident Carolina Contrata, represented the pro-shoreline access side of the
case. On the other hand is the Weekapaug Fire District, primarily represented
by attorney Joseph Farside.
The major decision on whether Spring Avenue is a right of
way is up to the CRMC ROW subcommittee, composed of three members of the
politically appointed executive panel that oversees CRMC.
The subcommittee is made up of Cranston municipal judge
Raymond Coia (Coia is also chair of CRMC), Newport city planner Patricia
Reynolds, and a Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management designee,
Ron Gagnon, chief of the department’s Office of Customer and Technical
Assistance.
CRMC executive director Jeff Willis said a decision from the
subcommittee was expected within the next year. Following last week’s public
comment, the attorneys in the case will be allowed to argue the facts before
the subcommittee, before the agency opens another period of comment for the
public.
“This is something that will not be spread out over many
months,” Willis said. “But we do need to be respectful of the subcommittee’s
time and schedules, they are volunteers.”