CRMC settles one beach access dispute in Westerly

Weekapaug fake fire district road blocks still unresolved.

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff

After more than 40 years since it was first given to the state for consideration, coastal regulators have decided to designate a shoreline access point at the end of Everett Avenue in Westerly a state right of way.

The matter had technically been before the Coastal Resources Management Council, the state agency that oversees coastal access, since the late 1970s. According to a report and recommendation authored by CRMC counsel Anthony DeSisto, the agency’s right of way subcommittee held hearings in the fall and winter of 1978 and early 1979.

“The town has made representations that it’s a public street, it’s in the harbor management plan as a public right of way to the shore,” DeSisto said. “You have your dedication and acceptance as subcommittee members heard, the two elements indicating it’s a public right of way.”

During the hearings, the town and members of the public indicated the access point was used as a public right of way (ROW) by local residents, but the full council voted in 1980 to put its designation process on hold to allow abutters opposing the designation process to provide evidence to the contrary. That evidence never materialized, and the ROW issue lay dormant until brought to CRMC’s attention by a town solicitor in Westerly in February.

“I don’t really have anything to add,” Westerly solicitor William Conley said before the recent CRMC vote. “We agree with the history of the ROW, we agree with the papers, and we agree with the conclusion. I ask that you accept Mr. DeSisto’s recommendation.”

The decision means the Everett Avenue ROW will be endowed with state protection, a significantly more powerful layer of defense against obstructions and other blocks to coastal access as CRMC can take legal action to keep a ROW open to the public.

It’s also likely one of the few new ROWs to get a state designation this year. For the past few years, CRMC’s subcommittee on coastal access has been investigating the ROW known as the Spring Avenue Extension, also in Westerly.

That right of way, which is the only access onto Weekapaug Beach for nearly a mile, is hotly contested between the town of Westerly, shoreline access advocates, and the Weekapaug Fire District, which asserts the Spring Avenue Extension has never been public and always been obstructed because it’s on private property.

CRMC’s subcommittee held public comment hearings in September, and held the first of likely many evidentiary hearings earlier in November. The next subcommittee meeting on the Spring Avenue Extension is scheduled for Jan. 6.

The coastal agency has an informal goal of designating one ROW per mile of Rhode Island coastline. To date, the agency has reviewed 353 potential ROWs for state designation, and labeled 234 of them as state ROWs, a far cry from the more than 400 the state would need to meet its public access goal. Thirty-three sites have not come to a resolution, and 22 still remain under review by CRMC.

Shoreline access remains a hot topic in Rhode Island. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a continual tug-of-war between members of the public desirous of more public access to the shore and waterfront homeowners, many of whom consider their beaches to be private.

A 2023 law passed in the wake of a legislative study commission codified new rates for lateral access — Rhode Islanders can walk up and down the shoreline within 10 feet of the lowest seaweed line without trespassing onto private property. The law made no changes to public access points, leaving CRMC to oversee those designations.