Stones unturned
By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff
Five percent? Ten? What if the stones are almost twice the
size?
That was the subject of debate between commissioners on the
Coastal Resources Management Council and a waterfront property owner.
James and Cheryl Chrones own, via a family trust, the last
house on Atlantic Avenue in Westerly before the street turns into sandy beach.
Like many houses dotting Rhode Island’s shoreline, this one has a 400-foot
revetment, a seawall that has existed in some form or another since 1938.
The water in front of the Atlantic Avenue home is designated
as Type 1 waters by CRMC; it’s meant for conservation only, and
shoreline-hardening structures like seawalls aren’t allowed. It’s why coastal
regulators have gone back and forth with the Quidnessett Country Club in North
Kingstown over its illegal seawall.
But there’s a catch: the Chrones’ seawall is grandfathered
in because it predates the formation of CRMC by more than three decades. So,
while state regulations say they can’t expand it or create a new wall, they are
allowed to keep the current one and put in applications to maintain it.
Since 1993, the Chrones have put in seven other, separate
CRMC applications for seawall maintenance, including an emergency permit
following Superstorm Sandy to replace riprap and repair a concrete patio.
This year’s application would swap between 350 and 400 tons of boulders ranging from 3-5 feet in diameter for mostly bigger stones, between 2 and more than 7 feet in diameter. The new boulders would weigh between 1 and 13 tons, just by themselves. CRMC staff recommended the council deny the application.
“The increase in the size of the stone is what makes this
not a maintenance application,” said Rich Lucia, a member of CRMC’s permitting
staff, at a council hearing March 10. “They’re going from maybe 5 feet, to 7
feet wide stone, they’re going to replace 800,000 pounds of stone. It’s beyond
what’s considered a maintenance activity.”
Staff also took issue with the fact that the bigger boulders
would mean the seawall would be located more seaward than it was previously,
and the revetment design would create a surface more reflective for wave
action. Changing the size or shape of the wall, staff wrote in its report,
would exceed the allowable actions in a traditional maintenance permit.
Attorneys and experts speaking on behalf of the Chrones said
the total number of stones being replaced would be limited to between 7% and
11% of the total tonnage making up the revetment. Peter Skwirz, an attorney
with Ursillo, Teitz & Rich Ltd., maintained the application fell under
CRMC’s existing regulations.
“We’re not asking for a variance, we’re not asking for an
exception,” Skwirz said to the council. “We’re just asking to apply the
regulations you already have, and which happen to make good sense in this
case.”
Why does it matter? Functionally, CRMC has been close to
inert in enforcing its own regulations regarding seawalls. Despite being the
subject of a years-long hearing process that has stretched to a CRMC hearing
and two separate court cases, the Quidnessett Country Club’s seawall is still
standing in violation of state orders.
Seawalls are banned for a reason. Shorelines, especially in
areas with high wind, wave and ocean action like Rhode Island’s south shore,
are living, breathing geographic features. Some parts of the shoreline will
erode, while others will accrete more sand, earth and sediment.
Even without the threat of climate change and sea level
rise, these processes would happen anyway. Seawalls in some ways only delay the
inevitable.
They work by deflecting wave action, and the erosion that
comes with waves repeatedly breaking on land, and the forces of erosion away
from the wall. The cost is they generally cause the land adjacent to seawalls
to erode faster. They also worsen erosion on the land directly in front of the
seawall, which in the long term could undermine the seawall, collapsing it into
the sea.
Rhode Island is expected to net another 9 feet of sea level
rise by the end of this century. In the long run, the seawalls are likely to
end up underwater anyway.
It’s why environmental groups, such as Save The Bay, usually
publicly oppose seawalls. Save The Bay’s Narragansett baykeeper Chris Dodge
testified against approval of the Chrones’ seawall, using the analogy of
building versus renovating a house. Others wrote in to lodge their objections.
“This is not simply building a house using some new
materials, and not using the materials that are on the site already,” Dodge
said. “This would be completely demolishing the house and then bringing in
brand-new material.”
“I’m very sympathetic to the applicants’ position,” CRMC
council member Stephen Izzi said. “They bought a property with a 75-year-old
revetment wall and designed by 75-year-old standards. But CRMC regulations
prohibit new structures [and] existing changes to structures beyond just
maintenance. Even the engineer conceded that a lot of what they propose is a
change in design, changing the existing slope of the revetment.”
The council voted unanimously to reject the Chrones’
application.
