Better water, less poo

R.I. Beach Health Responds to Better Stormwater Management

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

Beachgoers enjoy a sunny day at Second Beach in Middletown. Beach closures in Rhode Island are trending downward. (Joanna Detz/ecoRI News)

Many of the changes witnessed along Rhode Island’s coastline during the past two decades are noticeable and concerning, especially when it comes to the impact on the brick-and-mortar environment that replaced the natural world.

The seaside town of South Kingstown provides a telling example of Mother Nature’s brisk alternations. Less than 20 years ago, a sandy carpet fronted Matunuck Beach Road and Ocean Mist, an iconic Ocean State watering hole. 

That carpet of disintegrated rock and fine mineral particles has largely been replaced by briny water. The Atlantic Ocean now laps beneath beachfront bars and restaurants and is advancing on the infrastructure buried beneath Matunuck Beach Road.

There are, however, unseen changes to the Ocean State’s waterfront that are cause for optimism.

The amount of sand in front of them may be shrinking, but water quality at Rhode Island’s signature attractions — its tourist-filled, economically important beaches — is improving.

Climate change could wipe out our neighbors

Matunuck Village One Big Storm Away from Substantial Destruction

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

The problem of disappearing Matunuck Beach goes well beyond the future of Ocean Mist and the other right-on-the-water buildings there. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News photos)

Last year, two days after a Nov. 30 offshore storm pelted Rhode Island’s coast, especially its open-ocean shoreline, with waves, wind and rain, a turbulent sea lingered along two beaches in this vulnerable seaside town.

Both South Kingstown Town Beach and Matunuck Beach showed signs of “dramatic changes,” according to David Prescott, Save The Bay’s South County coastkeeper. He noted that the accumulating impacts of these more frequent and intense storms are taking a toll.

“These storms are doing damage. This is crazy,” said Prescott, standing on South Kingstown Town Beach during a cold and windy Dec. 2 weekday. “Coastal dynamics are always changing, but climate change complicates the process. These winter and spring storms hammer the coast from one tide cycle to the next.”

Town Beach, under the relentless pounding of waves, never-ending tide cycles and climate-fueled storms, is retreating at a rate of about 5 feet annually. About a mile away, Matunuck Beach, once a sandy carpet that fronted Matunuck Beach Road and Ocean Mist, a popular beach bar, is being chewed up at a significant rate, with some areas losing more than 100 feet since 1939.

Beachfront bars and restaurants, supported by a maze of wooden beams, jut out over breaking waves, as seawater routinely laps beneath the at-risk structures.

The problem of disappearing Matunuck Beach goes well beyond the future of Ocean Mist and the other right-on-the-water buildings, however. The village of Matunuck, home to about 500 residences and several businesses, is a big hurricane away from experiencing some serious damage.

The 4-foot-high seawall built and being expanded will do little to protect the neighborhood from a 100-year storm, like the one that hit in 1938. Prescott noted that the debris field created by the hurricane of 1938 reached all the way to Route 1.

Big staff changes at the Coastal Resources Management Council

Fugate Heads Staff Departures at R.I.'s Respected Coastal Agency

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

Grover Fugate was hired 34 years ago as the Coastal Resources
Management Council’s first executive director. (ecoRI News)

Grover Fugate is heading a departure of staff and institutional knowledge from the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC).

Fugate is set to retire by June 1 and will be joined some time this year by coastal policy analyst James Boyd. Aquaculture coordinator David Beutel is also expected to retire this year. Geologist Janet Freedman and two others are also eligible for retirement. 

Two other staff members are eligible to retire next year.

With only 30 employees, CRMC is one of the smallest state agencies, serving as a zoning department and oversight board for coastal and offshore development, including offshore wind.

Fugate has served as executive director since 1986, guiding the agency during some of its most tumultuous times. The CRMC council has been a source of controversy for decades, with unfilled seats, dubious political appointees, and favoritism toward developers.

The agency was created in 1971 after the near-approval of large fossil-fuel projects, such as oil refineries within Narragansett Bay. 

Building a wall in South Kingstown to hold back the tide

CRMC Approves Controversial Matunuck Seawall

By Tim Faulkner/ecoRI News staff

RI Sea Grant - URI photo

Matunuck Beach Road in South Kingstown continues to be a test case for climate crisis adaptation.

In 2012, the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) made a controversial decision to approve a 202-foot-long sheet-metal wall for protecting a portion of the vulnerable shoreline road. 

After weeks of contentious hearings, the coastal zoning agency reversed its own decision to approve the manmade barrier. Opponents argued that the structure would cause more environmental harm along the rapidly retreating beach, while setting a precedent for further manmade hardening of Rhode Island’s coast. 

Ecosystems, they argued, should be managed with natural materials or allowed unhindered movement, especially as flooding and storms intensify.

As it did in 2012, CRMC agreed on Nov. 12 with South Kingstown’s reasoning that protecting the road is necessary to maintain the only thoroughfare to an isolated neighborhood of 240 homes and handful of businesses.

The first seawall, completed in 2018, set in motion a multiphase plan to protect the road and waterfront buildings. Phase 2, approved Nov. 12, extends the sheet-metal wall 350 feet. 

A third phase, approved by CRMC in 2016, allows the owner of the Ocean Mist tavern, Kevin Finnegan, to build a 530-foot-long, 14-foot-high protective barrier in front of his waterfront business. Rather than use metal or stone, the new wall will be made of giant sand-filled plastic bags.

The project essentially moves an illegal seawall behind the Ocean Mist to the front of the tavern, where the beach has eroded significantly and water now flows under an elevated deck.

The space between the front of the deck and the road will be filled, moving the manmade shoreline further into the water. The project has been on hold while the town negotiates a sale of the waterfront area to Finnegan.

Save The Bay testified against extending the sheet-metal wall, writing in a letter that “hardening the shoreline is not a viable response to the impacts of climate change.” 

Trying to stop the tide to save a bar

Popular Pub Ocean Mist to Get New Seawall

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

To cheers from residents, the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) approved a seawall to protect a road and a popular waterfront tavern in South Kingstown's Matunuck Beach community.

In a packed lecture hall June 14 on the University of Rhode Island Bay Campus, the CRMC, which regulates coastal development in Rhode Island, voted 6-2 in favor of a proposal to rebuild what remains of a tattered rock wall next to the Ocean Mist tavern.

The wall was last repaired in 1983, when it had 80 feet of beach between it and the ocean. The beach has since disappeared due to coastal erosion — only a small strip of sand and stone sit behind the scattered rocks.

The new stonewall will be 530 feet long and 14 feet high. Although CRMC typically opposes new hardened seawalls, the structure received a much smoother path to approval because it was classified as a maintenance project.

Seawall Concerns Plague Matunuck Village, Ocean Mist

The view looking east from the Ocean Mist.

(Photo Tracey C. O’Neill 2012)

Tracey C. O'Neill has provided an update on discussion of a seawall along Matunuck Village.

Calling for a united approach to erosion concerns in the seaside village of Matunuck, legal counsel for the Ocean Mist, reached out to the Town, the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), federal and local legislators, offering a public-private partnership solution to the Town’s controversial road infrastructure project.

The parcel immediately adjacent to the Ocean Mist is the subject of the Town’s planned seawall build, a 202 ft. protective mechanism necessary to defend the main access road providing ingress and egress to the village. The road serves as sole access for emergency vehicles and houses the main water line running into the village.

“I’ll  buy the property from the Town, restore and maintain the sea wall for everyone. It’s a win for the town. It’s a win for the Ocean Mist and Matunuck,” he said. “But the wall has to be moved seaward – an extension of the historic wall that was on Mary Carpenter’s property. Let’s fix the wall that’s there.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Latest plans to control local beach erosion

New Barriers Proposed for Misquamicut, Matunuck

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI.org News staff

NARRAGANSETT — Experimental and controversial beach protection barriers are being proposed for two stretches of South County beaches, including South Kingstown Town Beach, which was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy last October.

Discussions last week between the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) and South Kingstown planners resulted in a tentative agreement to allow unproven approaches to stop beach erosion, such as polyester-type bags filled with sand or stone.

White House, Congressional Delegation Survey Hurricane Sandy Damage

State senators and representatives were joined by members of the White House Hurricane Sandy Task Force on Monday morning in Matunuck to survey damage from the 2012 storm.

Posted by Erin Tiernan (Editor), in the Narragansett-South Kingstown Patch

Senator Jack Reed, right

Members of the state Congressional delegation were joined by the White House's Hurricane Sandy Task Force on Monday to survey erosion on South Kingstown's south shore and hatch a plan to protect the community.

Storm surges caused by Hurricane Sandy last fall further deteriorated already threatening erosion conditions across the Matunuck and Green Hill shoreline. Beaches along the south coast are disappearing the waterline to creeping closer to local businesses, homes and vital public infrastructure.

When ocean and humans collide

Rhode Island’s Eroding Coast a Serious Problem

Storm surge during the great Blizzard of '78

By KEVIN PROFT/ecoRI.org News staff

NARRAGANSETT — Rhode Island’s coastline is in a natural and constant state of flux. The coastline is altered most during big storms such as hurricanes and nor’easters. High waves wash away or damage dunes that protect land further inland. They also pound sea cliffs saturated and weakened by rain, causing sections to collapse. 

Coastal erosion: how to deal with it, and why

Coastal Erosion: How to Deal With It, And Why

The deck of the Ocean Mist, one of the most vulnerable
local businesses to coastal erosion. (Photo by Bob Plain)

By Ray Huling on August 6, 2012

The Journal ran a story Sunday on Rhode Island’s new efforts to deal with coastal erosion. It’s a decent piece, but it understresses a couple of important points and misses a few more.

First, the problem of shore erosion has been and will continue to be intensified by sea level rises pushed by global warming, which, yes, is caused by people.

In fact, we might do well to skip the middle man and just say that climate change, like Soylent Green, is people. People are accelerating the erosion of Rhode Island’s shore.

Last Call?

Matunuck Plan Could Spell End for the Ocean Mist

By Tracey C. O'Neill in RIFuture.org

The deck of the Ocean Mist. (photo by Bob Plain)

MATUNUCK — This coastal community in the far reaches of South Kingstown harbors all the working ingredients of a self-sustaining village. 

The corner store, surf shop, pizza parlor and hometown pubs play host to local residents, tourists and daily beach-goers every year.

In the heart of Matunuck village stands the Ocean Mist, sitting high on pilings above the Atlantic, a virtual dock of hedonism, enjoyed, remembered and revisited by people of all walks of life. Together, The Ocean Mist and village of Matunuck have evolved over the years.

More on on CRMC's Matunuck reversal

Barriers Fall for Matunuck Beach Armoring

By DAVE FISHER and TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI.org News staff

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — The wind seems to have shifted concerning the erosion problem at Matunuck Beach and the threat level to the only road servicing the small beach community. 

After previously rejecting efforts by the town to protect Matunuck Beach Road from erosion through hard “armoring” measures and reclassification of the beach as “manmade," the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) voted 6-4 May 8 to approve the original application for a special exemption to CRMC regulations for a 202-foot-long stretch of Matunuck Beach directly next to the Ocean Mist.

FOLLOW-UP on last night's CRMC vote on Matunuck

CRMC Votes For SK Sea Wall, Against Ocean Mist

By Tracey C. O'Neill in RIFuture.org

In a 9-0 vote, with one abstention the Coastal Resource Management Council in reconsidering the application of the Town of South Kingstown voted to approve the construction of a 202 ft sheet pile wall armament as a measure of protection for the sole access road into the seaside community of Matunuck.

Executive Director, Grover Fugate presented a four-prong approach for dealing with the critical erosion issues in Matunuck and other Rhode Island Coastal areas. The first prong, of immediate concern dealt with the “imminent peril situation” in Matunuck, presented by Town Manager, Stephen Alfred as a public health and safety concern for residents should Matunuck Beach Road infrastructure fail.

Tough luck, South Kingstown

CRMC Issues Eleventh Hour Decision

Beach erosion at Matunuck Beach

By Tracey C. O'Neill in RIFuture.org

The Coastal Resource Management Council (CRMC), after another evening filled with heated testimony, issued its decision on a request by the Town of South Kingstown to reclassify a portion of shoreline along Matunuck Beach Road. CRMC would not be forced to make a potentially precedential decision based on an eleventh hour situation being put before them for resolution.

In a 6-2 vote, the Council voted no, voicing concern with reclassifying the existing shoreline designation of “Coastal Headlands Bluffs and Cliffs” to that of a “manmade shoreline.”

Beaches without sand?

CRMC Nixes Wall Exemption for Matunuck Beach

By DAVE FISHER/ecoRI.org News staff

Matunuck Beach is disappearing. Coastal erosion of the beach has accelerated during the past decade to the point that town officials fear that erosion could compromise the integrity of Matunuck Beach Road, leaving some 240 homes without a public water supply and an adequate evacuation route in the event of a serious storm and consequent flooding.

At the April 10 meeting of the Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), the governmental body charged with protecting Rhode Island’s 400 miles of shoreline, South Kingstown officials sought a special exemption from the CRMC to install a sheet-pile wall directly adjacent to Matunuck Beach Road to protect the road from the imminent effects of further erosion.