Erosion rules are too late for some

ALONG THE WATERFRONT: Kevin Finnegan, owner of the Ocean Mist Beach Bar in the Matunuck village in South Kingstown, has been proactive on erosion-control measures to protect his beachfront business, but has expressed skepticism regarding new erosion rules. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
ALONG THE WATERFRONT: Kevin Finnegan, owner of the Ocean Mist Beach Bar in the Matunuck village in South Kingstown, has been proactive on erosion-control measures to protect his beachfront business, but has expressed skepticism regarding new erosion rules. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Beach erosion may seem unstoppable to seaside business communities in South Kingstown and Westerly, but new rules designed to allow experimentation to curb it could provide some short-term relief – if property owners decide to try it.
New regulations approved Oct. 7 by the R.I. Coastal Resource Management Council would allow a dozen eligible commercial and residential property owners on Matunuck Beach Road in South Kingstown and another 38 property owners on Atlantic Avenue in Westerly’s Misquamicut neighborhood to use experimental measures to prevent beach erosion.
The rules do not recommend, endorse, limit or otherwise specify what new technologies or approaches might be used. As a result, property owners are left to do the research, collaborate with their neighbors and apply first for predetermination to see if their plans are feasible, and then for approval to go forward.
The regulations are intended to permit temporary measures for up to three years, though successful initiatives could be renewed.
By late January, the Misquamicut Business Association was just beginning to study the new rules and explore potential options for its members.
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Caswell Cooke Jr., the association’s executive director. “If we can take advantage of experimental measures, we should pursue them. I’m going to find out what’s allowed and study [the new rules] and discuss it with our board. What we can do is just help get the information out to our people.”
Michelle Colucci Pinto, co-owner of the Andrea Hotel, which was destroyed by the remnants of Superstorm Sandy and has been reconstituted in a temporary structure, is interested in learning more, but unsure how feasible it would be unless neighbors joined forces. Her property at 89 Atlantic Ave. is eligible for experimental measures.
“If one piece of property tries something, it’s not going to really help us unless the whole oceanfront is cooperating,” Pinto said. “I’m interested as a stakeholder, but it definitely would need to be a collaborative effort.”
So far, Jim Boyd, the policy analyst who wrote the new rules at the request of CRMC Executive Director Grover Fugate, has had no applications for experimental measures. “The rules are somewhat open to allow for the review of the emerging technologies,” he said. “The technical review panel [set up in the new regulations] will decide on whether a technology method is likely to work.”
In South Kingstown’s Matunuck district, two of the businesses eligible under the new rules are the Ocean Mist Beach Bar and Tara’s Tipperary Tavern. The latter’s owners could not be reached immediately for comment, but Ocean Mist proprietor Kevin Finnegan voiced skepticism.
“They hand it out to you like they’re helping you,” Finnegan said, referring to the CRMC’s passing of the new regulations last fall.
Finnegan is one of several oceanfront property owners who has an illegal creosote-covered timber sea wall on the property, said Boyd, a fact Finnegan acknowledged.
South Kingstown Town Manager Stephen A. Alfred believes the new rules have value, and that property owners such as Finnegan who have erosion-control measures that violate coastal rules are in a difficult position.
He cited work being done by Vincent Murray, the town’s planning director, to research the possibility of using an experimental measure called a “geo-mattress,” which is made of geotextile fabric that does not biodegrade and is filled with sand or beach cobblestones and placed in areas subject to erosion.
Part of the challenge derives from the CRMC’s obligations as a regulatory state agency that cannot advocate for the rules it regulates, he added.
“We’ve said to them, ‘You’re the experts. We shouldn’t be telling you what experimental measures should be tried. You should be telling us,’ ” Alfred said.
But Boyd, the CRMC policy analyst, explained: “We don’t define what’s allowed because we don’t want to limit people. It’s open. We’re willing to look at new and emerging technologies. We’re saying, ‘Bring something you think will work, and work with a consultant to design something you think will work with your particular site conditions.’ ”
South Kingstown successfully lobbied when the new rules were written to include the town beach as an eligible parcel for experimentation and also were able to add a provision that allows property owners in violation of related CMRC regulations to apply to try out an experimental approach and only then have to take an illegal sea wall down, Alfred said. “None of those [Matunuck Road] property owners are looking for the experimental regulations,” he said. “The town of South Kingstown is.
“The experimental regulations are too late to be of use to the property owners, based on the amount of erosion that’s [already] occurred. If they had 200 feet of sand in front of them, I think you’d have the probability of people interested in experimenting. Now, it’s a case of self-preservation, and that’s not in sync with the coastal regulations or the experimental regulations,” Alfred said. “For them to be able to protect the structures on their property, they’ve had to take measures contrary to the regulations.”
In Westerly, the town council has asked Town Engineer Paul LeBlanc to “research viable alternatives” that he says will include so-called trap bags that hold sand in place to prevent erosion “because this isn’t the first time we’ve lost engineered dunes at both locations.”
A trap bag is a nylon holding bag system created in segments of 100 feet in length to hold native sand material and keep it in place. It would provide 400,000 pounds of shoreline protective barrier per segment, and has been used for river erosion and along ocean frontage in New Jersey, Long Island and Massachusetts, he said.
At Misquamicut, 70,000 cubic yards of sand that shifted onto two town beach properties and some areas of Atlantic Avenue from Sandy have had to be shifted back to the dunes, he said.
“If we had had these components in place, the overwash at those locations would have been minimized,” he said.
There’s one obstacle for Westerly, however: its town beach is not considered eligible for the experimental erosion-control measures. But LeBlanc is going to apply to the CRMC through a permit-review process, he said.
“The experimental technology should have been incorporated into shoreline components that were previously engineered, and I’m not sure why CRMC excluded those,” LeBlanc said. “It really has advantages. It’s not a traditional hardened product like revetment boulders or large rip rap which causes undermining of the structures.” •

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