After months of planning, local and state officials are ready to set an agenda to develop a plan for Narragansett Bay. Though it’s unclear what that agenda will include, representatives from the state Coastal Resource Management Council, the state Department of Environmental Management, Save The Bay, the Rhode Economic Development Corporation, the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council and the University of Rhode Island, and state legislature have agreed to meet next Monday (Oct. 16) to establish their goals for the bay. The meeting will be at the Coastal Institute on the University of Rhode Island’s Bay Campus.
The meeting is an outgrowth of the Bay Summit held earlier this year at the Rhode Island Convention Center.
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“I think that the Bay Summit was successful in that it served to get off the ‘lets talk about my own agenda,'” said Jan Reitsma, director of DEM. “There are a lot of topics that need to be discussed, but the nice thing is the environmentalists have begun to accept that they need to be a part of environmental activities, and the economic development community seems ready to make environmental issues a part of its goal.”
But defining the economic and environmental future of Narragansett Bay will be tough for groups that often find themselves on opposite shores.
”The Bay Summit spawned a list of topics that included dredging, a development at Quonset and the creation of a management plan for the bay that included an economic profile for the bay,” said Peter August, director of the Coastal Institute. “What we are trying to do now is create a structure and format by which these issues can be addressed and organized.”
From building a deep-water port at Quonset Point to dredging and estuary preservation, observers seem to agree that the state’s business community and environmentalists must find a common ground when it comes to Narragansett Bay.
”You can’t deny the fact that it’s a very difficult project,” said August. “But everyone seems to agree that we need a viable sustainable use plan for the bay. Do we know how to get there – not yet. And though we have a diversity of issues, everybody appreciates that we have an important agenda in front of us.”
Narragansett Bay has played different roles in the state’s economy throughout history. In the late 1800s when the state was a resource-based economy, the bay was used to move trade boats up and down the coast, and it was used to support a very active fishing industry. According to Curt Spalding, executive director of Save the Bay that all changed during the industrial revolution when mill sites were constructed along the bay and the state’s riverbeds.
”The bay’s value has always followed the economic value of the time,” he said. “It went from being something that provided value to a place to dump waste.”
But a decline in the state’s industrial base over the last 30 years has also brought an increased awareness in the preserving the bay’s future, Spalding said.
”Historically there has always been a strong connection to the bay,” he said. “That connection was broken by the Industrial Revolution. There was a lot of filling, and a loss of thousands of acres of salt marsh. Today, the bay is really tied to supporting a quality of life and its essential to the new economy.”
When discussing a plan for Narragansett Bay, it is inevitable the development of a deep-water port at Quonset Point would surface – and it has.
”The port component is definitely one part of this,” said Thomas Schumpert, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. “The top priority would be to keep and enhance the quality of life of the bay for all Rhode Island and all visitors.”
Opponents of a deep-water port assert that the preservation of the bay could be at risk and that the state doesn’t have the economy to support it.
”The theory that you need an industry base to support the ladder[growth] in the economy is an old idea,” said Curt Spalding, executive director of Save the Bay. “We believe we need to resolve current issues. We feel if you push heavy uses, it threatens the bay’s quality of life.”
”There is a huge issue surrounding the ability to bring oil up the bay with the energy issues we are reading about every day,” Reitsma said. “That in and of itself warrants a study to find out if we are underutilizing the bay, but we don’t want to develop that potential at the cost of the environment.”
Other issues that have been discussed are habitat restoration, commercial fishing, and the role of the bay in tourism.
”What we are talking about is sustainable tourism,” said David DePetrillo, director of tourism for EDC. “That is tourism based on the most important resources we have culturally and environmentally. There is more interest in the bay, more interest concerning the bay today than at any other time in history. I don’t see a conflict in preservation and development as long as we have sustainable tourism.”
Part of the problem, many people agree, is the lack of unity. Different organizations are studying various parts of the bay and not sharing information with one another.
“There are too many different agencies and organizations collecting data and not integrating,” Reistma said. “We need to reverse the trend of fragmentation. I think that we are all in agreement that there needs to be a central repository of data. We need to work on a system to make sure that all of the data collected can be used not just by government people, but by all people that use the bay.”
The last overall study of the bay for future development, released in the 1980s, is now outdated, Spalding said.
”This is a place for us to start from,” he said. “We need to take this information and move into the future with it. I am a big proponent of dialogue advancement,” Spalding said, “if it means the use of they bay in a sustainable way through the future. We need to create a vision of what the bay will be 15 years from now.”
August said participants of the collaboration will be broken down into smaller work groups to cover individual subject areas. The entire group will meet every couple of months to discuss progress.
”Our goal is to make sure than the right hand and the left hand know what’s going on,” he said. “That’s going to take some kind of order, a ton of interaction and communication. What’s critically important is how we articulate a vision for the future of the bay that permits and allows the public to be a part of it.”
