When Rhode Island passed a 2023 law strengthening shoreline access, some advocates felt a sense of relief as state and local authorities took a stronger stance in support of the public’s right to use and enjoy the Rhode Island coastline.
But that stance has seemingly shifted after a group of beachfront property owners challenged the law in court, according to Joy Cordio, a Westerly resident and former town councilor.
In 2024, a Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the property owners who argued that the law amounts to an illegal taking of their land, and an appeal has brought the case to the R.I. Supreme Court.
Although the law remains in effect during the appeal, Cordio said that some municipal governments and agencies, including the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council, have tempered their enforcement efforts since the Superior Court ruling.
“The first couple of years, I think there was a heightened awareness,” said Cordio, an outspoken advocate for water access. “The public was made aware that they do in fact have rights – that when they saw fencing on a beach that extended past the high tide line, that that was not legal, [and] they had a right to walk on the shore.”
The 2023 law designates the area 10 feet inland from the “seaweed line” as publicly accessible land, seeking to end a debate that goes back to the 19th century.
Arguments for shoreline access date back to the public trust doctrine, a broad legal concept holding that the government must preserve the public’s right to certain natural resources.
But observers say the Ocean State has an especially strong backing for this principle: particularly, a portion of the Rhode Island Constitution stating, “The people shall continue to enjoy and freely exercise all the rights of fishery, and the privileges of the shore … including but not limited to fishing from the shore, the gathering of seaweed, leaving the shore to swim in the sea and passage along the shore.”
Jesse Reiblich, an assistant professor in the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Marine Affairs, leads a research team seeking to determine the law’s effectiveness, looking into variables such as how authorities enforce the law and how easily the general public can understand it.
Researchers are still collecting data, but Reiblich said that the team sees some cause for optimism.
In 2019, shoreline access advocate Scott Keeley made headlines when, following trespassing complaints from waterfront property owners, police arrested him for collecting seaweed on a South Kingstown beach.
The complaints of landowners along the water haven’t vanished, but the passage of a 2023 law strengthening the public’s right to use and enjoy the shoreline has brought about some changes.
“The more recent disputes ... have not ended up with people being led away in handcuffs,” Reiblich said.
Over the summer, the researchers will convene focus groups that include surfers, fishers and others who spend time along the water.
But so far, Reiblich said, members of the public seem to find that the law clearly outlines their rights.
“The idea is to say we know that no matter where the actual tideline is, you’re able to access 10 feet above that,” he said. “People feel like they can go to the beach and actually know, ‘Yes, I belong here.’ ”
Still, advocates assert that Rhode Island has a long way to go in making the law truly effective.
Property owners still call the police with trespassing complaints, Cordio said. But she noted a new tendency for officers to cite the public’s right to the shoreline when these disputes arise.
Initially, the CRMC, the state agency responsible for overseeing shoreline access, addressed instances where property owners were blocking public rights-of-way. Now, “CRMC is hesitant to enforce anything until [the court] determines it’s a valid law,” Cordio said.
CRMC spokesperson Laura Dwyer said that characterization is not correct.
“The threat of litigation has not prevented the CRMC from taking appropriate enforcement action,” she said.
“Anecdotally, complaints concerning impediments to the exercise of shoreline privileges and obstructions to lateral access, in particular unauthorized snow fencing, increased significantly following the law’s passage,” Dwyer said, but “have declined more recently as the public and property owners have become more familiar with the law.”
The agency relies on existing enforcement powers to uphold the shoreline access law, Dwyer said. Those powers include acting as a final authority in disputes involving the state’s coastline.
But CRMC, a panel in which nine out of 10 members are politically appointed, has faced grievances that go beyond shoreline access. R.I. Attorney General Peter F. Neronha and organizations such as the nonprofit Save The Bay Inc. have complained that CRMC members have conflicts of interest and a lack of environmental expertise.
Some have called for the unpaid committee positions to be replaced by full-time roles, and for the committee to be folded into the R.I. Department of Environmental Management.
