CRMC Council approves maintenance of Mary Carpenter's wall in Matunuck

June 20, 2016, NARRAGANSETT – In a demonstration of its ability to be flexible when extraordinary circumstances require it, the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council has approved maintenance repairs to a stone wall formerly owned by Mary Carpenter, now owned by the town.

The Council, by a 6 to 2 vote on June 14, 2016, approved the joint maintenance application from the Town of South Kingstown and Ocean Mist owner Kevin Finnegan to repair and reconstruct the Mary Carpenter’s revetment to the west of the popular ocean side bar and restaurant.

The first iteration of a joint application between the two parties was received by the CRMC on November 3, 2015, and accepted on November 17, 2015. CRMC staff reviewed the application, and the biologist, engineer and geologist completed their reports on April 13, 2016. The application was noticed for 30 days as required, and there were also several plan revisions requiring amended staff reports, and two public hearings before the Council.

More than 200 people filled the Corless Auditorium at the University of Rhode Island Bay Campus, most of them supporters of the application to demolish the existing dumped riprap seawall and reconstruct it as a layered shoreline protection facility, with the toe of the existing wall in the same location and the crest extending further landward.

The CRMC professional staff, in their report, stated that under the plans submitted, the project met the constraints of a maintenance under the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Program (the CRMC’s Red Book), but proposed stipulations to ensure the construction stays within the confines of a maintenance.

• Replacement shall be constructed of 3-5 ton (or larger) armor riprap;
• The stone shall be placed (not dumped) on a 1.5 to 1 or 1:1 slope;
• The proposed east end of the wall shall have a 34-foot return;
• The base stone elevation of both armor riprap and concrete blocks shall be equal to or lower (2’ +/-) than mean low water level; and
• An approximate 2-foot layer of crushed filter stone material and/or geotechnical filter fabric shall be used behind the wall

Under the approved plans, permanent public access will be created along the top of the wall through a public shoreline access easement, of which the Council will be a party. The easement will include lateral access from the road and have public access signage prominently posted. The easement will be signed and in place prior to the issuance of the assent. In addition, an independent third party will be selected by the Council and paid for by the applicants to ensure that the additional material brought on-site does not exceed the authorized amount, in addition to ensuring that the approved plans are not exceeded.

The latest vote from the Council will now clear the way for the remaining property owners in the experimental erosion control area to come forward with a unified plan to implement measures along their properties, including Mr. Finnegan, with the goal to also resolve remaining enforcement there.

Save The Bay submitted testimony and comments, also on behalf of the Rhode Island Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation and Conservation Law Foundation, voicing their concern over the merits of the maintenance application, as well as questioning the need for it.

“I’m going to vote to approve this wall, but this has been a difficult process, and while I’m anxious, too, to save the Ocean Mist, there have been some valid concerns raised,” CRMC Chair Anne Maxwell Livingston said at the meeting. “It’s taken a while, but it’s needed a while, to come up with the best solution.”

The Mary Carpenter wall maintenance action is a small step in an ongoing CRMC effort to address erosion and storm impacts to the Matunuck area, one of the most highly erosive sections of the Rhode Island coastline.

Since discussions and work sessions began in 2011, the CRMC has made a number of strides to address – for both the short- and long-term – erosion in the Matunuck area of South Kingstown. First, it embarked on development of the Shoreline Change (Beach) Special Area Management Plan (SAMP), which aims to address coastal erosion, the effects of storm events and sea level rise on Rhode Island’s coastal areas. It agreed to hold in abeyance a number of enforcement actions occurring in the Matunuck area until a more permanent solution was devised. It developed and adopted (effective in fall of 2013) an Experimental Coastal Erosion Control program, added to the Salt Pond SAMP, to provide property owners in selected areas of both Matunuck and Westerly to implement experimental erosion control measures on their coastal properties. The CRMC also approved the Town of South Kingstown’s plans to construct a sheet-pile wall to the west of the Ocean Mist, in order to try to protect that section of Matunuck Beach Road and the valuable infrastructure beneath it.

And while some in the community are heralding the Council’s decision as one that will protect the road and the community from the forces of erosion and storms, the CRMC does not want to perpetuate that false impression. While the reconstructed revetment might prevent flooding during minor storm events, it will not shield the road or community behind it during major storm events, and will eventually need to be maintained.

The CRMC’s official response is as follows:

The CRMC was very flexible in this process, and the permitting time for this maintenance assent from Mr. Finnegan and the Town was actually expeditious – approximately 7 months total. Overall, this process of working with the people of Matunuck has been a long one because our regulations are clear, and based on science, so accepting something that is in principle contradictory to those regulations is going to take time and effort and many discussions. Mr. Finnegan, after meeting with the CRMC professional staff upwards of 10 times for plans he had, had been advised by the CRMC staff as to how to proceed under our regulations, and then had submitted time and again something that was not acceptable. This last time was the first time he’d submitted something in line with our regulations (resulting in the jointly filed maintenance application). Also, the town and Mr. Finnegan had been at-odds for some time, so the town had gone ahead with their application to the CRMC for the sheet pile wall, which Mr. Finnegan contested and took to court. During this time, we changed our regulations to create experimental erosion control measures for that section of the Matunuck shoreline, but no formal applications came in. At this point, we have preliminary determinations from those property owners, and are ready to proceed with resolving the outstanding enforcement there and move ahead, hopefully, with a unified application for experimental erosion control. While some might view this timeline as a long one, it has constantly been moving toward its goal.