PROVIDENCE — Ten days after the Quidnessett Country Club missed a key deadline, coastal regulators voted Tuesday to give the club an extra 30 days to submit a restoration plan.

For the past two years, staff from the Coastal Resources Management Council have been working to bring the club into compliance with state regulations. Early in 2023, the club erected a 550-foot-long seawall near the 14^th hole of the golf course on Narragansett Bay in North Kingstown without any approval or permits from CRMC or the Army Corps of Engineers.

The July 22 vote gave Quidnessett Country Club an additional 30 days to propose and submit a restoration plan to agency staff. On June 10, CRMC’s politically appointed executive council had voted to give the club a 120-stay against removal of the seawall and strict deadlines to submit and execute an acceptable plan for restoring the coastline to its original state.

“It is still the club’s intention to come to an agreement with agency staff on an acceptable restoration plan,” said attorney Jennifer Cervenka, a former CRMC chair who represented Quidnessett Country Club during Tuesday’s proceedings.

Cervenka said the club wished to pursue a “more enhanced sandbag system” manufactured by the Fort Myers, Fla.-based company TrapBag, but that decision came late within the first 30-day deadline window during which the club had time to draw up an official plan.

“At this point in time, we have no plan in hand whatsoever,” CRMC executive director Jeff Willis said. “What we have now is basically a brochure for TrapBag.”

Willis said the agency’s technical staff had met with Quidnessett Country Club officials twice after the June 10 meeting to facilitate a restoration plan. According to Willis, the first meeting was productive, and lasted more than two hours. At the end of the meeting, CRMC staff were considering a concession to the club to relax its slope requirements and allow steeper grading to protect the club’s 14^th hole, which is at risk from erosion, according to the club.

The second meeting, Willis said, was much shorter and less productive. He told council members the club told agency staff at the second meeting they wished to pursue a TrapBag system instead.

But TrapBag’s synthetic system of enhanced sandbags may run into regulatory problems as well. The outer, environment-facing layer of the system is made of plastic, and doesn’t biodegrade, which the CRMC historically hasn’t allowed in erosion-control projects. The agency typically favors non-structural materials such as wood or stone in the area in the bay where the club’s golf course is located.

“The system’s trappings are made from geosynthetic textiles,” said Rich Lucia, supervising engineer at CRMC. “They are not biodegradable, and since they are not biodegradable the agency considers them structural materials.”

Cervenka disagreed, arguing that the agency’s regulations didn’t specify polypropylene plastic as a structural material, and that in a prior 2013 assent for coastal work obtained by Quidnessett Country Club, the club was allowed to use a hybrid of structural and non-structural materials to repair the shoreline.

“The club has a precedent,” Cervenka said. “Hybrid structural and non-structural materials were used by the club in its 2013 assent from the agency.”

Despite the extension of the deadline to submit a restoration plan, the club is still operating under the original 120-day stay before CRMC moves to take further action against the illegal seawall. While the council voted Tuesday to award the club an extension, not all of the council members were pleased with the results of the club’s efforts.

“Why can’t the wall be removed while restoration talks take place?” asked council member Kevin Flynn, who also serves as vice chair of the Warwick Planning Board. “This is a discussion on a new application in the area, but we have a wall that needs to be removed first before any proposal for the shoreline can be put in its place.”

Stephen Izzi, a council member and Cranston attorney, disagreed with Flynn on removing the wall. “Not to speak for the club,” said Izzi, “but I think they don’t want to take down the wall and have nothing to replace it, and risk damage to the 14^th hole.”

While Flynn ultimately voted to approve the extension of the restoration plan deadline, his sentiment is shared by the council’s critics and environmental groups.

Chris Dodge, Narragansett baykeeper for the environmental nonprofit Save The Bay, told ecoRI News his organization had been waiting for the agency to take action and enforce its own regulations.

“We are further disappointed with the lack of progress here tonight,” Dodge said after the council meeting. “It’s been 694 days since CRMC issued the initial cease-and-desist order and no real action has been taken, and there is no agreement in place still to take the seawall down.

“Why are we making concessions for an entity like this? Would we do this for any other private entity or homeowner who asked?”

For Save The Bay, the situation with the Quidnessett Country Club has spotlighted why CRMC is in desperate need of reform. Despite the nonprofit’s best efforts, legislation to overhaul the agency and make it into a more traditional state department with an executive director making final decisions, not unlike the Department of Environmental Management, failed to pass muster again this year.

Lawmakers instead chose legislation that adjusted the council’s requirements through the backdoor. Now, instead of nine politically appointed members, and one DEM designee, starting next year (pending federal approval), the council will have six appointed members and one DEM designee, lowering its quorum requirements from six to four members.

Coincidentally, seven is also the current number of members serving on CRMC’s executive council.

The Quidnessett Country Club is also taking legal action, filing an administrative appeal in Rhode Island Superior Court over CRMC’s June 10 decision, arguing the council ignored its own policies and procedures when it declined to send the club’s case before the agency’s hearing officer or a subcommittee for investigation.

“The enforcement decision contravenes state law In denying plaintiff its right to a hearing before an administrative hearing officer in a contested enforcement proceeding, and where administrative penalties have been assessed,” Cervenka wrote in the club’s legal complaint. “The enforcement decision unlawfully denied plaintiff its right to present evidence or rebut CRMC staff testimony on contested enforcement issues.”

In that case, at least, Quidnessett Country Club and Save The Bay are on the same page about something.

“It should have gone before CRMC’s hearing officer,” Dodge said. “The council erred when it refused to send it to the officer or create a subcommittee.”