PROVIDENCE — Three and a half months after state regulators voted to authorize their attorneys to take further enforcement action, no lawsuit has been filed against Quidnessett Country Club for its illegally erected seawall.

The Coastal Resources Management Council, a 10-member, politically appointed board whose members have final say in coastal development decisions in Rhode Island, took that vote on Sept. 23, 2025. It had been a long time coming for environmental groups and CRMC watchdogs, who contended the agency had been too lenient and took too long to engage in enforcement action against the North Kingstown club.

But to date the agency’s attorneys haven’t filed a lawsuit in Superior Court, and a spokesperson for CRMC didn’t immediately answer an inquiry from ecoRI News whether the agency was still in talks with the club over an acceptable restoration plan.

Environmental groups and council critics are getting impatient. The Providence-based nonprofit Save The Bay, which has long been critical of decision-making by CRMC’s appointed board, sent a letter to CRMC chair Raymond Coia last month expressing concerns over the agency’s lack of action.

“The perpetuation of Quidnessett Country Club’s unresolved violation on our Bay shoreline not only disincentivizes environmental compliance but also gives the appearance of unequal application of the law,” wrote Topher Hamblett, executive director of Save The Bay.

For Save The Bay and other environmental groups, the Quidnessett Country Club saga remains a prime example of the CRMC leadership council’s dysfunction, and the need for its reform.

Quidnessett Country Club, meanwhile, has always maintained it did what it needed to do to protect its golf course from coastal erosion when, in 2023, the club built the 550-foot-long seawall on the 14th hole of its golf course on the coastline in Narragansett Bay without permits. CRMC staff were first tipped off to the seawall that summer, and they issued a cease-and-desist order to the club on Aug. 28, 2023.

The issue has since remained in a quagmire of agency processes and administrative procedure. CRMC spent much of 2024 considering a motion from Quidnessett Country Club (QCC) to change the water-type designation in front of the club to one that allowed shoreline hardening measures like seawalls.

The agency heard months of evidence and public comment at hearings before rejecting the motion entirely in early 2025. Agency staff spent the rest of the 2025 trying to reach an acceptable compromise restoration plan, before CRMC’s executive board put a strict 90-day deadline on the club last June.

A staff report dated Sept. 16, 2025, shows agency staff met with the club three times during the summer, with club staff submitting two additional restoration plans that CRMC found unacceptable.

The two parties remained split on where to put the toeline for the shore, and the club’s insistence on using a TrapBag system, which uses polypropylene fabric to stabilize the shoreline. Synthetic materials for shore stabilization are against the agency’s regulations.

“Staff conclude that not only did the QCC deliberately, willfully, and knowingly violate CRMC regulations by installing an unauthorized revetment of dumped stone over 600 feet in length, but also does not intend to comply with the Council’s Order to Restore,” wrote CRMC staff in their enforcement report to the council.

Two days before agency staff rejected the latest restoration plan, Quidnessett Country Club filed its own lawsuit against CRMC in Superior Court, asking for a judge to rule on a regulatory change that would allow the seawall to remain in place.

The September deadline came and went, and the council voted for their attorneys, Anthony DeSisto Law Associates LLC, to take further enforcement action, leading to the current delay.