PROVIDENCE — It’s been nearly five years since coastal regulators opened proceedings to award Westerly’s Spring Avenue Extension a possible state designation, and a final resolution to the case has never seemed so far away.

The last time the Coastal Resources Management Council’s right of way (ROW) subcommittee held a hearing on Spring Avenue was Nov. 4, and three months later all the agency has to show for it is a canceled meeting originally scheduled for the second week of January.

The lack of action this winter has brought new criticism of CRMC and its processes. In a letter sent to CRMC’s chair, Raymond Coia, the Providence-based nonprofit Save The Bay expressed concerns about the agency’s “persistent and inexcusable delay.”

“Opponents to this ROW have used the lack of an efficient scheduling process to their advantage and will likely continue to do so,” according to the letter. “This is a distinct disadvantage to the interests of the public and an abrogation of CRMC’s obligation to designate public ROWs to Rhode Island’s public trust beaches and tidal areas.”

There’s a danger of evidence deteriorating, Save The Bay said in its letter. Written records, witness testimony, physical markers, and historical usage all change over time, and many cases in Rhode Island have evidence dating back decades and, in some cases, centuries.

Topher Hamblett, executive director of Save The Bay, said the letter was sent out of frustration due to the January evidence hearing being abruptly canceled.

“The last hearing was in early November, and it was really out of frustration for this dragging process,” Hamblett said in a phone interview with ecoRI News on Friday. “There’s very little accountability for the council and its subcommittees running processes that are efficient and feel fair to the public.”

Hamblett said the “tortoise-like” pace of the subcommittee’s process was symptomatic of a large problem with the council. CRMC’s executive board and its subcommittees function like public bodies such as town councils, and they meet on a fixed schedule, one or twice a month. Meetings scheduled outside the routine are traditionally rare.

The Spring Avenue Extension ROW case has a long list of witnesses to get through as well. The witness lists submitted by attorneys on each side of the case totals around 40, and at the November meeting of the subcommittee it hadn’t fully completed the testimony of the first witness. The current pace means it will take years of hearings before the subcommittee finishes hearing from witnesses.

It also has knock-on effects on cases waiting in CRMC’s queue, said Hamblett. After the subcommittee concludes the Spring Avenue Extension ROW, it will start considering the case of a ROW out of Buttonwoods in Warwick.

“When a case like Spring Avenue devours so much of the committee’s time, other ROW applications can only suffer,” Hamblett said. “It’s a horribly inefficient process.”

Hamblett said he hadn’t received a response from Coia to his letter as of Friday. In an emailed statement to ecoRI News, Laura Dwyer said the agency was “working tirelessly” to make the Spring Avenue Extension ROW hearings work for all parties involved.

“It has taken time, however, to juggle the calendars of our volunteer CRMC Subcommittee members, proponents’ and opponents’ attorneys, and find non-conflicting dates with available meeting spaces,” Dwyer wrote.

The agency canceled the Jan. 6 meeting because “We mistakenly incorrectly posted the January 6, 2026, ROW hearing with the Secretary of State and therefore had to cancel it,” Dwyer told ecoRI News. “Staff has continued working to find available dates.”

Save The Bay’s letter made four recommendations to CRMC on how to speed up the Spring Avenue Extension case. The nonprofit suggested scheduled hearings months at a time, aiming for one to two hearings per week; stop scheduling meetings by consensus; if a lawyer or witness can’t make a scheduled hearing, they should have to submit a request for an extension in court; and the agency should allow written statements to serve as direct testimony.

Shoreline access is growing as a political issue in Rhode Island. In 2023, the General Assembly passed a law clarifying the public’s rights for lateral shoreline access, but much of the current battle has moved toward ROWs, also known as perpendicular access.

As an agency, CRMC self-imposed a goal of designating one ROW for every mile of shoreline Rhode Island; to meet that internal goal the agency would have to approve a state designation for at least 400 ROWs.

What does a state designation get you? It’s a powerful tool for keeping ROWs open to the public. The state can use its full legal authority and resources to ensure private property owners or others aren’t obstructing public access.

To date, CRMC has given 235 ROWs a state designation, most recently the Everett Avenue ROW in Westerly last year. The agency over the years has been slow to approve new ROWs.

Annual CRMC reports over the past 25 years show the agency has only approved 19 new ROWs with a state designation, a pace that would put it far behind on its goal of one ROW for every mile of coastline.

Just under a third of those designations have occurred in the past five years. In addition to last year’s Everett Avenue ROW, CRMC designated five ROWs in Portsmouth back in 2022, before it took up the Spring Avenue Extension in earnest.

Meanwhile, there could be changes coming to CRMC that could impact the Spring Avenue Extension. Last year the General Assembly passed legislation slimming down CRMC’s politically appointed executive board from 10 members to seven. The new law also requires the governor to appoint a new board by March 1 of this year.

New appointees will be required to have specific expertise in coastal environments, planning or engineering, but with less than two weeks left until the new deadline Gov. Dan McKee’s office hasn’t announced any new appointments for the board.

A spokesperson for McKee didn’t respond to inquiries from ecoRI News on the status of the mandated appointments.