PROVIDENCE — Coastal regulators have started the shot clock for the Quidnessett Country Club’s illegally constructed seawall.

On Tuesday night, the Coastal Resources Management Council, by unanimous vote, rejected a petition from the club to refer the seawall case to the CRMC’s hearing officer, and in a separate motion, ordered the club to come up with an acceptable removal plan to agency staff within 30 days.

It’s the first significant action by the CRMC against Quidnessett Country Club over its 550-foot-long seawall in the two years since the club built the wall on the 14th hole of its golf course on the coastline in Narragansett Bay without authorization or permits from state coastal regulators.

Once the club has submitted an acceptable restoration plan for the site, it will have another 90 days to hire a contractor and execute the plan, extending the lifespan of the seawall deep into the summer, and possibly into the winter, far longer than environmental advocates were hoping. CRMC executive council chair Raymond Coia also suggested a stay of action against the club for the 120-day period, shielding the club from further enforcement action for its duration.

“It affords them an opportunity to work with agency staff and come up with a restoration plan,” Coia said Tuesday.

Jennifer Cervenka, an attorney and a former CRMC chair, represented the club as it requested the council refer the case to the agency’s hearing officer, Mark Krieger. Cervenka told the council the club was officially contesting the case, citing a decision issued by a Superior Court judge earlier this year, where CRMC was ruled to have violated its own procedures by not classifying the Jamestown Boat Yard as a contested case, and saying the council was obligated to turn the matter over to the hearing officer or form a special subcommittee.

“Our position is that the council does not have jurisdiction over this decision,” Cervenka said. “It should refer the case to the hearing officer.”

It wasn’t a view shared by CRMC executive director Jeff Willis, or the council’s legal counsel, Mark DeSisto. Willis said the case before the council Tuesday was an enforcement case, not an application, and that Quidnessett Country Club didn’t contest it built the seawall without permits.

“The case before us has never been contested by the country club,” Willis said. “The violations listed are uncontested facts of the enforcement matter.”

It was the second time in five months representatives from Quidnessett Country Club appeared before CRMC over the seawall case. In January the council threw out a bid from the club to change the water type around the club’s North Kingstown property, essentially legalizing the seawall after the club had already skipped out on the application process. Environmental advocates balked at the petition, saying it would erode CRMC’s already thready enforcement powers.

Since then Quidnessett Country Club submitted two additional restoration plans, both of which were unacceptable to agency staff, who expected a full restoration of the coastline to its pre-seawall existence.

The club wanted to move the coastline more seaward than previous CRMC assents allowed, alleging anything else would cut into the club’s 18-hole golf course. The agency had last awarded the club an emergency permit in 2013, following Superstorm Sandy, to repair the bluffs around its golf course.

But according to CRMC’s enforcement report, the final repairs were built much more seaward than the 2013 permit had allowed, with neither Quidnessett Country Club, or its then-contractor DiPrete Engineering, providing the agency with weekly monitoring reports or a final compliance report.

“The 2013 as-built toe [line] was farther seaward than the cross section would allow, and in some areas extended below the mean high water and high tide lines,” wrote CRMC staff in an enforcement report.

Each of the five restoration plans, staff wrote, had the restoration line where the club had built the bluffs in 2013, which was not authorized by the agency.

“Programmatically, however, the toe of the restored feature can extend no farther seaward than that which was authorized by CRMC assent,” wrote staff in the report.

The restoration line is an impasse between the club and CRMC staff.

“I don’t think the matter can be resolved between us and staff because of the line,” Cervenka said.