This fall the Coastal Resource Management Council’s executive board will make a decision that will reveal if Rhode Island is a democratic state or just a playground for the rich and powerful.

Will the Quidnessett Country Club have to remove the 550-foot-long seawall it had illegally built a year ago or does a politically appointed, unpaid citizen board whose members adjudicate consequential coastal development despite having little to no experience in such matters allow the stone revetment to remain?

History is on the side of the latter.

CRMC staff issued a notice of violation to the North Kingstown country club last summer. In response, the North Quidnessett Road business hired Providence-based attorney Jennifer Cervenka, a former CRMC board chair from 2017-2021, to represent its interests.

(The Army Corps of Engineers issued its own notice of violation over the country club’s failure to get federal permits for the illegally built riprap.)

Cervenka filed a petition asking CRMC to change the classification of waters, where her client illegally built a seawall, from Type 1 conservation waters to Type 2 low-intensity waters, a classification with fewer restrictions and one that allows new revetments to be built.

Apparently, if Cervenka was still on the CRMC board she would find it acceptable to rewrite a law after it is broken. Not surprising, since Rhode Island bends over backwards for special interests, even if those look-the-other-way decisions mean the natural world is degraded, human health is diminished, public concern is ignored, or coastal erosion is exacerbated.

Meanwhile, those of us who don’t know a guy are required (expected?) to follow the law.

The CRMC board and the governors who nominate its members and the senators who confirm them have long been playing a game of favorites. Questionable appointees, head-scratching decisions, and secret negotiations have plagued the agency since it was created 53 years ago.

Many board appointments have been chosen as political favors — how else do you explain a dental hygienist, a liquor store owner, the CEO of a chain of physical therapy offices, and a solar developer being named to a board in charge of coastal development/protection? The agency’s governing body has rightfully earned a reputation for favoring developers over environmental protections and public access.

The agency’s structure needs to be reorganized, but until then can we at least play by the rules? (Although I suspect the call for CRMC reform wouldn’t be quite as loud if special interests weren’t regularly being served.)

The Quidnessett Country Club (QCC) has a permit history for other development on its 185-acre property, so it can’t plead ignorance for not asking for permission to build along an eroding shoreline. In fact, in 2012, the private club submitted an application to build a smaller seawall, which was rejected because CRMC said it would accelerate coastal erosion in the area.

“Without the flexibility afforded for shoreline protection in areas abutting Type 2 Waters, the QCC will certainly lose a critical piece of its 18-hole golf course, and result in devastating losses to both its business and members, as well as thousands of individuals, businesses, and associations across the State that use QCC for professional golf tournaments, charity events, fundraisers, weddings, proms, and countless other engagements,” Cervenka wrote in her April 12 petition.

Give me a break. The Ocean State’s economy, fun factor, and philanthropy will not be lost at sea if the golf course’s par-5, 526-yard 14th hole needs to be redesigned or moved.

During the public comment period for this obnoxious appeal, QCC submitted a few hundred letters of seawall support, many of them overwhelmingly in the form of a boilerplate letter.

The form letter praised the club’s 18-hole golf course, as if it were Women & Infants Hospital. Think of the child who might one day eagle the 14th hole, or the prom attendees who might lose their buzz if the golf course outside the club’s function hall features a reshaped fairway.

The copied-and-pasted letters noted the importance the protection the seawall affords the golf course from coastal erosion. It ignores how the hardened shoreline would impact other local businesses and homes along the North Kingstown coast.

During a public hearing last month, a supporter of law-breaking said, “I believe what they’re trying to do is a good thing for members and employees of the club.”

The waters along the country club’s shoreline weren’t classified as Type 1 in a scheme to flood the 14th hole. The classification signifies the protection of “areas of natural habitat or scenic value of unique or unusual significance, or areas that have been deemed unsuitable for structures due to their exposure to severe wave action, flooding, and erosion.”

The Quidnessett Country Club doesn’t exist in isolation, although the business’s form letters certainly believe so.

“Due to aggressive coastal erosion along its signature 14th hole, the Club is threatened with irreversible damage to both its course and business,” read the form letters. “An 18-hole golf course is necessary to the Club’s operations, it’s ability to retain and attract new members and its continued hosting of professional tournaments.”

They make it sound like 550 feet of seawall is all that stands in the way of the entire golf course going under. If that really is the case, get out now.

If the CRMC board looks the other way, that may mean it’s time to get out of the Biggest Little Banana Republic.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.