In 2023, Quidnessett Country Club in North Kingstown, R.I., built an illegal seawall to protect its 14th hole from coastal erosion. The board of Rhode Island’s coastal regulatory agency (CRMC) ordered the club to take the wall down, but Quidnessett has yet to comply. The battle has exposed inefficiencies of CRMC’s board and its vulnerability to political pressure. ecoRI News reporter and Blab Lab Host Rob Smith speaks with Save The Bay director of advocacy Jed Thorpe about his organization’s intervention in the country club dust-up and Save The Bay’s efforts for legislative reform to replace CRMC’s politically appointed board.

Subscribe and listen on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast.

Please share any questions or ideas with hosts Colleen Cronin ([email protected]) or Rob Smith ([email protected]).

This transcript was edited for clarity and length.

Rob Smith 

Welcome to Blab Lab, a monthly podcast from the reporters of ecoRI News, where we unpack the critical environmental issues facing southern New England. I’m reporter Rob Smith, and today in the studio, we’re with the director of advocacy for Save The Bay, Jed Thorp, to talk about what’s going on with a certain seawall in North Kingstown.

Jed, thanks for coming on the show today.

Jed Thorp 

Happy to be here. Thanks, Rob.

Rob Smith 

You and Save The Bay have been at the forefront of what’s happening with the Quidnessett Country Club in North Kingstown. Can you take us to the start? They erected the wall in 2023 and Save The Bay was one of the first organizations who raised the alarm. Can you take us to the beginning of when the sea wall was built?

Jed Thorp

We became aware of it in the summer of 2023, so almost two years ago now, and someone called us and said, “Hey, are you familiar with this wall that’s been built,” and we hadn’t been made aware of previously.

We went down, took a look, and alerted CRMC. They apparently were not aware at that point that the wall had been built. We found out later that the wall was built probably in January, February of 2023, so by the time that we found out about it, the wall had probably already been there for five or six months, and that was, you know, it was Aug. 28 of 2023 that they were issued a cease-and-desist order by CRMC.

That was 690 days ago. So it’s been almost two years now that that wall has been in place. And once we became aware of it, and once CRMC became aware of the wall, there was sort of a series of events that happened after that. They were issued a cease-and-desist order.

Quidnessett very quickly submitted a petition for a rule change to change the water type designation for that stretch of shoreline from what’s called Type 1 waters to Type 2 waters, and as the enforcement process was unfolding at CRMC, Quidnessett was trying to change the rules after the fact to hopefully allow for that wall to stay in place. CRMC entertained that petition.

That process went on for about a year. The council let Quidnessett come in and make their case for why the rule should be changed. The council eventually decided no Type 1 waters is appropriate for this stretch of shoreline.

And then once we got that rule change petition out of the way, then we went back to enforcement restoration, what that should look like. And that’s kind of where we are today. We’re now at this point where Quidnessett has had, you know, six or seven iterations of what a restoration plan should look like.

They couldn’t reach agreement with the staff, so at the last CRMC meeting in June, the council voted to issue an order to restore the site. That order has not been followed. They had 30 days to come back with an acceptable restoration plan. Quidnessett has not done that.

[Editor’s note: This podcast episode was recorded prior to CRMC’s July 22 meeting, at which it extended the club’s restoration plan deadline by another 30 days after it failed to meet the first one.]

Rob Smith 

So when they built this seawall, they didn’t have a permit, right?

Jed Thorp

They didn’t have a permit, and they knew that this was illegal, but they decided to go ahead and do it anyway, presumably because they assumed that it would be easier to ask for forgiveness after the fact. And, you know, somehow, I’m sure they decided, well, if we build this giant wall, you know, let’s sort of, you know, dare the regulators to make us take it down.

And I’m sure they thought maybe they would be successful in their attempt to change the rules after the fact. That didn’t happen. The reason that we know that they knew it was illegal is because they sought permission in 2012 and 2013 to do pretty much the same thing. And they had a whole back and forth.

They were told by CRMC back then that they couldn’t do this. So we know that they knew, but they decided, to heck with the rules, we’re going to go ahead and do it anyway. And you know, this has been a very important issue to us, not just because of the impacts of this one specific seawall and this one specific stretch of shoreline, but there’s really kind of a bigger picture issue at play here, and that is, you know whether or not the rule of law is going to be followed in this state.

You know if we have laws and rules that say, “You shall not build certain things in certain places,” those laws and rules have to matter and those laws and rules have to be enforced. Whether or not CRMC, the council and the staff can get this wall taken down has huge implications for the rest of the shoreline, for other properties, other coastal property owners who might look to do the same thing, because as long as CRMC continues to drag their feet on this, it sends a message to other coastal property owners that you know, maybe you can do the same thing that Quidnessett did, and maybe you can get away with it.

Rob Smith 

Is an issue like this typical for the Coastal Resources Management Council?

Jed Thorp

You know, this specific situation with Quidnessett is somewhat unique, but the issue of the council not being able to follow proper processes, not being able to consistently and predictably and adequately enforce the state’s coastal laws has been a problem with the council for, you know, well over 10, 20 years now, there’s a series of cases. I could list them all: On Block Island with Champlin’s Marina, the Jamestown Boat Yard, numerous other decisions where the council has unfortunately sort of developed a pattern of making bad decisions, making decisions that end up getting overturned by the courts, whether it’s the Superior Court, Supreme Court. The council has become kind of a hot political issue because of their, I don’t know what the right word is, ineptitude. But they haven’t been adequately protecting our coastal resources, and that’s why Save The Bay and others have been calling for reform of CRMC, which we can talk more about.

Rob Smith 

When you say you’re worried about the rule of law, and if you know Party X isn’t following the law and CRMC isn’t enforcing their own law, the system of how CRMC operates doesn’t really work, does it?

Jed Thorp

No, it doesn’t, and that’s because of the structure that we’ve chosen to have in place for how decisions about our coastline are going to be made. In most coastal states, you have an agency like DEM with a director and staff making decisions approved by a director.

When we created our coastal agency, we opted for this kind of weird, wacky system where you have citizens who get appointed to this council who aren’t experts on coastal law, coastal ecology, coastal science, and these volunteers on the council are empowered to, you know, oftentimes trump the recommendations of the staff and do whatever they want to do.

I think the reason we have the system that we have in place now goes back to when the council first got created. And there was a long period of time where the council was a mix of local elected officials, state legislators, reps and senators, and it was really a way for the political powers that be to kind of step in and put their thumb on the scales and influence decisions about what can be built where. That’s why they came up with that structure.

Now, after separation of powers happened in 2004 legislators were basically kicked off the council, and no longer able to be on the council, but we still have the vestiges of that old system, and it’s just not working in all sorts of ways. You know, we have a really, really hard time finding people willing to serve on the council. Right now, we’re supposed to have 10 people. We only have seven. It’s been probably five or six years since all 10 of those seats have been filled.

That’s a problem, because we have problems with getting a quorum for meetings. Meetings are frequently canceled. And it’s not just about the people who are sitting in those seats. It’s the whole structure around them that is just not a good system, and we need to change it.

Rob Smith 

Just to be specific, the council makes the final decisions for the agency, and not every case, but in a lot of the cases that go before them, they are the final decision-makers.

Jed Thorp 

Yeah, absolutely. So they have the final decision-making authority. The CRMC has a director, an executive director, but that director, you know, basically works for the council. It’s ultimately the chair of the council and the other council members who have the ultimate decision-making authority.

And, you know, wacky things happen all the time. I mean, just at the last CRMC meeting about Quidnessett, there was a recommendation from staff to restore the site in a certain way. The council kind of followed that recommendation, but they made the motion in a weird, kind of confusing way.

I could be prepared to accept a removal of the wall, but you stay that for 120 days, having them deliver to CRMC staff an acceptable restoration plan within 30 days, commence to complete the restoration within 90 days from the date the acceptable plan is filed.

Jed Thorp 

That, frankly, left everybody in the room, us, Quidnessett, confused. I think no one was sure what was decided. Everybody walked out of the meeting like, ‘Wait, what just happened?’ And, and this is what happens, you know, somebody gets an idea in their head, a council member makes a motion, and then somebody else says, ‘Well, what if we tweak the motion and do this?’ And it all happens so quickly. And that kind of thing happens all the time.

Rob Smith 

Sometimes they don’t know exactly what kind of motion they’re making.

Jed Thorp 

You don’t really know until the actual official order gets written up. And that hasn’t yet happened for this one. And not only has the official order for the June decision not happened, the decision that was made in January to deny Quidnessett’s request to change the water type designation, that decision also hasn’t been finalized yet, and so we know that Quidnessett will probably appeal that decision from January. They will probably appeal the decision from last month to not send this case to a hearing officer, but they can’t even file their appeal until the decisions have been made official. And that’s just, you know, again, another example of the problems with the process that don’t get fixed with the legislation that the Assembly passed this year.

Rob Smith 

But whereas, compared to say, DEM, the government can be slow, but if it was just an executive director, this would operate much smoother, because they would be under some pretty severe penalties.

Jed Thorp

If they didn’t basically do their job, they’d be under severe penalties, and you’d also have more accountability. Despite the Champlin’s Marina decision, the Jamestown Boat Yard decision, no one’s ever been brought in front of a General Assembly oversight committee to answer for those bad decisions. When you have a director where the buck stops, you know that person can be held accountable, that person can be brought in for oversight hearings to answer for the bad decisions. And that’s never happened with the council, so far as I know.

Nobody really knows who’s really in charge, who’s making the decisions. And then it’s therefore very hard to hold those individuals on the council accountable for their bad decisions.

Rob Smith 

Do you think if all the members were, say, qualified with environmental backgrounds or coastal policy backgrounds, this process would work better?

Jed Thorp 

Possibly, but most likely not, because we’ve had qualified people on the council before. Our current staff attorney, Catherine Hall, she served on the council for a couple of years, and she’d be the first one to tell you that even as a qualified expert on coastal law and policy, it was really, really hard for her, as a volunteer on that council, to contribute her expertise.

Council members, they get a pile of documents on a Friday afternoon, they’re expected to review complex permits and charts and whatnot before the next meeting on Tuesday, and then make informed decisions. And even Catherine, as an expert on coastal policy and law, it is very hard for her to really get her head around these issues in a way where she can make any sort of informed recommendation or decision three days later.

And that’s probably even harder for people who don’t have her level of expertise and background. So even if you find people who are quote, unquote, qualified, who maybe have certain expertise, the process is sort of set up in such a way where I don’t think that expertise can really be that helpful, frankly.

Rob Smith 

And just to point out that they’re all volunteers, this isn’t their full-time job, like with an executive director. They aren’t getting paid for reviewing all these documents in their off time, or even for these council meetings that they have to go to.

Jed Thorp 

They are volunteers, and I think that’s why it’s been so hard to get people to be willing to serve on the council, because it’s a huge ask. It’s a lot of work, and the current requirements are a little bit tricky, because you have to have X number of people from small communities, you have to have X number of council members from larger communities.

And the legislation that the General Assembly passed last month is going to change the composition from 10 members down to seven members. Those seven members are going to be required to have environmental expertise. One of them has to be a coastal biologist, one of them has to be an engineer. And they’re going to find it to be just as hard to find people who wear those hats to be willing to serve.

So I don’t think they’re going to have any easier time filling these vacancies under the new framework than they do right now. Under the current framework, I think it’s still going to be hard to find people to serve. Right now the governor is supposed to appoint 10 members, and he hasn’t done that, despite clear direction from NOAA that those seats have to be filled. We put one more person on the council this year, but we had a six-month legislative session where the governor could have put forward, and, frankly, should have put forward three more names, and he just chose not to do so. Maybe they couldn’t find people who are willing to serve.

But there’s no guarantee that under the new framework, when we have seven members that are going to be on the council, there’s nothing to say that the governor can’t drag his feet yet again. And maybe you’ll have four members on the council, maybe you’ll have five. You might still have a couple of vacancies. Those same issues that we have now with 10 people are probably still going to be there when we have a council of seven people.

Rob Smith 

This new reform that passed last month, this wasn’t your preferred bill, right? You guys had a, I don’t want to really call it an omnibus bill, but there was a big bill in the General Assembly to make CRMC closer in line with agencies like DEM.

Jed Thorp

The legislation that we supported was introduced by the attorney general, sponsored by Sen. Mark McKinney, Rep. Terri Cortvriend. We, along with the [Rhode Island] Saltwater Anglers, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, and a whole bunch of other organizations, were strongly supporting that legislation, which would have eliminated the volunteer council altogether. It would have set up a framework similar to DEM, where you have decisions made by a director with recommendations from staff.

It would have retained a volunteer council to advise the department on programs and policies, but not be making day to day decisions. It would have also required the hiring of a staff attorney, which the legislation that ended up passing did not address right now, and this is a huge problem for how things work in the meetings. The appointed council hires an outside attorney to advise the council, but the staff has no staff attorney, so in contested cases and hearings, there’s not an attorney there advocating on behalf of staff, and that problem was not fixed in the legislation that passed.

So we and others were strongly supporting and we will continue to support legislation to eliminate the volunteer council, because I think it’s only a matter of time, I think before the Assembly is going to choose to do that. Because I think we’re going to continue to have problems with how decisions get made. We’re going to continue to have problems getting members to serve, getting quorums for meetings, and I think sooner or later, the Assembly is going to have to move to a better framework, like what other states have.

Rob Smith 

Was there any public opposition to the bill you guys were putting forward this year?

Jed Thorp 

The only entity that testified in support of the bill that passed, and not really, they didn’t necessarily testify in opposition to our bill, but the only entity that testified in favor of the bill was the Rhode Island Builders Association.

And I think it is somewhat telling that the legislation that was supported by all the environmental groups and all the user groups didn’t pass, and the legislation that did pass was the one that was only supported by the builders.

And I think, frankly, the builders and developer interests like the system that’s in place now, because, again, it keeps the door open for political influence on decisions that get made by the council and we should not have that, that is not a good reason or a good justification to keep a broken a broken system in place. The council either agrees with the recommendations of staff, and if they do that, then the council is really not needed, or the council is there to overturn the decisions of the staff, and that’s also not a good reason to keep the council.

So we will continue to push for and advocate for legislation next year or the year after that to eventually get rid of the council, because I think it’s a matter of time before that has to happen.

Rob Smith

Jed, thanks for coming on the show today.

Jed Thorp

Thanks for having me, Rob. Appreciate it.

Rob Smith 

Thanks also to our listeners for following along. If you have ideas for the podcast or topics you’d like us to discuss, please email us at [email protected]. We want to thank Vanessa Carlton for letting us use her song, Willows, for a theme song, which you hear at the beginning and end of every episode. The Blab Lab was recorded at LitArts RI Providence. This episode was edited and mixed by Colleen Cronin and Jo Detz and Avery Brookins. For more Rhode Island environmental news, you can visit us at ecori.org.