Posted on January 28, 2025
PROVIDENCE — A Rhode Island Superior Court judge has ruled coastal regulators erred when they approved a controversial marina expansion and dredging project in Jamestown without complying with their own agency’s procedural regulations.
In a decision issued Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Lanphear vacated the decision by the Coastal Resources Management Council to approve the Jamestown Boat Yard’s expansion and dredging project, and ordered the state agency to convene a subcommittee to reconsider the project.
The agency failed on a number of accounts, according to Lanphear. CRMC’s 10-member executive board failed to classify the Jamestown Boat Yard’s application as a contested case, despite substantial objections, and evidence, submitted by project opponents.
Any contested cases, wrote Lanphear, per CRMC’s own internal regulations should have automatically triggered a hearing before one of the agency’s subcommittees. Instead, the agency charged forward, assuming it had full authority to do so.
“CRMC’s failure to comply with its own procedure by failing to declare the matter a contested case … stripped the full council of its jurisdiction to render a decision without a formal hearing before a subcommittee,” Lanphear wrote.
Subcommittees for contested cases are a fairly regular occurrence at CRMC. The agency’s executive board created one back in 2019, to hear a contested case for aquaculture expansion as proposed by Perry Raso, owner of Matunuck Oyster Bar. An agency subcommittee has spent the past few years adjudicating whether to make the Spring Avenue extension right of way in Westerly a state-designated ROW.
Lanphear’s order will require CRMC to create a new subcommittee or assign the case to an existing one. Its executive panel is scheduled to discuss the decision at its Jan. 28 meeting.
“We are disappointed, but are examining the court ruling and considering an appeal,” said Laura Dwyer, CRMC’s public educator and information coordinator.
Jamestown Boat Yard did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The court’s decision is a victory for abutters, the Dumplings Association Inc., a nonprofit homeowners’ association that shares the cove where the boatyard is located. The association appealed the agency’s decision in Superior Court in early 2021, weeks after CRMC issued its written decision on the application.
The Jamestown Boat Yard originally applied for a CRMC permit to dredge and expand the footprint of its marina in June 2019. The project was briefly delayed when then-owner and general manager of the marina, Steven DeVoe, sold the boatyard to Safe Harbors Marinas, an out-of-state company that currently owns and operates 11 marinas in Rhode Island, in September 2021.
The Dumplings Association sent CRMC a letter of objection to the application on June 19, 2019, and requested the agency hold a hearing on the matter. The association took issue with the possible impacts on the surrounding environment and properties, as the association has its own pier used by its members.
In response, the Jamestown Boat Yard reduced the size of its proposed marina expansion twice, and CRMC staff recommended the project for approval in April 2020. In the fall of that year, the full council held hearings on two nights in October on Zoom, where both parties were informed they did not have the ability to cross-examine witnesses.
At the meetings, 27 full-time and seasonal residents of Dumplings Cove testified against the project, including music legend James Taylor, arguing the geology of the harbor was too shallow and narrow to accommodate expansion, and a recent upsurge in boating had made the harbor too dangerous to accommodate additional larger boats. More than 550 full-time and part-time residents had signed a petition on behalf of Friends of Dumplings Cove opposing the project.
Council members at the time were less than sympathetic, stating they didn’t think the expansion would have an impact on congestion in the cove. The council voted, 4-2, to approve the project, which allowed 2,000 cubic yards of dredging and expansions for Jamestown Boat Yard’s marina.
The Dumplings Association, still opposed to the project, appealed the agency’s decision in Superior Court.
At the time, the Jamestown Boat Yard ruling was one of first major decisions by the council that underscored the need for CRMC reform, according to advocates. ecoRI News noted in its reporting of the Zoom hearings that only six of the 10 members of CRMC’s decision-making board were present at the vote to approve in October 2020, with three of the four members at the time being chronically absent from council meetings.
Subsequent decisions have brought the agency’s executive panel under greater scrutiny. Soon after, the agency would strike a backroom deal to expand Champlin’s Marina into Block Island’s Great Salt Pond, which continues to loom large in the minds of CRMC reform advocates.
