Massachusetts
Mass. residents are clamoring for more beach access. The state says it’s listening.
The state’s recreational and environmental agency says it has a new top objective: Expand access to coastal and inland beaches.
It comes in the wake of a recently released government survey that shows Massachusetts residents are clamoring for more water access.
“We heard from people loud and clear that having that connection to water is so important,” Stephanie Cooper, undersecretary of environment with the Executive Office of Energy & Environmental Affairs, told GBH News earlier this month. “With climate change where we’re having hotter temperatures, it becomes that much more important to have a place to cool off.”
Massachusetts’ new statewide outdoor recreation plan, released in March, included a survey of more than 5,000 residents and a roadmap for the commonwealth’s priorities. Beaches topped the list of outdoor recreational areas residents want more of across most racial groups, beating out nature preserves and hiking trails.
But the state’s objective could be difficult, given that a small fraction of Massachusetts’ coastline is currently accessible to the public and municipalities often limit access for those who don’t live in shore communities.
Cooper and some lawmakers are not yet specifying a plan to hit their new objective. And any expansions could be costly.
Cooper pointed to about $6 million annually in federal grants for land and water conservation acquisitions, money that can also be distributed to local communities for expanding recreational properties. The state’s new recreation plan is required by the U.S. National Park Service every five years for Massachusetts to be eligible for federal conservation funding.
That funding climbed significantly since 2021 under the Biden administration, up more than 73% over the previous three years’ average annual funding. There could be more state money coming, too, from a new environmental bond bill. And Cooper says she hoping for new federal grants and opportunities to team up with land trust nonprofits in the next year to acquire more coastal properties.
But restrictive laws have long made Massachusetts beaches some of the country’s most inaccessible. Geordie Vining, for one, welcomes the state’s new priority: he was the director of coastal access planning for the state between 1994 and 2000.
He’s still skeptical about the commonwealth making any real headway.
“Public coastal access is really important,” said Vining, now a planner for the coastal city of Newburyport. But, he said, “Challenges basically remain the same: The incredibly high cost of coastal property — eye-popping costs — and resistance from private property owners who own that expensive coastal property.”
The last time the state conducted an inventory of coastal access was more than 30 years ago. That report estimated that just 12% of the state’s roughly 1,400-mile coastline is open to all members of the public.
That low figure is due to a centuries-old law that dictates homeowners own the beach down to the low-tide line, along with a longstanding system of coastal towns barring or limiting nonresidents through strict parking regulations and fines. Racist housing practices also played a role as historic deeds in some beach communities expressly banned selling homes to anyone but white Christians.
The GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting covered those issues in a 2022 series, “Barriers at the Beach.”
The state currently owns and manages 15 saltwater ocean beaches and 31 fresh water inland beaches, according to the recreational study. Massachusetts also hosts several federally owned coastal properties, including The Cape Cod National Seashore and Parker River National Wildlife Refuge on the North Shore.
Adding to those holdings would require a lot of spending, given the value of waterfront real estate.
That would be on top of millions of dollars the state now spends every year on coastal resilience to protect existing sandy beaches at risk of disappearing under high tides, money that goes toward seawalls or re-nourishing the sand. Severe storm surges and erosion caused by climate change, Vining and Cooper agreed, have upended coastal policies and budgets.
And even public access doesn’t necessarily mean access for all. Some of the state’s coastal resiliency funding goes to coastal towns that also sharply restrict nonresidents access or charge high fees for parking.
Courtesy of the town of Marshfield’s Planning Department
Marshfield, for example, received $1.2 million from the state last fall to help renourish critically eroded shoreline along Bay Avenue Beach but allots a small number of parking spaces for nonresidents at its beaches.
Scituate won a nearly $2 million grant last fall to replenish 26,000 cubic yards of sand and gravel at North Scituate Beach. But the coastal town sells just a few hundred beach stickers to nonresidents for $350 each — passes that are not valid on weekends or on holidays.
In Ipswich, Select Board members two weeks ago tightened beach access in their North Shore coastal town, voting to ban nonresidents from beach parking through the summer season and increase parking fines around that beach from $30 to $50.
“This will prevent non-residents from parking in the neighborhoods and walking down to beach,” Ipswich Police Chief Paul Nikas wrote in an April memo to the Select Board.
But such restrictions are frustrating for lawmakers who want to see beaches more accessible to all of the commonwealth’s residents.
“Massachusetts has the most restrictive ocean-access laws in the country,” said state Rep. Dylan Fernandes, a Woods Hole Democrat, who has filed several bills to reform beach ownership statutes and local regulations that exclude nonresidents.
He has pushed back against these local practices, proposing legislation to tie public spending on coastal projects to fully open beaches. His bill would ban communities that get public funds for their beaches from charging excessive parking fees or allowing access only to residents or renters in that community.
At a hearing on the bill last fall, beachgoers shared their frustration with legislators about their feelings of injustice at the expense of getting onto coastal beaches in Massachusetts. Alex Vai of Sudbury, who volunteers with the beach access nonprofit Surfrider, was among them.
“Parking, congestion, crowding — all of these are issues that arise because people are being funneled into the 12% of Massachusetts coastline that is public,” he said.
What residents get out of beach access is “completely undervalued,” said Setha Low, a psychology and anthropology professor at the City University of New York who is editing a new book about environmental injustice at beaches.
“I don’t think that there is any public space that brings as much joy and pleasure and a sense of belonging as beaches,” said Low. “We need to be looking to our states and our cities and the federal government to try to get us more beach access.”
While officials duke it out over access, some organizations on the ground are doing what they can to give residents the benefits beaches can provide.
One grassroots project is helping dozens of neurodivergent and medically fragile youth in the state access two state-owned beaches on the weekends. The state awarded a $10,000 grant to the project run by a Rhode Island–based nonprofit called Gnome Surf.
Christopher Burrell
GBH News
Another project, Kayak and Sail Lynn, teaches local high schoolers to build boats and paddle kayaks. Run by a teacher at Lynn English High School, the program connects teenagers with a local coastline many have hardly touched.
Cole Kiiza, a 17-year-old junior at the high school, said that before joining this club last year, he rarely went to the beach.
“I’ve been to the beach maybe twice, but we had to drive all the way to Rockport and Gloucester, and it’s really far away,” he said. “After this, I got on the water a lot. We had multiple kayak expeditions. I got to take a dip in the water after we landed on Point of Pines. Peaceful, serene. It was honestly so beautiful.”
Federal data shows that driving under the influence in Massachusetts is a growing problem.
The number of drivers under the influence of alcohol, drugs or medication at the time of a fatal crash “increased steadily” from 2020 to 2023 in the Bay State, according to AAA Northeast, citing the latest available data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Over the four years, the Commonwealth recorded 141 total such incidents, increasing from 17 in 2020 to 55 in 2023, according to data in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System.
Mary Kate DePamphilis, program director for the Massachusetts chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, says that one death is too many because of impaired driving, and fatality numbers “don’t consider the many others who have been injured; some severely.”
Dozens of community members gathered in Franklin on Thursday for a vigil in memory of the state’s most recent victims of impaired driving: 5-year-old girl Krisha Patel and her 38-year-old mother, Minaben Patel.
Suspect James Blanchard, 21, of Franklin, is accused of drinking Tito’s Vodka straight out of a 1.75-liter bottle behind the wheel when he plowed a pickup truck head-on into a sedan driven by Atulkumar Patel, Krisha’s father and Minaben’s husband, the evening of May 24.
“MADD is heartbroken over the Memorial Day crash that happened in Franklin,” DePamphilis told the Herald. “An innocent child and her mother are no longer with us because of someone’s careless decision to drink and drive.
“Impaired driving crashes are 100% preventable,” she added, “which makes this even more tragic.”
Locally, DePamphilis said her organization is working “every day to prevent these senseless deaths” in partnership with law enforcement, by providing education in schools for children and parents, while “working on strengthening impaired driving legislation.”
Mothers Against Drunk Driving is also “working diligently” to advocate for the federal HALT Act, legislation that would mandate impaired driving prevention technology in all new cars, DePamphilis said.
Reducing the number of impaired driving incidents in the Bay State is also the mission of traffic safety grants awarded through the state Office of Grants and Research. This fiscal year, the program issued more than $12 million in federal funding to nonprofits, municipal police and state agencies to bolster safety for all users of the road.
Data provided to the Herald shows that the Massachusetts State Police conducted 26 sobriety checkpoints and 40 saturation patrols between December 2023 and September 2024, totaling 7,187 hours of enforcement activity and issuing over 11,000 citations and written warnings to drivers.
“Every day, we serve victims of impaired driving, free of charge,” DePamphilis said of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. “We are there for families in their darkest days to help navigate through grief and the criminal justice system, eventually getting to a place in their healing journey where they can cope. I urge anyone who has been a victim of impaired driving to reach out to 1-800-MADD-HELP.”
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The discovery of Adriana Suazo’s body in a wooded area in Milton, Massachusetts has intensified growing concerns across New England about the number of unexplained deaths in the region in recent months.
Suazo, a 21-year-old Boston resident, was found by a passerby around 11:45 a.m. on Sunday, June 1, in Milton, Mass, which is approximately 8 miles south from the capitol city, according to a press release from the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office.
The department said that there were no obvious signs of trauma, and the cause of death is under investigation by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Suazo’s death is the latest in a troubling sequence of cases. Since March 2025, at least 13 bodies have been found across Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine, many of them in remote or wooded areas.
NEW ENGLAND SERIAL KILLER STOKED BY 12TH BODY FOUND IN 3 MONTHS, 2 IN SAME TOWN
The body of 21-year-old Adriana Suazo was found at 11:45 a.m. in the area of 143 Central Ave. by a passerby, officials said.
The discovery of Adriana Suazo’s body in a wooded area in Milton, Massachusetts has stoked growing concerns across New England. (Town of Milton via Facebook)
The circumstances vary, from dismemberments to unattended deaths of the now 13 bodies found throughout the tight-knit region.
While local police departments and district attorneys continue to investigate each case individually, the sheer volume and proximity in time have led to mounting public speculation about the possibility of a serial offender.
Law enforcement agencies have pushed back against the notion of a single perpetrator, citing the absence of forensic links from each case.
A map showing the locations of where bodies in the New England area have been found. (Fox News)
Victims in New England Region
On March 6, 35-year-old Paige Fannon was found dead in the Norwalk River in Connecticut, the same day a human skull was discovered in a wooded area near Route 3 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Later that month, on March 19, the dismembered remains of 58-year-old Suzanne Wormser were found in a suitcase in Groton, Connecticut; her roommate was arrested but died shortly afterward in custody.
Denise Leary, 59, was found dead in New Haven on March 25, followed a day later by 56-year-old Michele Romano, whose remains were located in the woods in Foster, Rhode Island.
NEW ENGLAND SERIAL KILLER FEARS: 10 BODIES NOW FOUND IN LESS THAN 2 MONTHS
The trend continued into April. On April 9, unidentified remains were found in Killingly, Connecticut.
On April 20, a body was pulled from the Seekonk River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, followed by another body found in the Connecticut River near Rocky Hill on April 27.
That same day, another body was discovered in Taunton, Massachusetts. On April 22, the body of 45-year-old Meggan Meredith was found near a bike path in Springfield, Massachusetts.
More recently, on May 30, 34-year-old Jasmine Wilkes was found deceased in Edgewood Park in New Haven.
The Milton, Massachusetts town center. (Google Maps)
Suazo’s sister, Melanie Pizarro, initiated a GoFundMe campaign to assist with funeral expenses, describing Adriana as “rambunctious, bold, and had a personality that could light up any room.”
“Adriana wasn’t just my sister—she was a firecracker, full of life, laughter, and fierce love,” she said. “She loved hard, laughed loud, and made sure the people around her felt it.”
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A vigil was held near the site where Suazo’s body was found, with family and friends gathering to honor her memory.
A family from Chelsea, Massachusetts, has filed a federal complaint over their treatment by U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement agents during an arrest on Mother’s Day.
In the May 11 incident, the family was leaving church when several federal agency vehicles intercepted them at the border between Everett and Chelsea, according to video of the incident shared with Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra. After several minutes of arguing, and refusing to obey their request to roll down their window, agents broke the window to remove the man from the car.
After removing the man from the car, agents threw him to the ground and handcuffed him. Inside the vehicle were the rest of his family, including his wife and children. With the agents above him, the man could be heard asking why they were arresting him, saying he wasn’t resisting.
Laywers for Civil Rights, which has filed a complaint under the Federal Tort Claims Act on behalf of the family, said the man arrested was Daniel Flores-Martinez. His wife Kenia Guerrero, who is a U.S. citizen, was also held by police during the incident.
Flores-Martinez was taken to an immigration detention center where he remains in custody, having been denied a request for a stay of removal.
“My children watched as their father was physically attacked, treated like an animal, and ripped away from us,” Guerro said in a media release.. “They have so many questions, but I don’t have the answers. Why would the government tear our family apart like this? No mother should have to explain this kind of cruelty to her children.”
Layers for Civil Rights says this reflects a larger pattern of behavior by ICE.
Law enforcement officials cannot open the car door without justification. A car’s interior as a whole is subject to Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable intrusions. No family should experience this level of fear, intimidation, and violence, especially not in front of young children on Mother’s Day and the Sabbath,” said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights.
We reached out to ICE after the initial incident for comment, but did not hear back at the time.
This is one of many apparent ICE operations that have caused controversy across the Greater Boston area in recent weeks, many of which have been captured on video. Agents were seen breaking a car window in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in April before taking a man inside into custody. That man was eventually released on bond when the government failed to provide charging documents.
There was a chaotic scene in Worcester when community members tried to prevent ICE agents from arresting a local mother. Video recorded by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra on May 8 showed Worcester police, who were called in as the situation escalated, holding a 16-year-old girl’s face to the ground. The 16-year-old and another woman, Ashley Spring, were arrested by Worcester police. A Worcester city councilor is also facing charges.
Turkish Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by federal agents on the streets of Somerville and sent to a detention center in Louisiana. She was released after weeks of legal back-and-forth, has returned to Massachusetts and continues to fight her immigration case.
In a press conference earlier this week, ICE acting director Todd Lyons defended the work of his agency and said these operations are in the interest of public safety. U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley further warned that anyone who interferes or obstructs operations is subject to prosecution.
Kennet Santizo
Kennet Santizo
Stills from video showing federal agents breaking an SUV window and detaining a man who was inside in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on Sunday, May 11, 2025.
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