Rhode Island
CRMC under fire after postponed hearing on Quidnessett Country Club • Rhode Island Current
The embattled Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council is awash in criticism again — not for a controversial decision, but for the lack of one.
In a Nov. 25 email to the council, also shared on its website, Save the Bay Executive Director Topher Hamblett accused the panel of coastal regulators of “political favoritism and abuse of power.”
A council subcommittee was scheduled to hold a hearing at 4 p.m. Tuesday on Quidnessett Country Club’s application to ease development restrictions for its waterfront property in North Kingstown. But the meeting was cancelled, extending the saga over an illegal seawall built along the club’s shoreline nearly two years ago.
Hamblett alleges the delays are intentional.
“The Council’s months-long series of delays gives the country club an unfair economic advantage over law-abiding coastal landowners and businesses who spend money and time applying for permits to comply with the law,” he wrote in the email.
“The Council is opening the door for more violations and sending the message that it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission. Additionally, the Council’s lack of consistency and fairness undermines the integrity of Rhode Island’s coastal governance, the protection of our coastal ecosystems and the public’s ability to access the shore.”
In January 2023, the country club built a 600-foot-long stone wall between its golf course and the shoreline — violating existing coastal regulations intended to protect the sensitive coastal marshes that feed into Narragansett Bay. After the rock wall was discovered, with subsequent fines and warnings levied by state and federal regulators, the club sought to retroactively keep its illegal barrier in place.
Quidnessett’s April 12 petition, if approved, would downgrade the water classification from the existing Type 1 “conservation area” to a less stringent Type 2 “low intensity use,” which could — though it doesn’t have to — allow for a permanent structure like a seawall. Under the existing designation, all permanent structures are banned.
A council subcommittee took public comment, but postponed a vote on the water type redesignation at a September meeting, in order to give the country club more time to make its case. The club, through its attorneys, said a permanent barrier is needed to protect the flagship 18-hole golf course against rising sea levels.
Tuesday’s meeting would have been the next occasion to consider, and potentially make a recommendation on the application. The panel vote would advance the proposal to the full council, which would then review and make its own decision at a later date.
The Council’s months-long series of delays gives the country club an unfair economic advantage over law-abiding coastal landowners and businesses who spend money and time applying for permits to comply with the law.
– Topher Hamblett, executive director for Save the Bay
Meanwhile, the seawall still stands, much to Hamblett’s dismay.
“This has all the appearances of the council wanting to accommodate Quidnessett Country Cub’s request to, in effect, let the wall stand,” Hamblett said in an interview Tuesday. “I think that, left to its own devices, they would do just that.”
Hamblett acknowledged that he did not know why the meeting was cancelled; the council has been plagued by vacancies which have led to a string of postponed meetings and key decisions.
Laura Dwyer, a spokesperson for the CRMC, said in an email late Tuesday that the meeting was postponed due to “scheduling issues.” She did not answer specific questions seeking comment about Hamblett’s letter.
Janice Matthews, vice president of The Jan Companies, which owns the country club, also did not respond to inquiries for comment.
The council’s staff in a Sept. 20 report argued against approving the water type reclassification, stressing the importance of the sensitive salt marshes surrounding the shoreline, along with marine wildlife, which were the very reason why the agency restricted development there in the first place — formally codified under state water type classifications created in the early 1980s.
But the politically appointed council doesn’t have to follow the recommendations of its expert staff; it hasn’t in other high-profile decisions.
Most notably, the council in 2020 approved a contested expansion of Champlin’s Marina on Block Island, against advice of staff, with terms brokered in what the town and conservation groups alleged was a “backroom deal.” The Rhode Island Supreme Court tossed the council’s decision in a 2022 ruling, agreeing with Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha that the council flouted its own public notice requirements.
A question of accountability
Hamblett sees parallels between Champlin’s case and Quidnessett, in the council’s actions, and in reactions among top state officials.
“The common denominator between Quidnessett and Champlin’s is there’s been no action from the governor or the General Assembly in terms of accountability,” Hamblett said Tuesday. “We’re concerned we’re going to see that silence continue as it relates to the country club’s accountability to the council.”
Other state officials who were copied on Hamblett’s email, including Gov. Dan McKee, House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, had also not responded to him as of midday Tuesday, Hamblett said.
McKee and Ruggerio did not immediately respond to inquiries from Rhode Island Current for comment on Tuesday.
Shekarchi was not available for comment due to being away for the holiday, Larry Berman, a spokesperson, said in an email on Tuesday.
One exception: Neronha, whose office has already critiqued Quidnessett for flouting state coastal regulations.
“With each public hearing that is canceled, CRMC continues to demonstrate why it cannot be trusted with environmental oversight,” Neronha said in a statement on Tuesday. “Normally, when a person or entity breaks the law, there are consequences. Here, Quidnessett Country Club decided that the rules don’t apply to them, acting in total disregard of laws designed to protect our coast, and thus far, getting away with it.”
Earlier this year, Neronha joined Save the Bay to call for eliminating the politically appointed council, and reshaping the agency as an administrative department akin to the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. Legislation outlining these changes was introduced but stalled in the last two legislative sessions.
“The time for CRMC reform was long ago, but we must continue the fight to place decision-making power into the hands of those who wish to protect and preserve our most treasured natural resources,” he said. “Because each day that passes without consequences for Quidnessett is another day of environmental justice delayed and denied.”
Hamblett said Save the Bay plans to push for a similar bill in the upcoming 2025 session, hoping that public attention — including 300 pages of written comment submitted to the CRMC — on Quidnessett might build support among lawmakers.
“We need top elected officials to be paying attention to our coastal agency,” Hamblett said.
The CRMC rescheduled its hearing on Quidnessett to Dec. 10. If the water reclassification is granted, the club must then apply for a permit to build any kind of permanent structure along the shoreline.
Updated to include a response from the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council.
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Rhode Island
He grew up in the kitchen. Then he rewrote the menu, and the future of his parents’ restaurant – The Boston Globe
He became obsessed with driving around, searching for any local farm or fisherman on a dock and bugging them to see if they, too, wanted to help him with his vision.
His menu now, which reflects a reinvention, leans into a new way to present New England seafood for an old suburban fishing town, serving snacks like a smoked Rhode Island bluefish paté, raw New Bedford sea scallops with sesame and crispy shallots, chowder with quahogs and fermented hot sauce. He also makes his own pasta with milled local grains.
Today, Dion has largely taken over the business, although his mom can still be found in the kitchen.
“If you’ve had a piece of swordfish at S.S. Dion in the past 43 years, she’s grilled it. And she doesn’t want that to end,” said Dion. “She loves it, and wants to work forever.”
His father visits every day for an hour to keep track of “all of my numbers.”
“I do it all on a computer, and he’s got every, every penny of it on paper,” said Dion.
The reimagined version has had a lot of success, growing 300 percent over the last five years.
What to eat: Try any of the snacks to start with, but be sure to get at least one of their house-made pastas for the table to share: a black spaghetti puttanesca with fried squid, anchovies, Calabrian chilies, and braised tomato. A bowl of gemelli with house-made fish sausage, rapini, pangrattato, and aglio e olio. A roasted mushroom campanelle with sautéed leeks, Brussel sprouts, tarragon, and tender pea tendrils. A perfect bolognese. There are also comforting staples from S.S. Dion’s past life: “The chicken parmesan will be on that menu for my whole life,” said Dion. “But there’s a fermented hot sauce martini on there as well.”
“I want to have that spectrum of people who have always come into S.S. and ordered what they love and remember,” said Dion. “But also there might be something exciting for someone else in their party who is more adventurous.”
You can get three courses for just $40 per person if you order from their prix fixe menu. Your options include local crudos; a funky caesar with smoked Rhode Island bluefish and sourdough croutons, calamari from Point Judith, all sorts of scratch-made pastas, and plenty of desserts.
Dion said his fries take three days to prepare, and he makes every part of their burger from scratch (an “everything” milk bun, house bacon, crispy onions, a 21-day dry-aged burger bun from Blackbird Farm slathered in a special sauce) other than the cheddar cheese it is topped with.
“The world just seems to get more and more artificial, and there’s a really blurry line between what is human and what is manufactured,” he said. “It just feels good to be authentic to my place.”
What to drink: Start off with a bang and get the “Low Tide Hot N’ Dirty,” which uses a nori-infused Lime Rock gin, fermented green chili, yuzu, and topped with a spicy seaweed chip. Or their bacon fat-washed maple old fashioned. The beer list has a ton of local brews from around New England, while the wine list has some interesting choices for the area: a Primitivo from Puglia, an Austrian riesling, and a chenin blanc-viognier from Napa.
Don’t forget dessert: The bananas foster bread pudding is baked in a cast iron pan drizzled with rum caramel and topped with pecans and vanilla ice cream. The chocolate pot de creme uses miso caramel, beetroot meringue, salted cashew crumble, and fennel. Or you can order a basque cheesecake topped with flaky sea salt and orange zest, or a traditional affogato that’s drowned in a double shot of espresso from Borealis Coffee Company, a small-batch local specialty roaster.
Final say: S.S. Dion is one of those legacy restaurants that found further success after reinventing itself when the second generation took over. Dion has dreams of opening his own restaurant with a different concept and to potentially do it in Providence. He’s looking for locations, but isn’t ready to sign a lease yet.
“I’m really happy with where S.S. is now,” said Dion. “But what chef doesn’t have dreams of opening a dozen more restaurants?
“I’d say that’s what’s next,” he added. “I’d like to start something else soon.”
S.S. Dion, 520 Thames St., Bristol, R.I., 401-253-2884, ssdion.com. Raw bar $3.5-$165; salads $13-$18; snacks $9-$25; scratch pasta $14-$38; entrées $25-market price; Sides and sauces $1-$7.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.
Newest clergy sex abuse lawsuit bill gives victims ‘hope,’ Neronha says
A new bill gives clergy sex abuse victims a path to sue the institutions that may have been responsible for their abuse as children.
PROVIDENCE – Victims of clergy sex abuse scored a long-sought victory in the Rhode Island Senate on Wednesday, June 3.
Legislation to allow the victims to sue the Catholic Church – and any other institution that failed to protect them from molestation when they were children – won unanimous Senate approval and now goes to the House for final votes.
The fast action from Senate Judiciary Committee approval – to a full Senate vote – within an hour and a half was not unexpected after the announcement on Monday of a compromise backed by the Senate’s top-tier Democrats, including Senate President Valarie Lawson, Majority Leader Frank Ciccone and Senate Judiciary Chairman Matthew LaMountain.
If passed, as now appears likely, the legislation will allow the victims of sexual abuse by clergy to sue the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence and any other entity that knew, but failed to stop – or concealed – the abuse they suffered as children at the hands of trusted elders.
The legislation would also provide the long-ago victims – many of them now in their 60s and 70s – with a two-year window to revive claims currently barred by expired time limits.
The compromise – after years of pleas and inaction – follows the long-awaited release on March 4 of Attorney General Peter Neronha’s report detailing the systematic cover-up by the Catholic Church of the sexual abuse of more than 300 Rhode Island children.
His report laid bare, for the first time, the scope of more than a half century of alleged child sexual abuse by Rhode Island Catholic clergy and the breadth and depth of the alleged cover-up, which often included destroying key files or shuffling priests from parish to parish, where they would reoffend.
Sen. Mark McKenney, the lead Senate sponsor, told colleagues that the proposed new law not only states “this conduct unacceptable, but from now on, the institutions that have enabled it will be held accountable as well.”
As to whether the law would survive a legal challenge, McKenney said the Rhode Island Constitution “contains a provision that is somewhat unique in the United States: a victims’ rights clause. That provision has been largely overlooked in the debate that’s gone on about the constitutionality of this and … previous versions of this bill,” but retired U.S. District Judge William Smith drew attention to it when he testified.
He said Article 1, Section 23 “of our constitution provides that crime victims, including child sexual abuse victims, not only may receive compensation from perpetrators, but also, and this is a quote from the constitution, ‘Shall receive such other compensation as the state may provide,’ with that power ‘entirely committed to our authority as the General Assembly.’”
Co-sponsor Dawn Euer applauded “the victims and survivors, both the ones that we know of and the ones that we don’t, as well as the ones that we have lost. The strength and courage that it takes to go through what [these] people have gone through … is incredible.
“And then to be able to come up here and advocate …. for passage of this legislation over years [of] legislative turmoil and back again, it’s really incredible the strength and determination that you all have shown,” she said to the group of survivor-advocates in the Senate gallery.
“We get used to it,” she said of the process by which “the proverbial sausage is made. But for issues like this that have real impacts on people’s lives, it can be an additional trauma,” she said of the year after year of public hearings and testimony, followed by inaction.
On Wednesday, she said, the Senate sent the “strong signal that Rhode Island stands with survivors and victims.”
This story has been updated with new information.
A rising tide of beach garbage plagues local wildlife. Fortunately, there’s something you can do about it.
A wide array of beach trash found on Napatree Point, from balloons and ribbons to Styrofoam, cellophane, nylon rope, bottle caps and a hypodermic needle. Waves break plastic into tiny particles that mix into beach sand and are ingested by marine life. Photography courtesy of Robert L. Mitchell
It’s easy to overlook the detritus along Rhode Island’s shoreline, but as the amount of beach litter has increased over the last few years, its effect on seabirds, seals, fish and other wildlife has risen dramatically.
Between 2011 and 2023, the Mystic Aquarium animal rescue program admitted fifty-eight seals into rehabilitation due to entanglements.
“Between 2024 and 2025, we have already passed that number, with fifty-nine entangled animals reported in just a year and a half,” says MaryEllen Mateleska, the aquarium’s senior director of education and conservation.
During an early summer walk at Watch Hill’s Napatree Point, much of the litter wasn’t noticeable at first because it had been ground down into little pieces along the high-tide mark. So it came as a surprise when my wife and I, after picking up everything we could find on a milelong stretch of sand, came away with a grocery bag full of trash. Most of it wasn’t whole bottles or cans, but micro trash — bits of things that had been pulverized by the surf.
Our haul included fifty-seven pieces of cellophane, twenty-five balloons (many with ribbons attached), twenty-four bottle caps, twenty-four pieces of nylon rope and netting fragments, twenty-four hard plastic fragments and ten cigarette butts (the plastic-based filters are not biodegradable). We also picked up fishing line, rubber lobster claw bands, tin foil, a shoe heel, one plastic bottle, one toothpaste tube and a syringe — all in the off-season.
“We are seeing more smaller plastic particles make their way to the beach,” says Mateleska.
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The litter accumulates from trash left on the shoreline, refuse that blows in from cars, bins and local roadways, and garbage that travels to the ocean by way of rivers. Waves then break down the plastics into smaller pieces of micro- and nanoplastics.
“Plastic pollution is incredibly dangerous to aquatic species,” she says. Fish and other animals ingest the microplastics and can become entangled in ribbons, nets and fishing lines. Other items that entangle wildlife include six-pack ring holders, hair ties, fishing line, netting or pieces of netting, fishing lures, hooks and plastic bags.
Sea birds are especially vulnerable because they use those bits of fishing line, rope, string and other materials to build their nests. Balloons, in particular, are deadly to seabirds, which often mistake them for jellyfish or other prey.
“Plastics are now in every ecosystem, almost every seabird, and almost every human body,” Mateleska says, with the long-term health impacts unknown.
They also take an extremely long time to break down, which is harmful to the state’s delicate coastal ecosystem.
“[Plastic] material that is in the environment may present itself on a shoreline very far away many years or decades later,” says Dave McLaughlin, sustainability coordinator at the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.
___________________________
What You Can Do
Beach walkers can help by picking up garbage wherever they go to enjoy the outdoors. But you don’t have to go to the beach to help. Better management of beach trash starts at home, Mataleska says.
“Refuse single-use plastics and look for sustainable alternatives, pick up trash wherever and whenever you see it, and support legislation that stops plastic at the source,” she advises.
Volunteer for coastal cleanups, use reusable materials, carry in and carry out your trash, recycle, and don’t litter. And consider joining a nonprofit group such as those sponsored by Coastodians (coastodians.org) or Save the Bay (savebay.org) that organize beach cleanups. When it comes to beach trash, even small groups can make a big difference.
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