CRMC To Reconsider Matunuck Tuesday

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Town officials announced during Monday night’s town council meeting that they would once again urge the state Coastal Resources Management Council to allow for the fortification of the Matunuck shoreline.

The future of Matunuck’s receding shoreline will be decided in two votes at Tuesday’s CRMC meeting, as the town has petitioned the council to reconsider its April 10 denial to armor the village’s roadways and utilities against further ocean erosion.

During the meeting at the University of Rhode Island Bay Campus in Narragansett earlier this month, the CRMC voted to deny the town special exception status for the installation of a 202-foot steel sheet-pile wall that would have protected Matunuck Beach Road – and interred utility lines – from damage by encroaching tides and storm surges.

“I have mixed feelings about this application,” said Anthony Affigne, a CRMC member, on April 10, minutes before the council handed down its 7-2 vote to deny the sheet-pile wall.

“I think the council should consider the protection of the Matunuck community through health and safety reasons and I’m not sure if this application does that. It is not consistent with our law to protect physical property – public or private. Health and safety is one thing. There is a cost to moving utilities and a need to accommodate that but I am not convinced they have given sufficient consideration to alternatives – exhaustive consideration.”

If approved, the sheet-pile wall would cost taxpayers $1.6 million and last from 20 to 40 years.

Other council members agreed the threshold for imminent threat to public health and safety was not reached in the town’s application to protect a portion of the Matunuck Beach Road and utility pipes, and the application was shot down without further consideration.

“We do believe that with the town’s application for a special exception that we did meet the criteria in [CRMC] red book,” Town Manager Steve Alfred said at Monday’s council meeting. “If in fact no other solutions are available for the protection of public safety for access and egress to that Matunuck neighborhood of 240 homes, how would we be able to provide public health and safety assurances?”

Alfred said the town should qualify for the exception under the CRMC’s public infrastructure exception rule. He added that the town submitted its request for reconsideration on April 19.

Matunuck Beach Road is within five feet of a breach, Alfred said on Monday night. Town Council members expressed fears that every passing storm could spell the end of the road, cut off part of Matunuck village from the mainland and disconnect about 660 south shore homes – many outside the endangered Matunuck area – from water services.

“If the water line was severed, any of the properties to the west would not have drinking water or fire protection for area,” Alfred said on Monday. “We are out of choices in terms of being able to deal with the town’s responsibility and the state’s responsibility to ensure safe passage to neighborhoods, particularly one with 240 homes.”

If the CRMC agrees to grant the town’s application special exception status, Alfred said the town would submit working plans to CRMC staff in order to develop designs that would be suitable to both sides.

“This is a huge concern for us as a council,” councilor Kathleen S. Fogarty said. “People think it is just that quadrant of the town, but it’s a much bigger deal than that.”

A second application by the town could end in the reclassification of a 1,400-foot swath of Matunuck village’s coast as manmade. This would allow property owners to armor their homes and land against further erosion, and in turn protect the town’s infrastructure behind the privately-owned lots.

In theory, Alfred said, hard structures on adjacent private properties would essentially continue the steel sheet-pile wall that would extend 202-feet north from the edge of the Ocean Mist property if approved.

The CRMC will meet 6 p.m. tonight in the South Kingstown High School auditorium to discuss both applications.