Managing a Special Area: Greenwich Bay Planning a Joint Effort

Managing a Special Area:
Greenwich Bay Planning a “Joint Effort”

Sand in Greenwich Bay is on the move, being scoured off beaches and swept into coves. Beachgoers, marina owners, quahoggers, and environmentalists alike watch the process with dismay. Bacteria from failing septic systems and animal waste, combined with heavy rainfall, is closing beaches in Warwick. User groups complain that conflicting regulations and competing uses hinder business operations and recreational uses, and maybe even harm the environment in the process.

At a recent meeting, the Warwick Watershed Action Team contemplated the problem of sewers. Warwick, using bond money, has installed extensive sewers—but for them to be effective, people have to hook up to them, and that costs money.

Two weeks later, at a meeting of Greenwich Bay marina owners, conversation turned to the threats of natural hazards on marinas. When storms send boats ashore, marina operators find themselves facing a Catch-22 situation, they complained. According to one owner, regulations require that they get the boats out within a short time, or be fined, but they also can’t harm the environment in the process, or they face another fine. And after heavy rainfalls, others complained of watching sand flow seemingly unimpeded from storm drains right into their marinas. Out of all these discussions, one comment kept surfacing, “Everyone’s got to participate.”

Virginia Lee, director of the Rhode Island Sea Grant Sustainable Coastal Communities and Environments Extension Program, listened to their pain. Lee and Sue Kennedy, coastal communities extension specialist, have been attending meetings of various groups in the Greenwich Bay watershed to compile their concerns—along with their recommendations—about hazards, water quality, cultural and historic resources, land use, economy, habitat, and geologic processes, such as erosion and deposition, for incorporation into the Greenwich Bay Special Area Management Plan (SAMP). The Greenwich Bay SAMP, which will incorporate regulations and recommended actions in those areas, is not always an easy sell. The heavily regulated marina owners, for instance, feared further restrictions. “We don’t need more rules,” one told Lee. Lee tried to reassure the group that one purpose of the SAMP is to eliminate contradictory policies and to be straightforward and clear. After the SAMP is approved, it will be incorporated into the state guide plan and municipal comprehensive and harbor management plans. The SAMP is being led by the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC), the agency responsible for managing the coastal areas in the state. While he often bears the brunt of people’s ire with regulations, Grover Fugate, CRMC executive director, wants to build public support for the plan. “We’d rather have it be a joint effort,” he says, and hopes that the process “broadens interest in the bay.” Though he heads up the body responsible for coastal permitting, he also has a personal interest in the SAMP as a resident of Warwick Neck. He mentions that one of CRMC’s goals is to eliminate the need to close beaches due to contamination. And he understands the importance of Greenwich Bay to those who make their living there.

“Greenwich Bay has some of the highest densities of quahogs in North America. It’s a little quahog factory is what it is,” he says, adding that the shellfishermen’s concern is that the “creep” of sedimentation is causing them to lose Greenwich Bay altogether as a shellfishing site. He says winter harvesting “means a lot to those guys’ yearly income, especially at the peak demand periods around the holidays.” While the protected coves of Greenwich Bay make winter shellfishing feasible, pollution in the shellfish beds forces them to go farther from shore, a more difficult and dangerous endeavor. Also, Warwick Cove has the largest concentration of boats anywhere in the state, Fugate says, and, as the coves fill with sand, marinas are forced to dock smaller and smaller boats, and in some cases lose slips entirely.

Technical committees comprised of experts in various fields are working on the SAMP chapters. Once the SAMP is written, it will be released for public review and comment before it is adopted. But the work with the local groups is necessary to making sure the SAMP incorporates their knowledge of the resource along with their concerns. “There’s no point in making a plan if people won’t follow it, or can’t,” Kennedy says.

The process of creating the SAMP, however, has produced more than just the document. Lee sees it as developing a sense of “ownership” critical to the success of the plan. Marina owner Ron Bethel has started the Warwick Marina Alliance to share information and resources among marinas. The Warwick Watershed Action Team facilitator Sue Letendre told Lee and Kennedy that citizens groups were crucial in helping spread the word about the SAMP in their communities.

For more information about the SAMP, please visit the Greenwich Bay website at seagrant.gso.uri.edu/G_Bay/.

—Monica Allard Cox

Related links:

Managing a Special Area: Greenwich Bay Planning a “Joint Effort”

Managing a Special Area:
Greenwich Bay Planning a “Joint Effort”