Editor’s note: This story is part of “Washout: Our vanishing beaches,” a series about the reshaping of Rhode Island’s shoreline.
Taylor Ellis loves the Rhode Island shoreline so much that about a year-and-half-ago he decided to see as much of it as possible. By foot. The long-time South Kingstown resident walked most of the state’s ocean-facing beach: from Westerly up the coast, down to Little Compton and even into Massachusetts. He walked around the islands where he could pass through legally – Aquidneck, Jamestown and Block Island.
“I really, really loved doing that,” Ellis said on a recent visit to Narragansett Town Beach. “Just feeling the sea air on your face, hearing the ocean waves coming to the shore – all of that, with me, just gives me a feeling of peace.”
But his journey was also an eye-opener. Ellis saw, even back in 2022, how the beaches are disappearing. Some of the hardest hit areas in Rhode Island have been eroding at a rate of five feet per year, or 250 feet over the last half century, according to J.P. Walsh, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council says, on average, the state’s coast is losing .7 feet per year to erosion, and barriers are eroding at a rate of .9 feet per year.
On his walks, Taylor Ellis saw how dunes had vanished in places, replaced by dramatic cross sections of earth and exposed root systems. Beach sand was being washed away or overtaken by the rising water.
“Especially in South Kingstown and Charlestown, like along those sections of shores, there’s houses that are in the surf zone now,” Ellis said. “You have to walk underneath the houses as you walk along the beach, and you see electrical wires dangling and old plumbing fixtures and pipes and propane tanks.”
This past winter, things got worse. According to Walsh, the URI researcher and professor, the severe storms this past winter eroded some areas of beach more than 15 feet from where they were last November.
Communities face huge costs for beach restoration
Towns and the state are opening their wallets in response to the damage. Narragansett spent more than $125,000 on sand replenishment and infrastructure repairs at its town beach. The town is also asking the federal government for another $125,000 to cover the expense of replacing a damaged stone wall in the Bonnet Shores area.
In southern Rhode Island alone, the combined actual and expected cost of beach-related cleanup for Westerly, South Kingstown, and Rhode Island’s eight state beaches is about $460,000 and counting. North Kingstown has to restructure the town beach seawall and doesn’t know the estimated cost yet. In Charlestown, among the hardest hit areas, the cost to repair a damaged breachway could be in the millions.
“We've had massive erosion along the beach,” Charlestown state Rep. Tina Spears said. “It's changed completely from last year to this year … We didn't have a beach initially, when I came down here in early spring or late winter.”
Spears stood on the east side of the Charlestown Breachway, looking out across the water to where about 30 yards of the stone barrier was washed away as a result of the winter storms. Spears is now co-sponsoring a bill to create a commission to look into mitigating beach erosion. She also wants the state to create a strategic plan for responding to threats from sea level rise.
“I think we need to get ahead of it,” she said. “It's not going away. Seas are warming. Storms are getting stronger. As a community and as a legislator, policymaker, I feel it's important that we take action.”
Others agree.
“Give us some money for sand,” said Caswell Cooke, head of the Misquamicut Business Association. “That's the only way you can fix this – more sand on the beach.”
‘How long can we stave off Mother Nature?’
Cooke spoke on the patio of the Windjammer Surf Bar in Misquamicut, as people sipped drinks and lounged in Adirondack chairs, their feet up on a seawall that holds back the waves. Nearby, crews worked a backhoe and bulldozer on the beach in front of a mobile home park.
Misquamicut is a roughly three-mile barrier beach in Westerly between Winnapaug Pond and the Atlantic Ocean. The area is notorious for how hard it gets hit during storms, and the main road here – Atlantic Avenue – is prone to flooding and getting buried in sand.
“Some of these businesses don't even have five years left before it's too late,” Cooke said. “We don't have time for a 10-year study. It's either you need to get federal funds to buy everybody on the street out, remove the road, remove the water, remove the infrastructure, remove the electric – I think that'd be hundreds of millions of dollars – or we could put some sand on the beach.”
Cooke is the first to acknowledge he doesn’t have a degree in coastal science or engineering. He’s a part-time DJ/realtor/beach food trailer operator and a Westerly politician. But he does have a plan to protect Misquamicut that’s based on projects in other states he’s looked into. He says it’s simple. Set up a barge a couple miles out and dredge the ocean floor. Pipe the sand ashore and build up the dunes. Then raise and extend the sandy beaches, and you’ve bought the community some time.
“It is a band aid. But it's a band aid that will have a lasting effect for a decade,” Cooke said. “And if the band aid works, you apply a new band aid.”
The band-aid is expensive. Cooke acknowledges a plan like his could cost upwards of $30 million. But he went ahead and made his pitch earlier this month to the Westerly Town Council, with the idea that the funds would come from local, state and federal sources.
One councilor, Dylan LaPietra, said flat out no and argued it’s better to let nature take its course at the Misquamicut barrier beach. Others, like Councilor Joy Cordio, were open to Caswell Cooke’s proposal but skeptical of the idea of spending money indefinitely on short-term fixes.
“How long can we stave off Mother Nature? She's going to win,” Cordio said. “We also have to think 20 years ahead. When do we prohibit rebuilding? When do we retreat? … I don't think it's feasible every 10 years to try to maintain, as sad as it is, our beaches.”
Those are questions being asked in coastal communities across the region. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, sea levels along the U.S. coastline could rise, on average, 10 to 12 inches by 2050 and two feet by the end of the century. If we fail to curb emissions, they could rise up to another five feet.
In Rhode Island, much of the debate about beaches in recent years has been about who gets to access them and where. But another question has become just as relevant: What’s going to be left of our beaches to enjoy?
Click hereto read more from “Washout: Our vanishing beaches,” a series about the reshaping of Rhode Island’s shoreline.
