SOUTH KINGSTOWN — The new stretch of seawall protecting Matunuck Beach Road, years in the making, is nearing completion, with implications for a prized seaside village under threat from erosion.
The project is expected to wrap up by late fall, South Kingstown director of public services Rich Bourbonnais said. When it’s done, the wall will run along the southern side of Matunuck Beach Road from the Ocean Mist beach bar to the trailer park association where it juts out toward the water.
“We have no other way to get to those homes that are all beyond the Mist,” Bourbonnais said. “Everything east of there is isolated. It’s the only access they have.”
Once it’s completed, it will be the relatively quiet culmination of a project that has stirred controversy and litigation in an iconic and erosion-threatened area of South Kingstown for more than a decade.
The project involves driving steel sheet piles about 40 feet into the ground, and capping about five feet of exposed steel with concrete. Workers also put boulders on the ocean side of the wall to protect from scouring.
The structure will protect Matunuck Beach Road and the water line it carries. In the first phase, completed three years ago, the town built more than 200 feet of seawall. The extension that’s going in now is for the next roughly 350 feet. It’s budgeted at $2.8 million, funded through a local bond referendum, Bourbonnais said. Work began in earnest on the latest 350 feet this spring, Bourbonnais said.
The town had weighed various other options to ensure that the area — including about 250 properties — could be accessed in the event that Matunuck Beach Road was wiped out, including building new roads. But those options wouldn’t work, the town said. Its arguments prevailed multiple times before state coastal regulators to get permission for the wall.
Seawalls already dot the Rhode Island coastline, but they come with downsides. Environmental groups like Save The Bay say that seawalls don’t work as long-term solutions. State coastal regulators disfavor “gray” infrastructure like seawalls, nudging property owners and towns toward more “green” resiliency. And even when they’re approved nowadays — sometimes amid controversy, like this one — modern seawalls come with a number of conditions and restrictions, like rules around how they’re built and rules on public access.
“While we understand there’s a community at stake there, it’s a Band-Aid approach,” said David Prescott, South County coastkeeper at the environmental advocacy group Save The Bay. He added later: “Is a wall going to hold back a storm, or most storms? Yes. Will it hold back a ‘38? No.”
With inevitable geological changes along a dynamic coast and sea level rise caused by climate change, communities grapple with tough choices. Do you armor the shore to protect what’s there? Walls keep out more than just waves, sometimes impinging on coastal access despite regulators’ best efforts. And a seawall, while protecting a road from the threat of an encroaching ocean for some years or decades, can actually make erosion problems worse in adjacent areas.
Another option is carefully and thoughtfully moving structures and infrastructure out of harm’s way, Save The Bay argues. But “retreat,” as it’s sometimes called, is a four-letter word to people who don’t want to give up on places that mean so much to them.
Prescott prefers not to say “retreat,” but instead uses terms like “move back.”
“Retreat has this connotation that you’re giving up,” Prescott said. “This isn’t about giving up. It’s about how you keep that character, and at the same time change to a changing climate.”
South Kingstown, for its part, has argued that the seawall is the only realistic way to protect the sole roadway access for a cherished neighborhood.
“We have an obligation to protect people and properties, and that’s what we’re doing,” Bourbonnais said.
In this case, there was the added controversy not just about whether to build a wall, but where to build it. Some local businesses, notably the iconic Ocean Mist beach bar, wanted the town and the businesses to build a seawall together — one that would protect not just the road but the businesses, too.
Part of the charm of the Ocean Mist is that it juts out into the water. As locals will remind you, you used to be able to play volleyball on the beach between the Ocean Mist and the lapping waves. Now, because of erosion, water rushes under the deck. The wall that the town is building along Matunuck Beach Road won’t do much to protect the Ocean Mist, owner Kevin Finnegan said — in fact, it might deflect its wave energy onto it and blow it out in a big storm.
The litigation that ensued delayed construction during the first phase, but the town and Finnegan eventually came to an agreement. That allowed the town to go ahead with its own seawall project to protect the road, and for the Ocean Mist’s owner to pursue restoring a different, second seawall. It’s a bit of a fixer-upper: Mary Carpenter’s historic seawall runs roughly parallel to Matunuck Beach Road, but it’s some yards seaward of the town’s new wall. Mary Carpenter’s seawall, a series of big rocks, has fallen into disrepair over the years. Finnegan said restoring this wall will cost $2 million to $3 million, which he’ll pay for. He has a deal in place with the town of South Kingstown to acquire the property for the project, he said.
“As long as I get to restore Mary Carpenter’s historic seawall, the Ocean Mist and village businesses will be protected,” Finnegan said. He’s ready to move ahead with acquiring the land and restoring the wall once the town is done with their project, he said.
Matunuck is one of the areas in the state most vulnerable to erosion, said Bryan Oakley, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State University who’s extensively studied the Rhode Island coast. That’s because it’s a headland shoreline, or a narrow piece of land that juts out into the water. Unlike with barrier shorelines — places where there’s an aquatic habitat like a salt pond behind them that can recover after minor or moderate storms — headlands don’t recover as much from sediment erosion when storms hit. With an area like Matunuck, there’s not as much give and take — just take and take.
“I think the long-term is always going to be a challenge down there,” Oakley said.
There are other problems. The area is made of finer materials that are easier to erode. And it’s relatively low-lying. Sea level rise caused by climate change will exacerbate the impact of storms and only make that geologic process worse.
“It’s sad to see a community like this threatened, but things are not going to get better in the coming decades,” Oakley said. “We are seeing rising sea levels. The bottom line is, it’s rising, it’s going to come up — likely several feet by the end of the century.”
Against that backdrop, Matunuck has faced tough choices and will continue to in the years ahead. Much of Rhode Island will. And not just along the ocean-facing coast.
But it doesn’t always have to be a choice between gray seawalls, retreat, or pretending the problem doesn’t exist. There’s also “green infrastructure,” where more natural, softer barriers are put in place.
Leah Feldman, coastal policy analyst with the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, pointed to Rose Larisa Park in East Providence as an example of where that’s worked. The CRMC, the Nature Conservancy and the city worked together on a “living shoreline” project there, partially funded by a grant from 11th Hour Racing, a Newport-based organization that brings the sailing and maritime communities together to promote ocean stewardship. Workers cut away a bank to reduce a slope and put stone at the base of the bluff, as well as logs made of coconut fiber. Native vegetation was planted on the bluff. And near the southern boundary of the park, workers constructed small intertidal sills, with sand and native salt marsh plants placed between the sill and the base of the bluff.
As officials prepared to break ground on the project back in April 2020, the CRMC described it as a test of a concept that hadn’t been used much in New England.
And now, two years later?
“It’s working like a charm,” Feldman said.
This story has been updated to add illustrations from the Town of South Kingstown.
Brian Amaral can be reached at brian.amaral@globe.com. Follow him @bamaral44.