Here's everything to know about RI's new shoreline access law before you head to the beach
You may have heard that Rhode Island recently passed a law intended to improve shoreline access by clearing up some longstanding confusion about the public's rights.
But what exactly does the new law do, and what will it mean for you when you head to the beach this summer?
Below, we've outlined how the law would (or wouldn't) work in a number of common scenarios. You'll also find answers to frequently asked questions that have come up since the law went into effect at the end of June.
RI's beach access: Law creates controversy, confusion and lawsuits as line is drawn in sand
Are all Rhode Island beaches public now?
The new law states that, below a certain point, all beaches are open to the public.
Even if a beach is owned by a private individual, business, or club, you can use it as long as you're no more than ten feet above the recognizable high tide line. Michael Woods, chair of the New England chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, describes the area below the ten-foot line as "a zone of intersection where both the public and the private property owner have rights."
There are some major caveats. For instance, you don't have the right to walk across private property in order to get down to the public portion of the beach. So, realistically speaking, you're still not going to be able to use certain beaches unless you swim there or arrive by boat.
Additionally, the law addresses your right to use sandy and rocky beaches — not the entire coastline. It doesn't apply in scenarios where there are man-made seawalls and no beach.
Here's an example to illustrate what the law does and doesn't do. Let's say you're walking along Narragansett Town Beach. At a certain point, you reach the end-of-town property and arrive at the Dunes Club, which is private. Under the new law, you can keep on walking, as long as you remain below the ten-foot line.
What you can't do is climb up on the Dunes Club's seawall, or grab a seat on the terrace. (The law states that the public is not entitled "to use amenities privately owned by other persons or entities, including, but not limited to: cabanas, decks, and beach chairs.") And if you'd driven up to the clubhouse, the club wouldn't have been obligated to let you walk across their property so that you could get to the part of the beach that's open to the public.
Ok, so I'm on the beach in front of the Dunes Club, below the ten foot line. Do I have to keep walking? Can I roll out my towel on the sand and lie down?
This is a matter of much debate, so there's not going to be a simple yes or no answer.
The new law deliberately avoids addressing what people can do on the portion of the beach that's open to the public — for instance, can can you set up an umbrella or a beach chair? Instead, it states that "the public's rights and privileges of the shore" can be exercised below the ten-foot line.
That's a reference to Rhode Island's constitution, which says that the public "shall continue to enjoy and freely exercise all the rights of fishery, and the privileges of the shore, to which they have been heretofore entitled under the charter and usages of this state, including but not limited to fishing from the shore, the gathering of seaweed, leaving the shore to swim in the sea and passage along the shore."
To some, that means that if you're not fishing, gathering seaweed, or swimming, you only have a constitutional right to "passage along the shore" — so, no, you can't just stretch out on your beach towel and take a nap.
But to shoreline access advocates, the key words are "including but not limited to." The constitution mentions four specific rights, but also strongly suggests that there are others, they argue.
That leads to the question of whether lounging in a beach chair could be considered one of the public's rights "to which they have been heretofore entitled under the charter and usages of this state." Some skeptics argue that it's tough to make that case, because the shoreline was historically a place of work, not a place of leisure.
In Woods' view, you'd probably have a hard time arguing that you're allowed to play music on a boombox. "That is likely not something that was part of the privileges of the shore," he observed. But if you're sitting on a towel in a bathing suit, you could argue that you have the intent to swim.
What if you just want to sit in your chair and read a book, and have no intention of going in the ocean?
"I think the safest thing that you can do is to buy an inexpensive fishing rod and a saltwater fishing license, and be taking a rest from fishing," Woods said. "There’s nothing in the constitution that says you have to be good at fishing, or that you have to catch anything."
How can I tell if I'm on the public part of the beach? Where does it become private?
Let's say that it's high tide and you're walking along the water's edge, with the ocean on your right. Ten feet to your left — meaning ten feet higher up on the beach — is where the public area ends.
To find the boundary at any other point in the day, you'll need to locate the "recognizable high tide line" — a visual marker that indicates how high the water gets at high tide. Then, you'll add ten feet to that.
The recognizable high tide line is often colloquially known as the "seaweed line," because clumps of seaweed deposited by the last tide tend to form a naturally-occurring, easy-to-see line.
But under the law, you can also look for a line of oil or scum, "a more or less continuous deposit of fine shell or debris," or any other markings "that delineate the general height reached by the water's surface level at a rising tide."
Most of the time, you only need to remember the words "seaweed plus ten." But the law also accounts for other scenarios when you can't follow that formula, as you'll see below.
What happens if people with beach houses start raking up the seaweed every morning?
The law includes a provision for this exact situation. "In the absence of residue seaweed or other evidence, the recognizable high tide line means the wet line on a sandy or rocky beach," it states.
In other words, if you show up to the beach and find it's completely devoid of any seaweed, debris, or other visual markers of the last high tide, just find the place where wet sand meets dry sand. The boundary will be ten feet above that.
Tons of seaweed washes up at a spot where I surf. If there's more than one seaweed line on the beach, which one counts?
The law anticipates this scenario, too: "If there is more than one line of seaweed, oil, scum, fine shell, or debris, then the recognizable high tide line means the most seaward line."
What that means, in plain English, is that the line closest to the water is always the one that wins. It doesn't matter how long it's been there.
At low tide, you might notice seaweed "kicking around in the surf," Woods noted. That wouldn't count as the lowest seaweed line, he believes, since it doesn't tell you anything about where the high tide was.
During king tides, the water goes all the way up to the cabanas at a private club in my town. Does that make their whole beach public?
Maybe! The basic principle of "seaweed plus ten" would still apply, since the law says that the recognizable high tide line "encompasses the water's surface level at spring high tides and other high tides that occur with periodic frequency."
And it's definitely possible that on certain stretches of coastline, at certain times of year, "seaweed plus ten" will translate to the entirety of the beach. (The location of the recognizable high tide line is constantly changing with the tides, so, at other times, the public may only have access to a smaller portion of the beach.)
It's worth noting that the "seaweed plus ten" rule doesn't apply when storms drive the water unusually high. The law states that the recognizable high tide line "does not include the water's surface level at storm surges in which there is a departure from the normal or predicted reach of the water’s surface level due to the piling up of water against a coast by strong winds, such as those accompanying a hurricane or other intense storms."
What if someone's built their beach house less than ten feet from the seaweed line? How close can I get to their back deck?
Legally, there's nothing stopping you from gathering seaweed from the beach while, less than a foot away, the homeowner hosts a cocktail party on their deck. The question is whether that sounds like a situation that you'd relish.
What you're not allowed to do is sit down on their Adirondack chairs, or unfurl their patio umbrella for some shade. Rep. Terri Cortvriend, who was the main driving force behind the new law, emphasized this point during a recent webinar hosted by Rhode Island Sea Grant and the Coastal Resources Management Council.
"You can't go up on a property owner's deck, or make yourself at home on their porch," she said. "That's not allowed."
The law explicitly states that the public doesn't have the right to use privately-owned "amenities" such as decks, cabanas, and beach chairs. It also says that the right to use the shoreline "shall not be afforded where no passable shore exists, nor on land above the vegetation line, or on lawns, rocky cliffs, sea walls, or other legally constructed shoreline infrastructure."
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If someone's back deck juts so far out that it prevents you from walking along the beach at high tide, that's a case of "no passable shore." You can't just climb over it, even though it's blocking the public portion of the beach.
However, it's also important to note that the statute specifically includes the words "legally constructed," Woods pointed out. If a property owner adds a seawall or deck without getting permission from the CRMC or other relevant authorities, the law might look at that differently, he said.
Can I have a bonfire below the 10-foot line on the beach?
Not if bonfires are prohibited under town ordinances (which they probably are.)
This is a key point that advocates for shoreline access like to emphasize: Any activities that are illegal remain illegal. Laws that ban behavior like public drunkenness, nudity and littering still apply when you're below the 10-foot line.
"We did not create a zone of lawlessness," Cortvriend said during the webinar.
His quest? Walk RI's entire coast- But private property and blocked access are a challenge
Does the new law let you get closer to Taylor Swift’s house?
No. The pop star's oceanfront home in Westerly sits on top of a legally-permitted seawall. As noted earlier, the new law includes an exception for seawalls.
It's worth mentioning, however, that not every privately-owned seawall in Rhode Island is automatically off-limits to the public. At times, the CRMC has required public access as a condition of approving a property owner's request to build a seawall. There do not appear to be any such stipulations in place for Taylor Swift's seawall.
Do I still have to pay to walk onto Narragansett Town Beach?
Yes. The new law does not prevent Narragansett from charging beach admission fees.
That's because the law only has implications for the portion of the beach that's below the ten-foot line. Above that line, property owners get to (mostly) make their own rules.
In this case, the property owner is the town of Narragansett. The town controls the access points that lead onto the beach, and has decided that people should pay to enter (which helps cover the cost of running the beach.)
It's no secret that people sometimes avoid paying the entry fee by jumping onto the beach from the seawall, or paddling over from the Narrow River. The new law would seem to suggest that as long as you're entering the beach below the ten-foot line, you can stay there, as long you remain below the line.
Narragansett Parks and Recreation director Michelle Kershaw said that if people access the beach from the water (i.e. by paddleboard,) staff will not interfere. "It would also be difficult for staff to keep track of this anyway," she wrote in an email.
However, if someone jumps off the seawall, "we will ask that person to pay the daily admission fee because they have purposely done so to avoid paying. If the person(s) jumps the sea wall and runs into the water, staff will resume their post. We will not chase people into the water."
For the record: Jumping off the seawall is considered dangerous, and can be a good way to break your ankle.
A local homeowners’ association has a security guard who sits on the beach and tells people that they can’t go beyond that point. I’m pretty sure that the new law says otherwise. What do I do?
Activist Scott Keeley did the right thing when he faced this scenario a few weeks ago, Woods said. Before heading to the beach, he understood the law and knew what his rights were. When a security guard confronted him, Keeley called the police, who confirmed that he was in the right.
"Those are really the two steps — to know what the law says, and, if that’s challenged, to know that it’s not your job to inform other people what the law is," Woods said. "It’s to engage law enforcement."
How about signs claiming that the beach is private? Can I ignore those?
First off, it's important to know signs with messages like "Private Property - No Trespassing" or "Members and Guests Only Beyond This Point" are often misleading, and in some cases may have been placed on the beach illegally. They don't change the fact that you have the right to use the beach below the ten-foot line.
"Personally, I might walk past a sign if I knew, confidently, that it was misplaced or illegal," Woods said. But it's a good idea to call local police to make sure that you're in the clear, he said, especially if you have any doubts about the validity of a sign or aren't completely sure what your rights are.
The point isn't that the public should disregard signs, but that they should know that there are situations "where the signs aren’t right," he added.
In some instances, a sign may have been "somewhat correct" until the new law went into effect a few weeks ago, Woods said. He suggested that there's room for "a little understanding" and beachgoers shouldn't fly off the handle, since it will take some time for signs to get updated.
Who can I complain to about a misleading sign?
The first question is whether the sign was placed there legally. Erecting a sign on the beach requires permission from the CRMC, so if the property owner didn't get a permit, the CRMC can make them take it down. (Even if they did get permission, it's worth checking to make sure that they didn't put up something drastically different than what the CRMC approved.)
Additionally, you could check to see if the town has its own ordinances regarding signage, and find out whether the sign that you're concerned about is allowed.
Even if the sign turns out to be legal, it may still be misleading — for instance, if it says "Private - Residents Only" without mentioning that public access is allowed within ten feet of the seaweed line. It's not yet clear if the short-staffed CRMC or local authorities will require such signs to be updated.
The new law does say that the CRMC, Department of Environmental Management, and Attorney General "shall determine appropriate language and signage details for use at shoreline locations."
Sen. Mark McKenney, the law's Senate sponsor, said during the CRMC-Sea Grant webinar that he hopes the Attorney General's office will designate a "point person" to deal with illegal signage and make sure that property owners know what they can and can't put up.
However, Brian Hodge of the Attorney General's Office said that members of the public who find problematic signs should still notify the CRMC.
What about fences that go all the way down to the water's edge? Are those legal?
McKenney said during the webinar that he believes that the law will prevent people from building fences below the ten-foot line, since doing so would block public access.
Leah Feldman, a policy analyst for the CRMC, added that the agency does sometimes permit snow fencing on the beach when it benefits the health of the dunes.
"Those permits are not written without stipulations protecting public access," she said. "When and if those fences do go beyond what we consider the geologic purposes of them, we are able to send our enforcement down there."
Isn’t the state being sued? Is the law valid right now?
Some coastal property owners have filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the law. They are also seeking an injunction that would put the law on hold while the suit is pending. As of the time of this writing, the request for an injunction has not been granted, so the law remains in effect.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Heading to the beach? What RI's new shoreline access law means for you
