BARRIERS TO PUBLIC ACCESS ON RHODE ISLAND’S MICROTIDAL, WAVE-DOMINATED SOUTHERN SHORELINE

The Rhode Island state constitution gives residents the right to access the shoreline for fishing, recreation, and other privileges. Access is provided at 230 state-designated rights-of-way and hundreds of other locations that are managed for the public. Members of the public also have the right to lateral (alongshore) access for the entirety of the state’s 400 miles of shoreline. However, the continued enjoyment of these public spaces is threatened by climate change, coastal development, and user conflicts, often driven by confusion about the legal shoreline boundary.

In Rhode Island, a 1982 Supreme Court decision (State v. Ibbison) established the Mean High Water (MHW) line as the legal property boundary between public trust and private land. The MHW line is the location where the coastal profile intersects the MHW tidal datum, defined as the arithmetic mean of all high water heights over the 19-year National Tidal Datum Epoch (currently 1983-2001). Seaward of this line, the public can exercise its constitutionally granted shoreline rights, including lateral passage. Landward, private property can be held. In its decision, the court reasoned that the MHW line could be determined with a high degree of certainty and, because it was based on high tide data, would also preserve alongshore access most times, thereby balancing the interests of property owners and the public. However, the decision failed to recognize that coastal processes regularly shift the location of the MHW line and that wave runup limits access to the subaerial beach.

Here we present a record of long-term cross-shore elevation transects from the RI south shore along with monthly tide surveys that together, emphasize the need for new policy consistent with the rights guaranteed in the RI constitution. On the wave-dominated RI south shore, the location of the MHW line changes daily, as wind and waves rearrange the beach profile. The MHW line is always seaward of the last high tide swash or “seaweed line,” with an average offset of 15 – 20 meters. And importantly, the MHW line is underwater for all but a few hours of the day, meaning the public must wade into the ocean to legally walk the shore. These records were included as legislative findings in RI House Bill H8055, which proposes using a recognizable feature for the public's rights and privileges of the shore.