‘Get off my sand?’: Coastal homeowners sue over shoreline law, but state is prepared to fight – the Providence Journal
Coastal property owners have filed a federal lawsuit to overturn Rhode Island’s new shoreline-access law. The suit claims that the new legislation, which allows the public to use the shoreline up to 10 feet inland of the seaweed line, amounts to an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment. It comes as little surprise: Opponents of the new law, some whom are involved with the suit, had made clear that they intended to challenge it in court…
Can Development Laws Elevate Us Out of Sea Level Rise?
Watch Hill is an old neighborhood, where houses with names like Windridge, Waveland and Sea Swept began to take their positions on the ridge more than 160 years ago…
But Watch Hill’s most implacable foe has always been Mother Nature. In 1938, the Great Hurricane wiped fifty houses off Napatree Point, a finger of land curling into the sound. Today, the village is under the increasingly frequent assault of water coaxed by tidal force or blown in by Nor’easters over streets and parking lots, cutting off access to Napatree and giving the old house names a sardonic twist…