Oyster farmers vie with recreational users
This series is supported by the Pulitzer Center and the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Aquaculture Farmers and Recreational Users Tussle for Space Along Rhode Island’s Crowded Coastline
August 21, 2021
A paddleboarder on the Sakonnet River in Tiverton passes near an area that could host a nearly 1-acre aquaculture operation. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News)
By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff
TIVERTON, R.I. — The Ocean State’s coastal areas and its salt
ponds are some of the most popular, crowded and treasured spots in
the state. They are recreational havens, economic drivers and food
suppliers.
Green Hill, Ninigret, Point Judith, Potter, Quonochontaug and
Winnapaug ponds run along Rhode Island’s southern coast. These
ponds are coastal lagoons with shallow water that are separated
from the open ocean by a natural barrier, creating a protected
environment that hosts an assortment of wildlife and myriad
activities. On any given day, especially in the summer, you can find
people boating, swimming, paddling, tubing, kite surfing, fishing
and birding.
These ponds, as well as areas like the Sakonnet River and
Nanaquaket Pond in Tiverton, have also become desired locations
for aquaculture. These operations are particularly suited for salt
ponds and coastal areas, because of shallower water, a longer
growing season and easier access.
Eighty-one Rhode Island aquaculture operations take up 339.08 acres of coastal waters. (Rod Hudson/Roger Williams University)
Rhode Island’s aquaculture industry has steadily been on the rise for
the past two-plus decades. From 1996 to 2019, the number of
aquaculture farms in Rhode Island increased from six to 81 and the
amount of space they occupy, from less than 20 acres to nearly 340,
according to information presented by Rod Hudson, a shellfish
hatchery manager and adjunct professor at Roger Williams
University, during an aquaculture discussion Aug. 12 at Tiverton
Public Library. The event was organized by Rep. Michelle McGaw, a
Democrat who represents Little Compton, Portsmouth and
Tiverton.
And while the general sentiment across the state, including by many
who use the same waters to play, is that aquaculture is good for the
local economy and environment — oysters like other bivalves filter
water and remove excess nutrients such as nitrogen; the farming
and harvesting of shellfish doesn’t require antibiotics and fertilizers;
a small oyster farm can clean as much as 100 million gallons of
water daily — resistance has become strong. Concerns have been
raised that this intensifying interest in marine farming is eroding
the proper management of aquaculture farm leases.
The Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC) is the agency
responsible for managing aquaculture leases. Under CRMC
regulations, a maximum of 5 percent of a pond’s water surface area
can be used for commercial aquaculture.
The application process includes site visits by the Rhode Island
Department of Environmental Management (DEM), the Army
Corps of Engineers and the Rhode Island Historical Preservation &
Heritage Commission. The application is also given a 30-day public
notice period. This review determines if the proposal will be met
with conflict, and the application is either approved or denied by
CRMC’s aquaculture coordinator before the project is voted on by
the 10-member board.
The agency’s current aquaculture coordinator, Benjamin Goetsch,
told the Tiverton Harbor & Coastal Waters Management
Commission at a meeting in March that CRMC doesn’t tell
aquaculture applicants where to put their projects, saying the review
process is designed to determine if a chosen site can accommodate
such an operation.
The regulations and the application process are meant to provide
structure for a growing industry, but it is Rhode Island General Law
20-10-1 that sets the foundation.
“It is in the best public interest of the people and the state that the
land and waters of the state are utilized properly and effectively to
produce plant and animal life,” according to state law. “The process
of aquaculture should only be conducted within the waters of the
state in a manner consistent with the best public interest.”
But what is in the public’s best interest is a matter of opinion.
Aquaculture expansion is certainly positive, as the state is bringing
back an industry that had its last boom at the turn of the 20th
century. Tourism, recreation and commercial fishing are also
important to the Ocean State, but when boaters, abutters and
fishermen have less access to coastal waters, tensions build.
Coastal property owners, recreational water users, anglers,
waterfowl hunters, aquaculture operators and state officials are
grappling with how to navigate their way through a complicated
situation involving a shared resource.
With Rhode Island’s aquaculture footprint growing, CRMC, during
its ongoing effort to develop a Narragansett Bay Special Area
Management Plan, “is holding robust discussions with an
aquaculture working group and is looking hard at all of the
processes involved in notifying, reviewing and deciding upon
aquaculture applications for our public trust waters.”
Aquaculture can be a growing business if sites are chosen well,
according to the Rhode Island Shellfisherman’s Association.
The East Coast Shellfish Growers Association recommends that
growers, “Make a best effort to communicate early and openly with
water-based and land-based neighbors about any facet of their
operation which might affect them.”
While Rhode Island’s main aquaculture crop is oysters, farmers are also raising hard-shell clams, mussels and seaweed. (istock)
User conflicts
Aquaculture projects proposed for the Sakonnet River in Tiverton
have galvanized residents. Neighbors claim they did not hear about
the two projects until they were well along in the CRMC approval
process. This lack of transparency, they say, has made an alreadycontentious
situation more problematic. They say the state’s
notification process is lacking, ignores abutters and other water
users, and needs to be revamped.
However, unlike municipal zoning and local land-use issues,
abutters are not required to be notified by CRMC or DEM of
aquaculture operations proposed for state waters.
Kenneth Mendez, who has owned a home on Sapowet Marsh for the
past three years, is among those concerned about plans to put more
oyster cages in a Tiverton waterbody popular with the public. Two
existing aquaculture operations on the eastern shoreline of the
Sakonnet River take up about 5.5 acres in Tiverton’s riparian waters.
In a June 11 email to the DEM director, Mendez expressed concern
that there is a lack of public notice when it comes to hearings
associated with aquaculture projects. He said this lack of
notification can potentially impact the outcome of important votes.
CRMC noted it has created an online listserve for anyone who
wants to be notified of any activities related to Rhode Island
aquaculture. The agency also has a webpage devoted to the industry.
To address residents’ concerns, the Tiverton Town Council recently
directed the town solicitor to look over a proposed resolution that,
if passed locally and sent to the General Assembly, could give
residents more time to respond to aquaculture proposals than state
regulations currently require.
The resolution was reportedly put on the agenda by council
member Jay Edwards. He has expressed concern about the way
CRMC has dealt with the aquaculture farms proposed to the north
and south of Sapowet Point on the Sakonnet River.
The proposed Bowen oyster farm plan — the one south of Sapowet
Point and near where Sapowet Marsh empties into the Sakonnet
River — was submitted by Little Compton brothers Patrick and
Sean Bowen. Their application seeks CRMC permission to
submerge up to 200 oysters cages in a 0.95-acre area 285 feet
offshore.
The farm would be the Bowens’ first dabble at running an
aquaculture operation. Patrick, who teaches at the Diman Regional
Vocational Technical High School in Fall River, Mass., and Sean,
who is the aquaculture coordinator and composting coordinator for
the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources, told
ecoRI News the operation would start small, with 30-40 cages.
Perhaps in five years the farm would ramp up to the maximum 200
cages, they said.
As for claims the public wasn’t made adequately aware of the
project, the lifelong Rhode Islanders said seven public hearings have
been held on their proposal, the comment period was extended by
15 days and their application has been posted on the websites of
CRMC and the town of Tiverton. The brothers noted they have
changed the farm’s plan three times to address residents’ concerns.
A group of Tiverton residents and others who use local waterways for recreation have come out against aquaculture operations proposed for the Sapowet Marsh Wildlife Management Area of the Sakonnet River. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News)
The Bowen aquaculture plan was originally filed in December 2019
and was expected to come to a CRMC board vote in June, but
pushback from opponents, including Mendez, Rick Metcalf, Clint
Clemens and Donald Libbey, delayed the process.
The project’s opponents have since launched a website and posted
signs up and down Seapowet Avenue urging the preservation of
access rights to the popular waterway.
Mendez, who regularly fishes for stripers and blues in the area
where the Bowens’ oyster cages would be submerged, told ecoRI
News the farm would encroach on a public trust.
Metcalf, an avid Sakonnet River kayaker whose property overlooks
the area where the Bowens have proposed their aquaculture
operation, said DEM’s nearby Sapowet Marsh Wildlife Management
Area parking lots are packed Saturdays and Sundays with people
boating, fishing and swimming in the tidal waters behind his house.
In a June 22 email to CRMC about the two Sakonnet River
aquaculture projects, Libbey, a Neck Road resident, wrote that while
“we can appreciate that this use seems compatible with the area, it is
not.” He said both locations are heavily used by recreational boaters,
swimmers and anglers and their free flow of navigation would be
interrupted by the aquaculture operations.
In another late-June email to CRMC, in regards to the Bowen
aquaculture proposal, Peter Jenkins, owner of a Middletown-based
saltwater fishing store and a member of the Rhode Island Saltwater
Anglers Association’s Access Committee, wrote that the proposed
site would “unreasonably interfere with, impair, and significantly
impact existing use of tidal waters. There are few waters in Rhode
Island that are as safe and as accessible as this area for recreational
anglers who wade fish.”
Sean Bowen, who graduated from Unity College in Maine with a
degree in sustainable aquaculture, called the claims the operation
would interfere with recreational uses misleading. He noted the 16-
inch-high cages would be submerged, four buoys would mark the
farm’s perimeter and the cages would be placed in rows of 10, with
25 feet between each row. He said kayaks and paddleboards would
be able to pass over the cages. He said there would still be plenty of
room to fish.
“We want a low-profile operation with a low-carbon footprint,”
Patrick Bowen said. “We want to be invisible.”
Tiverton resident Will Miranda is concerned about the impact the
growing number of Rhode Island aquaculture operations are having
on commercial fishing. While not a commercial fisherman himself,
his father and other family members are, and he believes
aquaculture farms can make valuable fishing and wild shellfishing
areas inaccessible.
“They’re going up everywhere and anywhere,” he said. “We need to
find suitable places to put them, but it seems like there is no plan for
where they can be put. They should be going in places that have
minimal impacts on the community.”
Miranda is also a kite surfer, but the 38-year-old doesn’t believe
aquaculture, at least when it comes to his recreational use of salt
ponds and coastal areas, hinders his enjoyment.
“I could get tangled up in cages and buoys and fall, but that’s my
problem,” he said. “That’s on me.” He said floating cages are the
bigger problem for a kiteboarder.
The New England chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers has
said the impacts to hunters’ use of the Sapowet Marsh area have not
been acknowledged, considered or addressed.
The Boehringer aquaculture application, submitted in January by
Wakefield residents Brad Boehringer and Travis Lundgren, requests
the use of floating and submerged gear to raise oysters and scallops
in a nearly 3-acre site north of Sapowet Point.
A similar situation is playing out in South Kingstown, where a
proposed 3-acre expansion of an aquaculture operation in Potter
Pond’s Segar Cove has received pushback. Neighbors are concerned
the project would effectively privatize more of the pond and further
limit public access. Potter Pond currently features about 9 acres of
aquaculture.
Like in Tiverton, opponents have created a website, made CRMC
aware of their disapproval and hired attorneys.
The Sakonnet River applications are currently under review and
therefore CRMC can’t comment on them directly, according to
Laura Dwyer, the agency’s public educator and information
coordinator.
She noted the Potter Pond project still needs to go before the CRMC
board for consideration. In an early August email, she said the
board is waiting on scheduling and a written recommendation from
a subcommittee.
“Regarding aquaculture generally, the CRMC has always sought to
balance the many uses of our coastal ponds and Narragansett Bay,
of which aquaculture is one,” Dwyer wrote. “However, CRMC
evaluates each application it receives on its own merits, and also
considers what the impacts of these proposed activities may be with
the many recreational, commercial, and other uses and users of the
state’s Public Trust waters.”
No one at CRMC was made available to speak about the growing
demands being put on Rhode Island’s salt ponds and coastal areas
and how this space is being managed. The next CRMC board
meeting is scheduled for Aug. 24.