07/03/10 - Competing expansion plans for Champlin’s Marina were dissected Friday June 25 at Narragansett Town Hall during the latest in a string of hearings before the Rhode Island Coastal Resource Management Council.

Champlin’s attorney Robert Goldberg pushed for a plan previously endorsed by a CRMC subcommittee that would allow the marina to expand 170 feet into the Great Salt Pond, while R. Daniel Prentiss, lawyer for the town, the Block Island Land Trust, the Block Island Conservancy and The Committee for the Great Salt Pond noted, “the council is not obligated to permit any expansion whatever.”

A third, and perhaps final, hearing will be held July 15 in Narragansett.

The CRMC began considering the Champlin’s expansion in 2003.

The current hearings were ordered by the Rhode Island Supreme Court, following the marina’s Superior Court appeal of the CRMC rejection of the expansion plan. The Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the marina and allowed an expansion that mirrored the subcommittee’s recommendation. The expansion opponents then succeeded in reversing that order in the state Supreme Court.

The court directed the CRMC to examine the CRMC staff’s creation of the so-called Goulet Plan. CRMC executive director Grover Fugate ordered CRMC Dredge Coordinator Danni Goulet to prepare the plan as a possible compromise between the Town of New Shoreham, environmental groups and the marina. The general idea, Fugate testified, was “an expansion, but maybe not what was proposed.”

The marina had originally sought a 4-acre expansion, 240 feet into the Great Salt Pond.

Goulet’s plan called for a 100-foot dock extension producing a wider navigation channel north of the marina, but forcing dredging of a shoreline area northwest of the marina.

CRMC Vice Chair Paul Lemont tried to limit Friday’s hearing to an investigation of Goulet’s plan, but attorneys Goldberg and Prentiss both questioned witnesses in a manner designed to emphasize their positions on the expansion.

“If you’re looking about protecting the pond,” said Goldberg in an interview following the hearing, “the subcommittee plan is far superior.” While questioning Fugate, Goldberg stressed that the 170 foot subcommittee plan included deeper water, thus diluting the polluting effects of gray water discharges from boats. It also has only one drawback, he contends, a tight navigation channel for 100-foot boats.

The Goulet plan calls for expansion into shallower water, increasing gray water pollution concentrations, Goldberg argued, and disrupting current shellfishing and bumper boat use areas.

Signaling a possible future legal challenge, Prentiss warned that if the CRMC approves any plan other than Champlin’s original proposal, the marina would need a new water quality certification from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. Lemont didn’t like that angle, stating “Where I think you are headed is a review of the water quality certification, and I don’t want to go there.” Nevertheless, a few minutes later, Prentiss succeeded in getting Angelo Liberti, DEM chief of surface water protection, to testify that the Champlin’s water quality certification, which allows 300 boats in the expansion area, would not apply to a revised plan. If the revised plan covered a reduced volume of pond water, Liberti testified, the number of allowable boats would have to be reduced.

Later in testimony, Fugate agreed, “If there was a change in the perimeter of those lines [of the marina expansion], that would require a new analysis by DEM.”

Prentiss tried to question Liberti about the formula used to determine the water quality harm done by marina expansion plans, but Goldberg objected and Lemont stopped the questioning because it was not related to the creation of the Goulet plan, much to Prentiss’s chagrin.

Goulet will return to testify at the third hearing. Prentiss and Goldberg said they have no plans to call additional witnesses, so a decision from the seven-member council could come after the July 15 hearing. The seven-member council could either approve an expansion plan or reject all expansion proposals, Fugate testified, “It’s their choice.”