Projo — Champlin's Marina expansion on Block Island struck down by state Supreme Court. Here's why.

An aerial view of Champlin’s Marina on Block Island. The Hummel Report

Oct 14, 2022

By Jim Hummel, The Hummel Report — PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Supreme Court has rejected — for a final time — a proposed marina expansion on Block Island, bringing an end to nearly two decades of hearings and litigation over the controversial project.

The high court, in a highly anticipated 54-page decision released Friday, upheld a 2020 decision by a Superior Court judge that said Champlin’s Marina could not expand its operation into the island’s Great Salt Pond, also known as New Harbor.

And it rejected the validity of a side agreement allowing a scaled-down expansion, agreed to in late 2020 by the marina and the state Coastal Resources Management Council behind closed doors, that left opponents of the project out of the process — and fuming. That back-room deal, as the opponents called it, was the subject of a Hummel Report investigationpublished in The Providence Sunday Journal in February 2021.

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