By Savana Dunning — With little warning, Clean Ocean Access, the nonprofit agency that has cleaned up Aquidneck Island beaches for nearly a decade, announced that it will dissolve.

Clean Ocean Access (COA), a nonprofit organization with the vision of A Clean,

Healthy Ocean that is Accessible to All in its 10 year anniversary has made the difficult decision to dissolve the organization.

By James Merolla — When is a public right-of-way to the shore not a right-of-way? When, over time, it has been impeded, overgrown, sits on or near private property, or becomes unsafe.

By Savana Dunning — A viral video confrontation between a Middletown property owner and a Newport resident trying to access a public right of way has generated over 6 million views on TikTok, sparking social media interest and conversation about public access to the shoreline.

By Cynthia Drummond — … An issue that has elicited some of the strongest public engagement in Rhode Island in recent years, access to the shoreline in coastal towns, including Westerly, has been the subject of in-depth coverage by ecoRI News.

By Christopher Allen — … The right of access to the shoreline is enshrined in the state’s constitution. But the definition of “access” is less clearly defined, as many people feel these rights-ofway do not include adequate parking for visitors.

By Frank Carini — The seed that became a nonprofit ocean advocacy group was planted on a cold January day in 2006, when Dave McLaughlin…

By Bob Curley — Often overlooked, rights-of-way offer easy access to Aquidneck’s captivating coastline…

Rep. Terri Cortvriend (D-Dist. 72, Portsmouth, Middletown) and House Minority Leader Blake A. Filippi have proposed legislation (2020-H 7755) that takes a different route to finally secure the public’s constitutionally guaranteed shoreline rights.

ABSTRACT — In order to ensure access to the coast for residents and visitors to Narragansett Bay, Save The Bay identified the finalization of a GIS dataset of State-designated rights-of-way (ROW) as a strategic objective for the organization over the past year…