The Public’s Radio — Former assistant R.I. attorney general: ‘White collar vigilantism’ has denied beachgoers public right of way in Westerly
The fenced off and overgrown Spring Avenue Extension in the Weekapaug section of Westerly. PHOTO BY ALEX NUNES - THE PUBLIC'S RADIO
Sep 7, 2021
By Alex Nunes — A special fire district says it owns a contested path to the ocean and that it can block the public from using the trail. Now a retired Rhode Island assistant attorney general has joined shoreline rights activists to try to open the path up to the public.
Head over to the Weekapaug section of Westerly with a beach chair and a copy of an old map, and you’ll be disappointed when you get to what’s commonly known as “Spring Avenue Extension.”
On paper and in old photographs, it might look like a path down to the beach sand and Atlantic Ocean, but today it’s blocked off by a chain link fence and overgrown vegetation. The Weekapaug Fire District, a quasi-municipal entity in the upscale beach community that owns shoreline property and doesn’t directly fight fires, claims that it owns the parcel and has blocked it off to prevent the public from walking through it.
But a retired assistant attorney general for Rhode Island who headed the office’s environmental division for 31 years is now trying to open the path up for public use. The attorney, Michael Rubin, has submitted a legal argument to the state Coastal Resources Management Council, the state body in charge of adjudicating shoreline fights, saying that Spring Avenue Extension is really a public right of way. Rubin says he has uncovered previously overlooked evidence that amounts to a “smoking gun” in the case.
Rubin argues that an April 1939 plat map recorded in Westerly Town Hall with the endorsement of town officials shows the path was accepted by the town as a public right of way. Once it went public, Rubin says, it could never be made private without official proceedings, regardless of the intentions and actions of the Weekapaug Fire District.
In light of all the evidence, Rubin said the fire district’s “opposing argument rests on an omission,” and its ongoing actions to block off the right of way to the public amount to “a campaign of white collar vigilantism.”
“I do believe that this is a land grab,” Rubin said. “This is an egregious land grab on the part of the fire district, and I think the fire district knows better.”
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