For the second year in a row, legislation that would restrict aquaculture along the shores of the Sakonnet River failed to make it out of committee before the Rhode Island General Assembly session adjourned Friday morning.

House bill 5037 was sponsored by Rep. John Edwards (D) of Tiverton. As was the case last year, it was submitted this February at the request of and in cooperation with the Tiverton Town Council.

Though the bill would have banned aquaculture 1,000 feet seaward from the median high tide line along the entire length of the Sakonnet, it was sponsored in response to a plan by Patrick and Sean Bowen of Little Compton, who for three years have been trying to get state approval to operate a one-acre oyster farm off Sapowet Point on Seapowet Avenue in Tiverton. The brothers' application is currently pending before the state Coastal Resources Management Council (CRMC).

Opinions on the Bowens' plan come down in large part to where Sakonnet-area residents live.

Many Tiverton residents, particularly those living in the Seapowet area, strongly oppose the Bowens’ plans. In a resolution supporting the legislation passed by the Tiverton Town Council earlier this year, councilors acknowledged that opposition by referencing public hearings where many have spoken against commercial aquaculture farms in Tiverton’s coastal waters. The council's resolution cited members' beliefs that passage of the legislation is “in the best interests of the residents of the town and will protect its scenic vistas and preserve the use of the Sakonnet River for recreational purposes."

While Tiverton's ruling body opposes the plan, its counterpart in Little Compton earlier this year unanimously passed a resolution in support of the Bowens' plan.

"We support you," councilor Paul Golembeske told the Bowens during a discussion on the council's resolution. "This just strikes me like people who move next to a farm ... and then they realize what's on the ground in the farm and say, 'I don't want to see that.'"

“Quite frankly, I don’t care what Little Compton thinks,” Tiverton town council member John Edwards later said when told of the neighboring town's resolution.

Tiverton appeals to CRMC

Though the legislation is dead this year, Tiverton's efforts to stop the project continue.

At the council's direction, Tiverton Town Administrator Chris Cotta earlier this month drafted a letter to CRMC Executive Director Jeffrey Willis, expressing the town’s objections to the Bowens' plan.

The eight-page letter asks for a “full and complete denial to the applicant for a lease in this particular area due to the excessive recreational conflicts that said lease will create.”

The letter states that the application, if approved, would be detrimental to recreational and commercial stakeholders who use the area extensively. It cites concerns about how the Bowens plan to access the leased area from the shoreline and mentions potential conflicts with local zoning laws.

It also references environmental concerns and points out that state funds spent to date for the acquisition of land was intended “for the enjoyment of all, not just Rhode Islanders, to use the Sapowet Marsh Management Area (SMMA).”

The letter expresses the council’s reservations about legal representation of the CRMC by attorney Anthony DeSisto, who earlier this year was named Little Compton's town solicitor.

The town requested in the letter that CRMC provide, prior to any final vote on the application, “a formal full hearing in the Town of Tiverton, the town that will be most affected by any lease being granted for this application.”

— With reports by Ruth Rasmussen