As 2022 comes to a close, some of Block Island’s biggest news stories will also go the way of the calendar and some will stick around well into the new year, and perhaps, beyond.This year, islanders closed the books on the Champlin’s Marina expansion as after almost 20 years the Rhode Island Supreme Court made a final ruling on the matter that effectively denied the expansion. But Champlin’s wasn’t the biggest story of 2022 although many would consider it the most important.By page view counts on The Block Island Times website, the biggest story of 2022 was of course about Ballard’s Beach Resort and the events surrounding that venue’s annual Reggae Fest that this year took place on the Rhode Island state holiday of Victory Day, Monday, August 8. Our story “Melee on Block Island ferry causes Mass Casualty Incident Response” garnered 20,332 views.The melee in question happened on one of the ferries attempting to get hordes of concertgoers and other island visitors back to the mainland after the all-day music festival at Ballard’s where crowds trampled fences in order to get into the already over-crowded event by bypassing the front doors. Frustrated festival goers and others waited
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