State officials compiled a long list of concerns over building a new cottage on the shrub-covered, beachfront property in the tony Quonochontaug summer colony. Waves frequently wash over the lot. It is “geologically active” with sands moving back and forth. The state coastal council rejected a building application from another family in 1995.

Despite all that, a Connecticut couple asked the Coastal Resources Management Council to consider letting them build a summer home on the lot on Surfside Avenue that the Town of Charlestown values at nearly $1.2 million.

Their lawyer and two consultants spent more than two hours arguing their case before the CRMC Tuesday night, providing a sure sign that the lure of waterfront living continues despite growing concerns about worsening hurricanes, eroding beaches and rising sea levels. The council ultimately decided not to accept the application.

The CRMC also had been scheduled to consider an application from three families seeking to protect their historic oceanfront houses several miles to the east in Matunuck from storm waves brought perilously close by a rapidly eroding shoreline.

The families want permission to build a 130x-by-20-foot cobble-filled sea wall to protect their homes, which are on the National Historic Register. The beach once stretched hundreds of feet to the south, but now waves break just 20 or 30 feet away. State policy prohibits such structures and state engineers recommended against it, saying it won’t stand up to storm waves or stop the beach from eroding from either end. The families got a continuance to a later hearing date.

As for the Quonochontaug application, CRMC Executive Director Grover Fugate said he would not approve it because of a legal principal used in Rhode Island and few other states.

Fugate said he rejected the application because of the Doctrine of Administrative Finality, which allows the state to refuse to reconsider a case unless it has been materially changed.

In 1995, the CRMC’s full council turned town a building application requested by another family. Fugate said there was substantial neighborhood opposition,

CRMC lawyer Brian Goldman said he did not believe that the presence of new owners, Kevin and Erin Kulak of Darien, Ct., was sufficient to allow the case to be reopened. “The change has to go to the root reason for why the application was denied in the first place,” said Goldman. “A new owner is not enough.”

Sean Coffey, an attorney representing Richard Campbell, a neighbor, said the first case went on for three years. Neighbors, he said, shouldn’t have to worry that the same cases will come back again and again.

Attorney Elizabeth M. Noonan, representing the Kulaks, presented an engineer, Richard Lipsitz, and a biologist, Scott P. Rabideau, to argue that they made substantial changes to the Kulak’s application.

They said they designed a smaller house, moved its proposed location several feet further back from the beach and designed an advanced septic system. The Kulaks also asked the town for permission to locate the house closer to the road and further from the beach, but they were denied.

Noonan argued that she has met three times with CRMC staffers and submitted three different applications, yet it still wasn’t clear to her what Fugate would find acceptable.

“This is an issue of fundamental fairness,” Noonan said. “This is a separate applicant and a different time. This is a buildable lot. A house has to go there.”

W. Michael Sullivan, director of the state Department of Environmental Management and a council member, moved to support Fugate’s refusal to accept the application. He said the lot is subject to storm surges. It’s in a critical resource area. Its septic system can increase nutrient loading of nearby waters. And the proposed structure is “essentially the same” as the one considered 14 years ago.

The council agreed unanimously.

Noonan said Wednesday she and her client have not decided what to do next.

plord@projo.com