Taylor Swift has three homes. One is a "modest" four bed, four bath cottage-style house in Beverly Hills that sits on 1.5 acres. Another, her main residence, is a penthouse in downtown Nashville. The third is a beachside mansion on the coast of Rhode Island that she bought this year for $17.7 million in cash. People there hate it.

Swift's Rhode Island home abuts a public beach in the town of Watch Hill. But of course, a celebrity's idea of "public" and the public's idea of "public" are often very different, and Watch Hill locals were already complaining this summer about Swift's presence there. Apparently Swift has security guards perched everywhere, and as security guards tend to be, they aren't especially friendly. Also tourists flood the once serene beach in hopes of catching a glimpse of the singer.

So now Taylor Swift is building a wall. She is building a wall out of boulder-sized rocks that are being pulled from the ocean via cranes while also adding a rock sea wall to the property, which is still a public beach in theory. David Collins, a reporter for The Day in Connecticut, tried to hunt down permits for the project at town hall but encountered a bureaucratic labyrinth that seemed to end only in the types of privileges afforded to someone who can buy an $18 million home in cash.

For instance, a permit fee for that type of construction in Watch Hill would typically call for the holder to pay the town $7 per thousand dollars spent. Swift, who did not have to acquire said permit, is spending — per the estimation of Building Official David Murphy — multiple millions of dollars on her wall.

Soon the project will be done, likely by the time Swift migrates north to escape the sweltering heat of the South. She will have a beautiful little slice of beach all to herself where she'll conceptualize a bunch of really good songs. The people of Watch Hill will go some place else, at least until some other rich person decides that this sounds like a great idea.

[via The Day]