PROVIDENCE – Citing the need to stop stormwater runoff from entering the city’s waterways, R.I. Attorney General Peter F. Neronha and the R.I. Department of Environmental Management announced Wednesday that the two are taking action to protect the city’s Mashapaug Watershed on the city’s South Side.
Neronha says he has filed a petition with RIDEM stating that the department should address polluted stormwater runoff within the Mashapaug Watershed – which includes Mashapaug, Spectacle, and Tongue ponds that ultimately feed the Roger Williams Park Pond – under the Clean Water Act. The federal act requires certain businesses to treat water before it enters the waterways and authorizes regulating other sources on a case-by-case basis.
Neronha said communities near the ponds that are part of the Mashapaug Watershed have endured “legacy pollution” and disproportionately overburdened by the stormwater runoff’s negative impacts. The ponds, the attorney general said, are surrounded by asphalt and the stormwater runoff caused by it resulted in the ponds becoming severely polluted for many years.
Mashapaug Pond, Neronha said, is listed by RIDEM as “impaired” due to heavy algal growth, dissolved oxygen, polychlorinated biphenyls in fish tissue and fecal coliform. Such pollutants from runoff within the watershed also caused multiple pond closures by the state, Neronha said.
Now, the pending written response by RIDEM to Neronha’s petition by April 30 is slated to introduce a permitting system to address the stormwater runoff situation. This system, Neronha said, will provide runoff management from currently unregulated sources, describe which commercial and industrial properties need to get a permit to address the runoffs and create provisions for mitigation plans for newly regulated properties.
Mitigation plans could include parking lot sweeping, reducing pavement, planting trees or utilizing pervious pavement, Neronha said. In a statement, he said the untreated runoff entering these ponds is an issue “we cannot afford to overlook any longer.”
“Pollution from stormwater runoff and the issues that flow from it are familiar to many Rhode Islanders who are too-often restricted from enjoying their local natural resources,” Neronha said. “Accordingly, it has become plain to me that if we had not taken the action we are taking today, these ponds, their flora and fauna, and more importantly the health and wellness of Rhode Islanders within this community, will continue to deteriorate.”
RIDEM Director Terry Gray said in a statement that stormwater issues within urban areas are “more immediate” because of the high percentage of impervious surfaces located near those ponds. He said this petition is a “taking a major step” toward cleaning up these urban waterbodies.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.