Owning a home near the water isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. At least not for Linda Perri, who lives a mile west of the Providence River.
She’s not close enough to see the river from her windows. Even if she were, all she’d see are the mountains of scrap metal and tarp-covered salt piles lining Allens Avenue on the riverfront.
Rumbling trucks and beeping cranes are the soundtrack of her days. Chemical fumes often waft in windows that are left open.
“It’s that kind of noxious, industrial oily smell,” Perri said. “Some days it just hangs in the air forever.”
For generations, manufacturing and marine companies have staked their claim along a 2-mile stretch of the river in Providence, drawn by the 40-foot-deep shipping channel and access to rail lines, highways and the city itself. The companies say it’s the perfect spot – in many cases, the only spot – to run their businesses, and the city has encouraged them with a special zoning designation for maritime and industrial uses.
But new attention on health, environment and racial justice issues has ignited conflict between companies and their residential neighbors.
Critics say the companies are dangerous polluters, and they want them out. Businesses say the city zoning ordinance welcomes them in and the jobs they create are vital to the economy.
Meanwhile, changes are coming to Providence City Hall, both in the open mayoral race this fall and a once-a-decade review of the city’s Comprehensive Plan that began this spring. A revised plan must be adopted by the City Council by 2025.
Community activists and some city officials see a chance to chart a new course for the Allens Avenue area not just as an industrial hub but as a place to live, shop and gather in community spaces.
“Our comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance are not static documents,” said Bonnie Nickerson, the city planning director. “They need to change and evolve as conditions change. Over the past decade, conditions have changed really dramatically.”
‘NEVER THE SAME’
Indeed, few were talking about pollution more than a century ago. The neighborhood now known as Washington Park that sits southwest of the working waterfront was mostly open land until the late 1800s. Even as houses started going up, people accepted the blight as part of industrial-era, city living.
Now the scars of heavy industry riddle the waterfront, from the abandoned freight tracks running along Allens Avenue to the contaminated soil throughout the area.
The same mess that makes residents complain is, in part, why companies like it.
They don’t have to contend with the complicated process of rezoning or win over the people who live in the 3,700 homes within a mile radius. The “W3” zone covering the area makes it easy to set up shop – and it hasn’t been changed since it was created 30 years ago, according to Timothy Rondeau, a city Planning Department spokesman.
That doesn’t mean there haven’t been attempts at major changes.
One of three “cities” in the late Providence Mayor Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr.’s 1999 Three Cities Plan was a commercial waterfront. A decade later, developer Patrick T. Conley unveiled a $300 million proposal for Allens Avenue, complete with a 300-room hotel and 400-slip marina. But Cianci’s plans never made it beyond the page, and Conley’s proposal was killed by the city ordinance committee, which in 2007 rejected the rezoning needed to make his vision a reality.
But advocates aren’t letting past failures stop them, especially with changing attitudes toward pollution and the ties between health, race and wealth.
State health data links high rates of asthma to the predominantly low-income and minority populations who live just west of the city waterfront, fueling the wave of racial reconciliation that includes links between skin color, income and health.
Perri, who has lived in Washington Park for 40 years, says she used to be able to walk to the waterfront and take the ferry to Newport, stopping for a snack at the first-floor bakery on Conley’s property.
The arrival of a nightclub in the neighborhood in 2012 brought violence, including a shooting in the parking lot. “All of a sudden, the dynamic of Washington Park changed,” Perri said. “It was never the same.”
Perri started the Washington Park Association, and soon another battle emerged as the industrial sights, smells and sounds of the working waterfront intensified.
[caption id="attachment_405707" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
GROWING INDUSTRY: A pile of scrap metal at Sims Metal Management Ltd. on Allens Avenue in Providence sits next to the building once owned by developer Patrick T. Conley. Sims took ownership of the building as part of the settlement of a six-year legal battle with Conley over the metal recycler’s activities. / PBN PHOTO/WILLIAM HAMILTON[/caption]
Among the offenders, to Perri, is Sims Metal Management Ltd. The global scrap metal company bought 9 acres on the river along Allens Avenue from Promet Marine Services Inc. in 2011. Piles of scrap metal appeared, Perri says. There was clanging and banging of recycling all day and sometimes at night, and a metallic smell that upset residents.
Conley had already spent $8 million in renovations on property next to Promet Marine, rehabbing an industrial warehouse into artist studios and sprucing up the dock to welcome cruise ships and a high-speed ferry to Newport. But to complete the $300 million plan for Providence Piers, he needed a zoning change from industrial to mixed use. That effort died before the ordinance committee.
Sims’ arrival was the nail in the coffin, Conley says.
Through his company Providence Piers, he sued Sims in federal court, alleging the metal recycler’s activities damaged his building and that pollution caused his retail tenants to flee. Sims paid $3.9 million to settle and take ownership of the building after a six-year legal battle.
“They blew me off the waterfront,” Conley said.
WINS AND LOSSES
Sims is not the only business to face scrutiny. And sometimes, public sentiment prevails.
In 2020, a company proposed a waste transfer station at Thurbers and Allens avenues. The application was withdrawn when neighbors protested.
And in 2021, neighborhood activists scored a win when the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council designated a public right of way on the waterfront at Public Street. The dead-end street off Allens Avenue had been blocked by abutting businesses despite having been recorded as a public access point.
In other instances, the companies won. In 2018, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved National Grid LNG LLC to build a natural gas processing plant at the southern end of the working waterfront, a defeat for neighbors such as Monica Huertas, who had formed the group No LNG in PVD.
The group has since been renamed People’s Port Authority, and Huertas says she is still fighting a “whack-a-mole” game against companies she believes are making people sick.
Her claims are anecdotal, but some health experts see a link between the industrial waterfront and health conditions of residents.
[caption id="attachment_405708" align="alignright" width="300"]
HEALTH FACTOR: Dr. Andrew Saal, chief medical officer for Providence Community Health Centers, says the asthma rates of patients are higher at the agency’s clinic near the Providence waterfront than at other locations. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
Dr. Andrew Saal, chief medical officer for Providence Community Health Centers, which has a clinic on Allens Avenue, describes burning eyes and chronic coughs that clinic staff and patients experience. Compared with its other locations, even those also in lower-income and high-traffic areas, the Chafee Center near the port has twice the rate of asthma among its patients, he says.
“There’s something about living in Washington Park and South Providence that’s directly connected to the environment there,” he said.
Three of Huertas’ four children have asthma, she says. Anytime Huertas opens her windows, she says she smells gas and tar from the port a quarter-mile away. Even on summer days, she rarely sees neighborhood children playing outside.
ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
The businesses argue that there are big benefits to their presence, for both the city and state.
“Ports unlock a huge value to the surrounding economy, way more than a condo,” said Christopher Hunter, executive director for the Providence Working Waterfront Alliance Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group of nine businesses along the waterfront side of Allens Avenue.
A 2008 report commissioned by the alliance estimated the Allens Avenue waterfront businesses accounted for $324 million in “business output” and more than 700 jobs statewide. More recent data is not available.
That estimate did not include ProvPort Inc., a nonprofit that owns and manages a 115-acre section of waterfront for industrial uses, but millions of dollars are also being invested for expansions and new operations within ProvPort, too.
Danish wind developer Orsted A/S and partner Eversource Energy recently constructed a 10,000-square-foot building in ProvPort to build wind turbine foundations. The project is part of a larger $40 million commitment to upgrade ports in Rhode Island.
“That’s a huge opportunity for the Port of Providence at large,” said Chris Waterson, general manager at Waterson Terminal Services LLC, which manages ProvPort. “We really see offshore wind as the future of this port.”
[caption id="attachment_405709" align="aligncenter" width="1024"]
NEW ADDITION Chris Waterson, general manager for Waterson Terminal Services LLC, which manages ProvPort Inc. in Providence, stands in front of the Orsted A/S facility that will build parts for wind turbines. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
Rejecting the growth plans of the waterfront companies means risking the economic benefits they bring while ignoring the city’s zoning rules for the area, says Nicholas Hemond, an attorney for Sea 3 Providence LLC.
“The comprehensive plan speaks to the Port of Providence as the industrial and maritime economic engine,” Hemond said.
Sea 3 is the latest company facing public backlash amid plans for a $20 million expansion of its portside propane storage terminal. Last year, the company sought permission from regulators to bypass the typical review process on a proposal to add tanks with a capacity of 540,000 gallons.
The R.I. Energy Facility Siting Board denied that bypass in April. Hemond did not say whether Sea 3 will continue to pursue the expansion.
Meanwhile, the Providence City Council voted to ban bulk storage of liquid propane gas citywide. The ordinance, introduced by Councilman Pedro Espinal, was driven by Sea 3’s expansion plans but may not stop them since they had filed those plans prior to the ordinance passing.
Since his election in 2019, Espinal has taken a stand against what he sees as businesses taking advantage of his neighborhood.
“The general belief out there is if you don’t want it in your community, you bring it to south Providence,” he said. “If this was somewhere else in the city, it would probably have never escalated to the point that it did.”
Increasingly, fellow city leaders are backing him. The council vote on the LPG ban was unanimous. Espinal sees it as a sign that the political will to change the waterfront is growing. He’d like to see more housing and wind energy companies.
But political will means nothing if the city doesn’t change its planning and zoning guidelines. Already, the LPG ban prompted a lawsuit by Sea 3, which alleged that the ban violates the city’s Comprehensive Plan and that Sea 3 has the right to operate and expand.
CONFLICTING VIEWPOINTS
There’s no obvious answer on how to ease the friction.
While Nickerson says there is a need to adapt to the evolving mindsets along the waterfront, she didn’t say what she thinks the city should do, instead suggesting a few options.
One idea: keep the zoning as is but add more conditions on uses through ordinances that could mandate companies offset their harms through pollution limits or donations to community health services. Another option: give the area a new zoning label that allows for a broader array of commercial, retail and residential uses.
Mayor Jorge O. Elorza, who campaigned on preserving Providence’s working waterfront, appears to have changed his tune, at least for the strip of waterfront-facing properties along Allens Avenue. He says he’s open to a new kind of vision for the waterfront, agreeing with community concerns about the environmental and health problems those “unsightly” businesses have caused for nearby residents.
Because he’s term-limited and can’t run for reelection, Elorza notes he has not taken a lead role in the review of the city’s Comprehensive Plan that began this spring.
Still, he stresses the importance of separating the northern section of the Allens Avenue waterfront area from the land within ProvPort, which has not been plagued by the same public scrutiny, according to Elorza. ProvPort has also played a key role in the growing offshore wind industry with the recent completion of the wind turbine manufacturing facility by Orsted A/S and Eversource.
“In the time I have been in office, ProvPort has thrived,” Elorza said. “Without hyperbole, it’s what’s helped give rise to an entire offshore wind industry in the United States.”
As compelling as economic development is, sick workers and frequent emergency room visits for children with asthma have financial consequences, too.
“A healthy economy needs a healthy workforce,” Saal said. “If you don’t play by the rules, if you make the environment dirty, sooner or later, the taxpayer will pay.”
Playing by the rules means more than following city zoning laws. There are also state and federal health and environmental regulations, which some companies repeatedly break.
Rhode Island Recycled Metals LLC, an Allens Avenue scrap yard, has been cited by the R.I. Department of Environmental Management multiple times for problems, including missing permits, and stormwater runoff and oil leaks spilling into the river.
Sims paid a small fine for missing permits at its Providence site in 2012. Then in 2020, the company reached an $875,000 settlement over air pollution at its Johnston shredding site. It was the largest penalty paid for Clean Air Act violations in state history, according to the R.I. Office of the Attorney General.
Another Allens Avenue company, Sprague Operating Resources LLC, has faced warnings and fines from DEM for smells from its liquid asphalt storage tanks.
The companies did not respond to inquiries for comment for this story.
Brett Smiley, a Providence mayoral candidate, said ramping up lawsuits and fines can put pressure on these “bad actors” to abandon their port locations.
“When they realize it’s not going to be business as usual, it’s going to be more and more appealing to sell,” he said.
Smiley isn’t looking to rezone the port, but he envisions it filled with offshore wind and other renewable energy companies rather than “salt piles and scrapyards.”
While open land along the waterfront has been scarce, 6.3 acres between ProvPort and Johnson & Wales University are now available for development after being purchased by R.I. Commerce Corp. in November. State officials say the expanded ProvPort area will be used in part for offshore wind companies.
At least one city leader is open to something else.
City Councilwoman Nirva LaFortune, who is also running for mayor, said she would like to see more mixed-use development and affordable housing in that area.
LaFortune acknowledges that converting properties that once housed oil tanks and metal shredding equipment into homes or shops requires a lot of work and money, including environmental cleanup.
Such a change would be irreversible, according to Hunter.
“A cucumber can become a pickle, but a pickle can’t go back to being a cucumber,” he said. “If you were ever to change the zoning … you will never get that industrial asset back.”
Mayoral candidates Gonzalo Cuervo and Michael Solomon did not return requests for comment.
As for Perri, she’s still fighting for a greener waterfront. Her latest project: turning blighted property that would have housed the waste transfer station near Allens and Thurbers avenues into a community solar array.
“If we start to clear it up and turn it green, the next thing you know, we could have some West Coast company putting a fish hatchery there,” she said. “I think if we promote that stuff, the green industry will follow our lead.”
Nancy Lavin is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Lavin@PBN.com.
