When Liz Camp, a resident of the Reservoir Triangle neighborhood, heard that developers wanted to build over two dozen townhouses on an open plot of land near Mashapaug Pond, she knew she had had to do something to halt the construction. After years of campaigning, when the governor’s office told Camp that her persistence was driving them crazy, she knew that “something” was finally working.
In the fall of 1990, a developer had purchased 4.6 acres of land on the southwest side of Mashapaug Pond that had previously been preserved as open space. With plans to build twenty-five new homes and lay two new streets, Reservoir Triangle residents worried the construction would “ruin the community” and cause traffic problems. “We want[ed] this space to be open space,” Liz Camp recalled. “We want[ed] the city to buy the property or the state to buy the property. And we want[ed] it to be open spaces. So, we became activists, neighborhood activists.”
Generating any sort of grassroots change in the neighborhood, let alone creating a new park, seemed impossible in the early 1990s. One Reservoir Triangle resident told a Providence Journal reporter that at a city hall meeting, none of the officials had even heard of their neighborhood. A newspaper article mockingly described residents’ vision for the area as “floating a dream of a clean Mashapaug Pond.”
Reservoir Triangle homeowners persisted. Meeting in one another’s living rooms, they organized calling campaigns and discussed strategies for making their voices heard. The Mashapaug Pond Action Committee was born.
After a long battle against the local government and frustrating political inaction, the Reservoir Triangle residents succeeded. The city finally bought the land from the developer, guaranteeing its preservation as public space. In 1994, after the city solicited input from residents regarding how they would like the space to be used, Murphy-Trainor Park was built on the land saved by the Mashapaug Pond Action Committee.
Murphy-Trainor Park is now one of three open, public spaces around Mashapaug Pond. And continued public pressure from neighborhood residents and activists has resulted in major zoning overhauls in the past years: Several properties near Mashapaug Pond that were formerly zoned for light industrial use are now preserved as public spaces. These new open areas include J.T. Owens Park and the Community Boating Center, as well as a park currently in development behind Alvarez High School.
Following in the footsteps of Liz Camp and the Mashapaug Pond Action Committee, other community-based initiatives, like the Urban Pond Procession, have also brought neighborhood residents together to raise awareness about issues with Mashapaug Pond. Murphy-Trainor Park itself, once a rallying point, is now a space for further community organizing.
Discussion Questions
If you were a resident in the Reservoir Triangle, what would you have done to help raise awareness about the construction and the pond’s pollution?Why is it important to have green spaces or parks in cities? Why do you think parks are such important spaces in neighborhoods?
What issues in your own community need to be addressed?
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]]>A school did not always stand on this ground. For nearly a century, the Gorham Manufacturing Company operated an extensive factory on the banks of Mashapaug Pond. Gorham left a complex legacy. While it brought thousands of well-paying jobs to the community, it also polluted the groundwater and soil. In the early 2000s, lawmakers suggested the now-vacant lot be used as a site for a new high school. Outraged residents protested that the site was toxic. With the addition of both a land remediation plan and an air filtration system to the construction blueprints, public opposition slowly subsided. Dr. Jorge Alvarez High School opened in 2006.
A school is more than a physical building, it is a community of those who learn and work together. Alvarez High School’s emphasis on community began with the school’s dedication in honor of Dr. Jorge Alvarez, a respected Providence teacher who pioneered innovative English as a Second Language programs. In this spirit, nearly ninety percent of Alvarez students are bilingual, and many are first-generation immigrants. Alvarez High School embraces its role as a local institution, but like many urban school districts, Providence is struggling to provide high quality education for all. Since the early 2010s, Alvarez High School has undertaken several initiatives, including a push toward project-based learning, to creatively address the educational needs of its diverse student body.A school strives for improvement. For Alvarez High School, this is on both an individual and environmental level. Since its opening, Alvarez High School has spearheaded various environmental rehabilitation efforts. In collaboration with the Urban Pond Procession and Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island, students’ scientific research and artistic pieces have been used to educate the community about the history of Mashapaug Pond’s contamination, and to share ways to rebuild the ecosystem. The newest initiative involves the development of outdoor sports fields.A school is a family. In 2013, low test scores, combined with a large increase in the number of younger students in the school system, prompted debate over converting Alvarez High School into a middle school. Community members and students rallied behind the school, and the outpouring of loyalty convinced the district to maintain the site as a high school. As one protesting student’s sign read, “Once an Eagle, always an Eagle.” In less than a decade, the school’s beginnings as a contaminated and protested construction site have been overshadowed by overwhelming community support.
Discussion QuestionsWhat roles do schools play in the community? What should be their role?
How is it good to have Alvarez at this site? How is it bad?
If you were a lawmaker, would you decide to build a school here? Why or why not? How would you make the decision?
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]]>The Urban Pond Procession’s (UPP) headquarters at Mashapaug Pond are nestled far away from the busy traffic of Reservoir Avenue and the clatter and commotion of shoppers at the nearby Ocean State Job Lot. To reach the Community Boating Center where many of the UPP events are held, one even has to ignore a few “no trespassing” signs. Despite this unobtrusive physical presence on the shores of the pond, UPP has been anything but quiet in its activism on behalf of Mashapaug Pond.
One of the first tangible products of UPP’s work were a series of signs warning visitors of the pond’s pollution that appeared around the pond in 2009. Colorful and intricate, the signs depicted fish and plants, together with warnings in multiple languages. Prior to that, the Rhode Island Health Department had been in charge of signage around the pond, which took the form of stark rectangle signs marked with ominous red circles reading “No Swimming!” The new signs, the product of a collaboration between local artist Holly Ewald and students from Alvarez High School and Charles Fortes Elementary School, raised neighborhood awareness and fostered UPP’s official beginning.
That summer, in the first Mashapaug Pond Procession, festival participants proudly carried silkscreened posters of the new signs. Students dressed in paper fish costumes marched with towering Big Nazo foam puppets, and attendees danced with members of the local What Cheer? Brigade brass band. At the end of the procession, participants gathered at the Community Boating Center for a concert by Community MusicWorks and hear presentations about the pond by a variety of speakers, including the students themselves.
Now UPP holds a festival every spring at the Pond. Students, artists, environmental activists, government administrators, and city residents celebrate the city’s ponds and waterways.
UPP is not the first organization to celebrate Mashapaug Pond. In the 1980s, members of the Reservoir Triangle Association (RTA) organized efforts to clean up the pond and preserve recreational space on its shoreline. The yearly Mashapaug Pond Festival at the J.T. Owens ballpark, featured Little League tournaments, international food vendors, fishing contests, children’s programs and, for the more intrepid, water-skiing.
Although the procession is UPP’s crowning achievement each year, UPP also organizes year-round workshops, collaborates with environmental groups on pond cleanups, and produces educational material for teachers. Ewald and other artists have also worked with students to create artistic installations for the pond. This includes the water-bottle sculpture, created by middle-school students at Providence’s Sophia Academy, erected in front of the Community Boating Center. The Mashapaug Monster, designed by artist Juliette Casselman and fabricated by The Steel Yard, floats annually on the pond at the time of the Procession to symbolically ward off the pollutants in the pond.
UPP’s presence at the boating center may be hidden from the average passerby on Reservoir Avenue, but workshops, signs, and artwork inspired by the pond demonstrate the Urban Pond Procession’s years of artistic and community collaboration.
Discussion Questions
The Urban Pond Procession uses artistic collaboration and performance to communicate the story of Mashapaug pond and its surrounding neighborhood. How do the posters, sculptures and art installations communicate information about Mashapaug differently than written stories or signs?
Is there something in your neighborhood that you would like to change? How might you use art, music, performance to raise awareness about it?
How do the different signs (Health Department versus UPP) make you think about the pond? Do they have similar or different effects?
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