In 1980, up to $1.5 million worth of silver flowed from Providence factories into the Narragansett Bay, giving new meaning to the phrase “a waste of money.” Much of this silver originated from the electroplating firms located in the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park on the north shore of Mashapaug Pond.
Discovered in the 1800s, electroplating revolutionized jewelry production by using electricity to apply thin layers of gold or silver to items cast from other, cheaper metals. By 1880, Rhode Island was home to more jewelry businesses than any other state. Providence became known as the costume jewelry capital of the world, its downtown called the jewelry district. A century later, however, the center of the jewelry industry had relocated three miles to the southeast, to the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park next to Mashapaug Pond.
Looking at its current arrangement of warehouses and parking lots, it may be hard to imagine the industrial park as a space that almost 500 families called home. Children played games in the road, buzzed around on homemade scooters, and snuck peaches and plums from their neighbors’ trees. Former resident Ed Hooks recalls the paper route that took him through a grid of streets, some paved and some not, whose names are now only found on historical maps. As a child, Ed swam in Mashapaug Pond, played with frogs, and caught crawfish in the brook that flowed toward Niantic Avenue. Some neighbors, he remembers, preferred the brook’s snapping turtles, and used them for soup.
When the Providence Redevelopment Authority bought this 117-acre parcel in 1961, it displaced those residents and adapted the land for commercial use. New sewer lines and broader, flatter roadways made the space an attractive location for factories involved in electrotyping and electroplating – casting and coating objects in metal. These operations involved dangerous ammonias, cyanides, and toxic heavy metals that flowed, like the silver, into Providence’s waterways.
Today, the quiet expanse of the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park betrays its current economic and environmental challenges. In 2010, the complex had only 33 tenants. However unremarkable it may appear, though, the industrial park continues to have an important impact on the local environment. Its wide paved roads, flat-roofed buildings, and sparse vegetation create a “heat island” with higher daytime air temperatures than other areas of Providence. The absence of trees also contributes to stormwater runoff. As rainwater hits asphalt surfaces, it mixes with road salt, animal waste, fertilizers, car fluids, and other pollutants. Without pervious surfaces or plants to filter this toxic water, it flows unobstructed until it reaches a storm drain or larger body of water. This pollutes the park’s immediate neighbor, Mashapaug Pond, and the broader watershed, which includes the ponds in Roger Williams Park and Narragansett Bay. The cost of cleaning these toxic chemicals from the watershed greatly exceeds $1.5 million in silver.
Happily, several organizations are actively working to reduce the amount of pollutants flowing through Mashapaug Pond’s watershed by educating citizens and commercial tenants about stormwater runoff, repaving hard surfaces with crushed stone or permeable concrete, planting trees and other native plants, and redirecting water into rain barrels and rain gardens. Several of these initiatives are planned for the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park.
Discussion Questions
Besides financial losses, what different “costs” have there been to doing business in the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park?
What steps could be taken to inform the businesses currently located in the industrial park about their impact on Rhode Island’s waterways?
Where are places that jewelry is manufactured today?
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]]>Rhode Island has a long history of industrial manufacturing. Slater Mill, on the banks of the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, is considered the “birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution.” By the early 1800s, that fervor for manufacturing had spread, and companies, like the Gorham Manufacturing Company, appeared throughout the state. Known for its world-class products in bronze and silver, Gorham left behind a toxic legacy at the site where its Mashapaug Pond factory operated for nearly 100 years.
Today, the Gorham Manufacturing Company is infamous in the Reservoir Triangle neighborhood for polluting the water, soil, and air of the community. For all of the nineteenth century, and most of the twentieth century, there were few restrictions on companies’ use of potentially harmful materials. At Gorham, workers regularly used cleaners with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), solvents, heavy metals such as lead, and other contaminants. With little thought to the environmental impact, these pollutants leached into the surrounding soil and water.
By the 1960s, industrial manufacturing had largely left Rhode Island and other states, and Americans were left to deal with the waste that factories had produced. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), established in 1970, set guidelines to control industrial dumping and provided ways to force polluters to clean up contaminated sites. Two years later, the Clean Water Act of 1972, set water quality standards and prohibited the dumping industrial waste directly into waterways.
Textron, Inc., bought Gorham’s assets shortly before the passage of the Clean Water Act. In doing so they became responsible for the cleanup of the Gorham site, including Mashapaug Cove and the ground water. With help from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, Textron has funded the effort to make the Gorham site safe for human use. It is a long process that is taking many years. Thus far, Textron has completed the ground remediation of the area that is now home to Alvarez High School and the Mashapaug Commons shopping center. Air filtration systems have also been added to both the school, shopping center, and nearby homes on Adelaide Avenue, ensuring the safety of local residents.
Further cleanup work includes covering contaminated soil with clean infill, dredging the Gorham “cove” of Mashapaug Pond to remove toxic sediment, and undertaking groundwater remediation throughout the area. Although it has been a slow process, this parcel will soon be safe for human recreational use. Eventually, the polluted land will hold a new neighborhood park and athletic fields for Alvarez High School.
Today, high levels of heavy metals, VOCs, PAHs, and dioxin are still found in the sediment of Mashapaug Cove. Carp, bass, and perch swim valiantly through the water, collecting chemical contaminants in their tissues. None of the fish in the pond are safe for human consumption. It is impossible to know whether these toxins are due solely to Gorham or if they have continually accumulated through storm-water runoff. Despite the extensive remediation work, Mashapaug Pond and the fish within it will remain contaminated, a legacy of the state’s industrial heritage.
Discussion Questions
Why weren’t people concerned about environmental pollution until the late twentieth century?What responsibilities should companies like Textron have regarding the cleanup of pollution from previous centuries?
How can we help to avoid further pollution of our natural environment?
What might it be like to attend a school built on top of formerly toxic land?
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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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]]>Mashapaug Pond is at the center of a complex freshwater ecosystem. Underneath the pond’s calm green surface is a strange world of toxic carp, three-eyed frogs, and rusting refuse. Many people think of cities and the wilderness as completely separate spaces, but Mashapaug Pond is the perfect example of urban wilderness. At the pond, the natural ecosystem, or community of living things, overlaps with the human-built city.
Mashapaug Pond has suffered from a long history of pollution. During Providence’s industrial heyday in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, people were largely unaware of the consequences of releasing industrial chemicals and other pollutants into the soil and water. At Mashapaug Pond, the Gorham Manufacturing Company – a major employer – was also responsible for a significant amount of pollution. Neighborhood resident Ed Hooks recalled: “You didn’t have too many ecologists back then. You didn’t have too many people that were concerned about that type of thing. So, when it comes to Gorham, people just saw Gorham as probably a place for employment more than anything else. If they’re dumping stuff in there, so what. They’ll give me a paycheck today.” Millions of dollars have now been spent to remediate Gorham’s pollution.
The major source of pond pollution today comes from stormwater runoff. In urban areas, paved roads, parking lots, and driveways creates impermeable surfaces that water cannot pass through. When it rains, the water isn’t filtered through plants and soil but flows directly into Mashapaug Pond, carrying with it car oil, animal feces, garbage, road salts, and other contaminants.
Mashapaug Pond’s unusually green water is also a clear sign of the pond’s sickness. Storm water runoff causes algal blooms in urban, fresh water ponds by picking up pet waste and fertilizers from lawns and landscaping and carrying them into storm drains that empty in urban ponds, promoting excessive growth of cyanobacteria. This bloom gives the pond its green tint. Cyanobacteria can create toxic conditions for humans, animals, and plants. Signs posted by the Rhode Island Department of Health warn humans of these toxins, but it is impossible to protect plants and animals from the poisonous environment.
Residents have worried about the impact of human activity on Mashapaug Pond for a long time. Local lore alludes to three-eyed frogs, two-headed fish, and other sea monsters that swim in the toxic, green water. In 1905, city park commissioners warned the Rhode Island General Assembly: “it is essential to the health of the neighborhood that they be not polluted by dumping or the crowding of buildings on [Mashapaug’s] shores.” One hundred years later, it is quite clear that the report was ignored. The pond is ringed by large shopping plazas, the Huntington Expressway Industrial Park, and multiple highways. All of these things disrupt the ability of storm water to soak into the ground and continue to contaminate Mashapaug Pond at a detriment to the plants, animals, and humans that share its ecosystem.
Today, groups like the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island and the Urban Pond Procession, as well as many teachers, students, and residents, are taking action to make sure that conditions at the Pond do not get worse. Hopefully one day the signs warning that “Mashapaug Pond is Sick” will be unnecessary.
Discussion Questions
How might you be contributing to the pollution of the urban watershed?What are some steps that might reduce the amount of impermeable surfaces in cities?
How have people’s views on pollution changed in the last century?
For more (including 4 images, 1 audio file, & 1 video) view the original article
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