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TIDEWATER: THE BASICS

The property

 

The Tidewater Site is a brownfield - a contaminated industrial property - located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.  It lies between the northeastern edge of the Oak Hill neighborhood and the Seekonk River. Today, National Grid owns the largest portion of the site, about 24 acres.  The City of Pawtucket owns two additional parcels.  The ballfield for the Francis J. Varieur Elementary School is actually located on one of these parcels.

 

During the last few years, National Grid has conducted significant work on the property.  This has transformed its appearance

from this:

 

To this:

The Property

As a result, some residents believe that the site has been "cleaned up."  This is not the case: the property remains contaminated with hazardous wastes from nearly a century of gas production.  These substances are located beneath the surface of the property, in the soil and groundwater.

The contamination

The contamination

Beginning in the 1880s, and continuing through the 1960s, the Tidewater Site was used to produce gas from coal through a process called coal gasification.  The process involved heating coal to produce gas and a by-product called coke.  The gas was further processed by running it through "purifiers" to trap and remove other contaminants.  [To see the process, view the short silent film Making Coal Gas and Coke cerca 1920s, which shows the process at Hunts Point, New York during the 1920s.] 

Coal gasification generated a massive amount of waste, much of which is toxic to humans.  Some of this was sold or repurposed into other forms for sale.  The by-products that could not be marketed were often dumped both on and off-site, or stored in underground storage tanks (see Allen Hathaway's finely detailed examination of Former Gas Manufacturing Plants for more about this history).  

 

This is the primary source of the contamination that currently exists at the Tidewater Site.    In fact, on some portions of the property, the soil contains more than twenty feet of "fill," or dumped waste!  According to the Site Investigation Data Report this fill consists of "varying percentages of sand, coal, ash, slag and former building/ structure debris" (p.8). [You can find the full SIte Investigation Data Report here; click on the document dated 1/11/11].  In addition, many of the

Source: GZA GeoEnvironmental

Site map with location of current and former structures and underground storage tanks

underground tanks that were created to store the waste have decomposed, spilling their contents into the soil.  As a result, the level ofcontamination generally increases the further down one digs in the soil.  You can find information about the contaminants on the site, with links to short overviews of their characteristics, here:

 

The neighborhood

The neighborhood

The Tidewater Site borders a residential neighborhood to the west.  An apartment building abuts - or directly bordes - the site, as do several homes.  Two schools - the International Charter School and the Blackstone Academy - also border the property on its northwestern edge, while the Francis J. Varieur Elementary School borders the site to the southwest. In addition, the Varieur school's ballfield is actually located on a portion of the former site. 

Homes

Schools

This setting makes questions about the management of the property especially important.  Read more about recent issues surrounding the property management here.  You can find information about how members of the community have mobilized to influence the management of the property here.

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