[CPEO-BIF] "Top Lawmakers Ignore Waterfront Environmental Concerns, " Providence, Rhode Island

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Top Lawmakers Ignore Waterfront Environmental Concerns


By FRANK CARINI
ECORI News (RI)
August 17, 2016

PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island’s elected representatives didn’t even flinch when, right before the 2016 session ended, they OK’d putting a bond to expand the Port of Providence, which included the possibility of using taxpayer money to fill in 31 acres of Narragansett Bay, on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The idea to dump fill-in material into the Ocean State’s most important natural resource — it was eventually dismissed in mid-July, and a miscommunication blamed on the idea’s short-lived life — highlights the disregard the Statehouse, at least a substantial fraction of it, has for Rhode Island’s environment. The state’s greatest resource is too often seen as nothing more than an economic tool — used and abused for profit and convenience.

“That $20 million was a surprise to everyone. It was just folded into the budget,” said Don Pryor, a member of Save The Bay’s Program and Policy Committee who alerted the organization to the details of the expansion plan. “Not much about the plan is known. Very little about it was explained.”

...

The so-called ProvPort bond will ask Rhode Island voters to approve a $20 million development project along Providence’s waterfront. The 20-million-dollar-taxpayer ask, including the part about filling in the bay and possibly buying a contaminated property on which an illegal scrap-metal business currently operates, barely got a mention in the General Assembly before its members scattered June 18 for the rest of the year.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.ecori.org/smart-growth/2016/8/13/waterfront-environmental-concerns-dont-register-with-top-lawmakers

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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