[CPEO-BIF] Mashapaug Pond (Gorham Silver), Providence, Rhode Island

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

[I wrote about this site in 2006. See http://cpeo.org/pubs/ProvidenceSchools.pdf. - LS]

Polluted Urban Pond Marches Toward Revival


By FRANK CARINI
ecoRI News (RI)
May 7, 2017

PROVIDENCE - Free food at the May 13 event may grab your attention, but the celebration of a decade of community activism and empowerment will win you over.

When the final Urban Pond Procession steps off at 5:30 p.m., it will signal the end to Holly Ewald’s relentless work and begin a new chapter for a long-forgotten-but-now-revived West End neighborhood.

…

The Gorham Manufacturing Co., on Mashapaug Pond, near Providence's border with Cranston, began production in 1890. At its height, the 37-acre facility had 30 buildings and was one of the largest silver manufacturers in the world.

As a result of the various manufacturing processes used at the Gorham factory for nearly a century, much of the land and water on the Adelaide Avenue site were significantly contaminated. Chemical solvents, such as trichloroethylene and perchloroethylene, that were used to clean metal and machine parts in the factory seeped into the land and created underground pools. These chemicals are volatile organic compounds, meaning they can turn into a gas that people might breathe in. They also are known to be human carcinogens.

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.ecori.org/green-groups/2017/5/7/polluted-urban-pond-marches-toward-revival

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650/961-8918 
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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