Rising seas, flood waters and storm surge have potential to unleash buried and stored toxins along city's working waterfront

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

PROVIDENCE — Climate-change concerns tied to a proposal to expand fossil-fuel infrastructure along the city’s industrial waterfront have mostly been met with reassurances that the natural-gas tank will be elevated enough to withstand projected sea-level rise combined with a 100-year storm.

Since the project was announced three years ago, the public-health impacts of building more polluting infrastructure along the Providence River and upper Narragansett Bay have largely been ignored by those who have proposed the facility, National Grid, and elected officials who were sworn to protect the public’s interest.

While disregarding the already-high rates of asthma in the neighborhoods that surround the project, National Grid and state and local officials have also remained mostly silent concerning the legacy of pollution bound to the proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) site and the Port of Providence.

The jacked-up LNG facility would add to the port’s collection of imported and stored petroleum products such as home heating oil, jet fuel, natural gas and diesel. Buried in the area’s dirt and sediment and blowing in the wind are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, total petroleum hydrocarbons, benzene, formaldehyde, cyanide, asbestos, lead, ammonia, arsenic, and polychlorinated biphenyl, a human carcinogen. Much of the infrastructure in and around the port is aging.

Sea-level rise and other climate-change impacts threaten to unleash all of that nastiness.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) considers Providence to be the “Achilles heel of the Northeast” because of its position at the head of Narragansett Bay, according to a 2014 study by a University of Rhode Island assistant professor of coastal planning, policy and design.

“For context, before Hurricane Katrina caused $80 billion in damages to the Gulf Coast, FEMA considered New Orleans to be the Achilles heel of that region,” Austin Becker wrote. “Rhode Island had been hit by nine hurricanes, two of them major, since 1900. The length and orientation of Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay, and its proximity to the Atlantic hurricane zone, make it susceptible to extreme storm surges from the southerly winds that are generated when a hurricane passes to the west of the Bay.”

In a 13-page DART grant application, Mayor Jorge Elorza praised the city’s waterfront for being a “driver of economic development.” The document noted that the mayor has “prioritized this continued land use with a new emphasis on sustainability and resilience.” That statement matches with what Elorza has said publicly about maintaining the current use of Providence’s working waterfront.

Last summer the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) sued the Shell Oil Co. for not safeguarding its massive oil tank-storage facility on Providence Harbor from the effects of climate change.

“With just one severe storm — one major flood — the Providence River and surrounding communities could be inundated with toxic substances, yet Shell has done nothing to safeguard us from this fate. It’s time they be held accountable for this grave inaction," CLF president Bradley Campbell said in June 2017.

The lawsuit suit alleges that the 25-tank facility and rail and marine terminal on Allens Avenue threatens upper Narragansett Bay and nearby communities by failing to safeguard the terminal from sea-level rise, storm surge and increased precipitation. According to federal flood maps, the site is within a flood zone.