EYESORE NO MORE?
Woonsocket asks for bids to demolish defunct municipal trash incinerator
WOONSOCKET – Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt announced on Tuesday her administration will take another swing at leveling the old city trash incinerator on Cumberland Hill Road in front of Woonsocket Regional Wastewater treatment plant.
Baldelli-Hunt said the city has issued a request for proposals (RFP) to demolish the long shutdown trash incinerator and clean up the site for potential future use.
“Removing blight from our neighborhoods has been one of my top priorities since taking office and the old incinerator stands as the poster child for blight in our community,” Baldelli-Hunt said in a statement released by Blake Collins, her administration’s business outreach and public relations coordinator.
Baldelli-Hunt went on to say that the “bottom line is that the site has environmental and safety concerns and we are ready to tackle this issue without further delay.”
The massive brick, steel and concrete structure, built in the early 1960s when such trash burning operations did not face the strict environmental impact regulations of today, offers “a vestige of our City’s past that has turned into a liability that sits upon viable land for potential future use,” Baldelli-Hunt said.
The RFP put out by the city calls for sealed bids submitted to City Hall by April 3, according to the administration’s statement. The proposals are to be opened and shared with the public at that point.
The request for bids, available for review at www.woonsocketri.org/sites/woonsocketri/files/uploads/5790.pdf, seek both the demolition of the building and proposals for remediation of any hazardous material issues on the property.
City Councilwoman Melissa Murray also addressed the need for the facility’s demolition in Tuesday’s announcement. “This building is situated along one of the main gateways into our city, therefore addressing this very visible eyesore is crucial,” Murray said. “Blight, contamination, and public safety must be addressed if our community is to become the destination we have the potential to be,” she said.
The city has conducted some early remediation work at the site while demolishing the old stack that rose above the building and also removal of some materials from the hearth area where trash was burned while it operated. The building was shut down when the city moved to a land filling operation off Davison Street and then a transfer station there. The old landfill was also remediated and capped years ago and was eventually converted into Rivers Edge Recreational complex, where the city has soccer fields, putting greens, and a local section of the Blackstone Valley Bikeway on the Blackstone River.
When contacted about the mayor’s announcement later on Tuesday, City Council President Daniel Gendron said he did not know more about the RFP than what was included in the administration’s statement.
“I honestly knew nothing about it,” Gendron said of the proposal surfacing after Monday’s City Council meeting.
It was the mayor’s prerogative to seek RFP on proposed work for city, but Gendron said the administration would have to come to the City Council for approval of any contract regarding city property.
As for the incinerator itself, Gendron said the city has been eyeing its removal from a major business route into the city for sometime, and that former Mayor Leo T. Fontaine’s administration had also looked into the options for its demolition and clean up.
Mayor Baldelli-Hunt has also raised the possibility of its removal before the council in the past, he noted.
“I do know about two years ago there was a work session where the mayor said she hoped to knock it down but there were environmental issues,” he said.
Yesterday’s announcement was the first update he has heard about the issue since that time, Gendron said. He added, however, that he would support removal of the incinerator as a way to improve the business development prospects of that section of Cumberland Hill Road.
When asked about the prior work on Tuesday, Baldelli-Hunt said the city had contracted with C&E Engineering of Woonsocket to research the environmental issues that may exist at the site and after an inspection of the property, an environmental report was prepared.
“So we have an environmental report in place pertaining to that site,” she said.
The next step in the process would be to determine how the incinerator could be removed, and to obtain costs on that project and any clean up work that would be required for the site’s future use, she said.
“At this point, we are putting it out to RFP and looking for demolition of a facility that hasn’t been used for decades,” Baldelli-Hunt said.
Although the proposal has been considered in the past, Baldelli-Hunt said there may have been hesitation on the part of the city to move forward due to the expected cost of the facility’s demolition and clean up.
But with such an eyesore standing in the way of the city’s economic recovery, Baldelli-Hunt added the time has come to finally pursue such a plan.
“There is no better time than now,” she said.
Depending on what information is received from the RFP, Baldelli-Hunt said she may consider including the demolition and clean-up costs in her proposed budget. There could also be opportunities for the city to find grant funding or other forms of financial assistance to complete such a needed improvement on Cumberland Hill Road, she noted.
“Right now the next step is to see what the potential costs are for having a clean and vacant site,” she said.