LONG ARM OF THE CLAW
Incinerator demolition begins
WOONSOCKET – It was a scrapping sound of metal against metal that signaled the beginning of the end for Woonsocket’s old trash incinerator building Monday morning.
The demolition permits had all be secured after a hazardous materials clean-up was conducted by project contractor J.R. Vinagro Corp. of Johnston, and all that was left was for the first brick or piece of future scrap metal to fall.
Dennis Quereux, Vinagro’s project manager for the demolition, said a large 330 Caterpillar High Reach excavator would accomplish most of the work scheduled on Monday. The excavator had a grapple bucket on it which allowed Vinagro’s crew to grab and pull down sections of the steel-frame canopy overhanging the building’s garage-like entrance as a first order of business.
“It’s an old building but it is going to go fine,” Quereux said as the demolition began.
The Woonsocket structure was similar to others the company has taken down, he noted. “It’s and old incinerator that had multiple uses over the years and so now it is all trash inside,” Quereux said of the building’s fixtures and abandoned rusted parts from the city’s water department.
Everything would be pulled downed and separated into piles for recycling, he noted.
Now that the demolition has started, Quereux said it won’t take long for his fourmember crew of machine operators to raze the brick, steel and concrete structure. “I would say about two to three weeks,” he said of the expected run of the project.
City Public Works Director Steven D’Agostino joined Mayor Lisa BaldelliHunt and City Councilman Christopher Beauchamp at the parking lot in front of the incinerator to take note of the start of demolition.
“It feels tremendous,” D’Agostino said. “It’s been a longtime in coming and it should have happened a longtime ago,” he said of the city’s past reluctance to take on the project.
While some city officials of the past may have been reluctant to face the costs of such work, D’Agostino said the first step needed to start it was the creation of an abatement plan for the hazardous materials at the site such as removal of the asbestos glazing in the building’s windows or flashings on the roof.
Once the scope of the work was known, the next step was finding a contractor.
“We put it out to bid and you take it down,” D’Agostino said of the $158,527 the City Council awarded for the project.
“You just have to roll up your sleeves and get in there and work,” he said.
When the backhoe claw grabbed the building, Baldelli-Hunt said everyone she was standing with said “it is about time.”
For years people would ask why the building was still standing in its deteriorated state and Baldelli-Hunt said the answer was always “that it would be too costly, that it was contaminated and it was too much for the taxpayers to handle.”
But no one actually could say what the exact costs were and Baldelli-Hunt said her administration made a point of finding that out.
“I promised the people of city that I wouldn’t be scared off by bold moves and this was a bold move,” she said. The actual cost of the demolition project turned out to be far less than the more than the $1 mil- lion- forecast many had assigned to it in speculation, she noted.
“Now we are going to rid the city of this eyesore and that makes this a historic day for the City of Woonsocket,” she said as the demolition work continued.
Beauchamp also welcomed the start of work on the demolition saying “it feels great that it is finally coming down and we are cleaning up this site.”
The incinerator has long welcomed people to the city with an industrial view that did not enhance the city’s image, he noted.
“Now we are cleaning up this gateway area of the city,” he said. “The Council understood the importance of that as well and that’s why the Council supported it with a unanimous vote,” he said.