BY Peder Schaefer ILLUSTRATION Floria Tsui DESIGN XingXing Shou
Twice a day, Monica Huertas, an environmental justice activist from South Providence, makes the long drive down Allens Avenue to pick up and drop off her son from school. Passing the industrialized waterfront always makes her feel the same way. “I’m sick to my stomach,” Monica told the College Hill Independent. “It’s not only from the nauseating smells but from the deep down feeling that at any moment, if someone throws a cigarette out the wrong way and it catches the wind, that shit is gonna explode.” Allens Avenue is only a few minutes drive away from Downtown Providence and the wealthy, green neighborhoods of the East Side and Fox Point, but it feels a world away. When driving towards the Port of Providence, the highway looms overhead, elevated on stilts, and abandoned buildings stand next to mounds of asphalt. The Seaplane Diner is across the street from a pile of scrap metal. A lone biker pedals down the road, buffeted sideways by the wind and drag of passing cars. Farther up Narragansett Bay, at India Point Park, it’s a different story. There, friends gather for picnics on the sloping green lawn and fishermen cast their lines off the pier. At one entrance is a sign that celebrates the building of the park. Albert Veri, the architect, is quoted: “It’s but a beginning. You plant something and it grows. Adjacent areas in time will tie in. This will be the seed.” Past the sign is a panoramic view of the mouth of Narragansett Bay. You can make out Allens Avenue in the distance, off to the right. The only green that meets the eye is the gentle slope of India Point Park running down towards the water. A woman is out walking her dog. India Point Park has not been a seed for a green coastline. If anything, the park has been a seed for gentrification in Fox Point. Many Providence residents—like those in Monica’s neighborhood in South Providence and Washington Park—still live with the impacts of an industrialized waterfront. Toxic air, poisoned water, and constant noise are only blocks away from their front doors.
in 2014 that organizes against fracking and natural gas projects across the Northeast. Huertas became the coordinator for FANG’s #NoLNGinPVD campaign that sought to stop the construction of a $180 million liquified natural gas plant proposed by National Grid. While the campaign wasn’t able to halt the construction of the plant—which will be completed in 2021—Huertas and other activists pressured Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza to come out against the construction of the facility. As an offshoot of that activism, Huertas helped form a Racial Environmental Justice Committee in 2016 with the Office of Sustainability in the City of Providence. “Let’s stop having people at the top, mainly white men, make decisions for us,” Huertas told the Indy. “Instead of top down, let’s have community folks tell us what they want, what a sustainable system means to them.” Huertas’s work with the Racial Environmental Justice Committee led to the publication of Providence’s Climate Justice Plan in 2019. Nearly 100 pages long, the plan lays out the complex and often overlooked environmental history of Providence, demonstrating how frontline communities—communities of color most impacted by the crises of ecology, economy and democracy—have borne the brunt of environmental impacts. The document also contains suggestions for how Providence can take steps towards a more environmentally just and equitable city. It hopes to ensure that the environmental cleanup doesn’t just lead to gentrification, like at Fox Point, but instead benefits local residents. One key element of the plan put together by community members is the idea of Green Justice Zones. Joshua Kestin, one of the coordinators for Sunrise Providence, a local hub of the national youth-led climate justice Sunrise Movement, told the Indy that there are two key elements to the zones: stopping polluters from continuing to pollute while increasing funding for environmental remediation projects—new parks, pollution clean up, etc.—in impacted communities. Huertas is working with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, city +++ planners, and other working groups to try and move towards this new model, but shifting decades of tradi“I’m going to go take it down with my damn hands if I tionally racist city policy towards frontline communihave to,” Huertas told the Indy about the infrastructure ties—embodied most of all in racially-tinged zoning on Allens. Huertas initially got involved with environ- decisions—isn’t easy. mental justice after buying her first home. She realized she couldn’t drink the tap water, plant seeds in her +++ backyard, or let her children play in the street because of the impacts of decades of pollution, much of it from The Climate Justice Plan is a part of Providence’s larger the industrial polluters in the Port of Providence. The aim to become carbon neutral by 2050, a goal set by area around the port, where Monica lives, has one Elorza in 2016 via executive order. “We obviously of the highest rates of asthma cases per capita in the cannot continue to have fossil fuels emitted in the port entire state. Rhode Island has the ninth highest asthma if we are going to meet that goal,” Leah Bamberger, the rate in the entire country. The environmental inequi- director of the Office of Sustainability, told the Indy. ties between the South Providence and Washington Right now, Providence is financially compensating Park neighborhoods and the East Side of Providence local community cohorts in two different Green Justice are stark, manifested not only in the appearance of Zones—Olneyville on the Woonasquatucket River each area, but also in the health outcomes of neighbor- and near the port of Providence—to help craft policy hood residents. ideas from the ground up in the spirit of “collaborative Huertas began grassroots organizing with the governance.” Fighting Against Natural Gas Convergence, or the FANG Providence has taken a few steps down the path laid Collective, in 2015. FANG is an activist group founded out in the plan. Municipal buildings are now hooked up to a 23 MW solar farm, and the city is trying to obtain more coastline access on Public Street near Allens. Providence is also about to launch the Community Choice Aggregation plan which would allow city
residents to opt-in to more renewable energy blends that are different than those supplied by National Grid. For example, a customer would be able to choose a 100 percent renewable energy electricity supply and pay a higher price than a typical customer. With that said, Providence hasn’t pursued the more ambitious ideas laid out in the Climate Justice Plan so far. Bamberger said many of the policy levers outlined in the plan are long-term goals that will have to be pulled by future city councils—such as zoning changes to prohibit new fossil fuel infrastructure, increasing access to renewable energy in Providence, and making greater investments in parks and environmental remediation in frontline communities. For example, Bamberger said that Portland had recently passed a zoning law that bans the building of new fossil fuel infrastructure in their city. Providence hasn’t made those kinds of changes, at least not yet. +++
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METRO
06 NOV 2020
