By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI staff

San Francisco has instituted a mandatory three-bin system for the collection of trash, recyclables and compostables.There’s a movement afoot to bring curbside composting to Rhode Island.

The Providence Urban Agriculture Task Force and the Environment Council of Rhode Island were awarded a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant to find out how to remove food waste from the Ocean State’s trash stream and use it to create organic soil rich in nutrients.

Greg Gerritt, a member of the Environment Council of Rhode Island and a vocal environmentalist, is spearheading the effort. The Providence resident has spoken to dozens of people about the idea in hopes of developing a plan that meets the needs of municipalities, farmers and gardeners, among others.

Gerritt has organized an invitation-only meeting for Jan. 15 at The Rhode Island Foundation, in which stakeholders will exchange ideas about curbside composting and the various facilities that would be needed to support it — from an agricultural model to an industrial model to the use of greenhouses.

The meeting will include lawmakers and representatives from various Rhode Island cities and towns, restaurants, local colleges and universities, waste haulers and the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation.

“We want to see who is really interested and who might have resources to bring to the table,” Gerritt said. “Back when I began looking at this issue, I thought the hard part would be to develop a collection system. I now believe that is totally doable, and now I believe the key factor will be to determine what type of facility or facilities to develop and then figure out how to find the money, find the partners, find the investors.”

Compost is a mixture of decaying organic matter, such as potato skins, coffee grounds, carrot peelings and apple cores, used to improve soil structure and provide nutrients. Unfortunately, most of Rhode Island’s valuable food waste ends up buried in the ever-shrinking Central Landfill.

The USDA estimates that nearly 26 million tons of annual food waste ends up rotting in landfills or being burned in incinerators. Food waste that doesn’t end up buried or burned, is chewed up in garbage disposals, which increases the load on sewage treatment plants, wastes water and keeps more nutrient-rich food scraps from being used as fertilizer.

In fact, less than 2 percent of U.S. food waste is managed through composting, according to the federal agency.

“The Urban Agriculture Task Force does not have the ability to transform the management of waste in Rhode Island on its own,” Gerritt said. “The only way this transformation is possible is if all of the potential partners, all of the organizations that deal with our waste stream, realize composting is in the best interest of the community and economically feasible.”

Amelia Rose, lead organizer for the Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island, said it is imperative that “we reduce the waste burden in Providence and throughout Rhode Island.”

She mentioned composting and recycling as the best ways to reduce the amount of waste unnecessarily being dumped at the state landfill in Johnston. “Structures are in place that encourage waste,” Rose said. “If we make recycling easier, make composting easier, people will do it.”

The organic matter that Americans discard daily, including food scraps, yard trimmings and other biodegradable garbage, comprises 23 percent of the U.S. waste stream, according Mike O’Connell, the executive director of the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation, which runs the Central Landfill.

He said Rhode Island needs a system that better keeps organic materials out of the landfill. “Organics are the next big pile of waste we will need to address,” O’Connell said. “We need a delivery system and we have to make sure the compost is clean.”

The tons of food waste Rhode Island buries annually could be better used to produce rich, black compost, or the appropriate food scraps could be used to feed farm animals.

To make better use of nutrient-rich organic matter that often is being needlessly tossed out with the trash, curbside composting programs are being initiated across the country. Inspired by San Francisco, which was the first city to institute a composting program, other cities with roughly the same population as Rhode Island, such as Seattle and Austin, Texas, have established similar programs.

Other smaller cities, such as Boulder, Colo., Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., Rapid City, S.D., and Berkeley, Calif., facing a decline in available landfill space and understanding the wastefulness of burying valuable organic material also have implemented some type of curbside composting program.

Compost improves the constitution of soil by making it more able to contain air and water and resist erosion. It also provides nutrients for plant growth and increases storage of carbon.

“Good compost changes dirt into rich, organic soil,” Gerritt said. “You put the seeds in and the plants jump out.”

For more information, contact Greg Gerritt via e-mail at environmentcouncil@earthlink.net.

The last few years it seems like my favorite times of year are tadpole season and menhaden season. Menhaden show up in the urban upper Bay most years beginning in late August and i take every chance I can to go watch the schools.

Tadpole season is right now. In Providence’s North Burial Ground there are two ponds. Many people are familiar with the bigger of the two ponds. It sits below the esker, has vegetated buffers, has a bench near the point under the Oak.

It is a lively place. Over the years I have seen Otter, Muskrat, turtles, frogs, fish, 3 kinds of herons, egrets, swifts, swallows, bats, and myriad smaller birds. But my favorite is the jumping tadpoles. Today the overwintering bullfrog tadpoles were jumping. They are about 3. inches long, pretty solidly built, and with hundreds in the pond there is a steady stream of tadpoles rising an inch above the surface of the water. I am not sure why they rise, but it is fun to watch.

Yesterday Michael pointed out a jelly mass with hundreds of tiny black eggs sitting on the surface next to the shore, so I will be keeping my eyes on those the next few weeks. And today, for the first time all spring, I got a good look at the big bullfrog that I regularly hear jump when I get to the pond. I managed to get close enough for a good look without spooking it. My lucky day.

The other pond is near the maintenance building in a low spot in an open field. It fills with road runoff when it rains, and is probably pretty close to the level of the river, which is flowing under I-95 when it goes by. Most of the year it appears to be nearly devoid of life, but for a few weeks in the spring, right now in fact, there are hundreds of Grey Tree Frog tadpoles.

Right now it looks like there are 3 size classes of tadpoles. Probably born 3 or 4 days apart. Yesterday it seemed like it was hatching day for the youngest tadpoles. Right on the shore line in the tiny coves the shoreline was black with tadpoles. Thousands in a square foot. Today the congregations were gone, and it looked like there were a lot fewer tadpoles. My explanation of the day is that the Killdeer that nest in the field seem to have fledged young birds that are now leaving the nest. When i got to the pond a larger bird and two smaller birds seemed to be hunting in the shallows. They could have been catching anything, but the obvious choice is tadpoles.

Over the next few weeks it will be enjoyable to watch the tadpoles grow, and then grow legs. One day I will come by and there will be hundreds of little frogs in the grass next to the pond, and two days later they will be dispersed for the year, and if you did not know, you would never guess what a spectacle of life you have missed.

June 26th, 2011

I am thinking the bullfrog tadpoles in the NBG pond are starting to develop legs, and it almost seems as if there are more frogs every day from last year’s tadpoles, but it is unclear.

At the little pond the Grey Tree Frogs have been starting to leave the pond, and dispersing to the trees, with the first sighting of transformed froglets on Wednesday. Friday I went with my little niece so I brought a net for netting tadpoles, and she loved them. I also got to see the various stages of leg development and how it related to tail shrinkage. Today the transforming tadpoles were sitting on a white piece of trash in the pond and with the contrasting background, as opposed to the mud of the pond, it was easy to see the legs. Almost every tadpole has legs, and I expect they pond will be empty of tadpoles in a week or 10 days.

By Scott Turner Oct. 17, 2009 in the Providence Journal

When I needed a place to “chill” during childhood I snuck into a nearby garage, snuggled in my own thoughts and dozed off.

I think of that oasis when I visit the Moshassuck River. Cool, damp, serene, sometimes smelling of oil and gas, home to Roger Williams and the Industrial Revolution, it’s the “river where moose watered” long ago.

The Moshassuck, with its beginnings in the tiny streams of Lime Rock near Lincoln, slices through a valley once the natural course of the Blackstone River until ice jammed it eons ago. Look west from College Hill to the 180-foot summit of Windmill Hill to witness the Moshassuck’s natural corridor.

It is "an old, old path," said Greg Gerritt, founder of Friends of the Moshassuck, an advocacy, protection and restoration group. The valley was a main line before, during, and after the Revolution, when manufacturing was king in Rhode Island, and the river served as industrial sewer for mills, metal works and textile factories.

Today the Moshassuck shares the valley with hundreds of home and commercial properties, and major routes, including Interstate 95, Amtrak and MBTA rail lines, and North Main Street. At least 29 roadways cross the river across several communities.

Last week, I ran into Gerritt on my way to the river. We walked over to Collyer Park. Although the whine of interstate traffic dominated, I could still hear the water rippling over fallen trees.

We stood under a red maple on the stonework of the channeled bank. Sunlight pierced the crimson foliage, illuminating the river bottom. The summer algae and sewage smell were gone.

Gerritt said that in about 10 years, completion of the Narragansett Bay Commission’s combined sewage project would finally rid the Moshassuck of human waste.

In Collyer Park, Friends of Moshassuck have transformed a field of invasive Japanese knotweed into a budding river bottom forest of red and silver maple, sweetgum, red oak, river birch and white ash. The trees produce shade that suppresses the knotweed.

Japanese knotweed spreads rapidly into dense thickets, particularly along shorelines, withstanding drought, and flooding and high heat. It can reach 10 feet in height, with broad, oval pointy tipped leaves.

I’ve watched the trees planted by the Friends spread from atolls into a growing riparian forest, and the knotweed underneath begin to whither.

A trail of thick black plastic, dotted with the lemon-yellow land snails that congregate on it, winds through the new forest, which produces a fruit cereal display of gold, orange, red, purple and yellow in late October.

When a train in the valley discharged a three-second wistful warning whistle, I thought of our restructuring world in which so many people live in constant fear and uncertainty.

Restoring the health of local environments is a way to repair the world, Gerritt said. "If we don’t heal ecosystems, we won’t make it on this planet."

Once, the Moshassuck fueled the greatest nation on earth. Then the river was left to die.

Still, the not-always-pretty Moshassuck flows to the sea. From its banks, Gerritt has seen menhaden, suckers and sunfish, fox, muskrat and herons.

Repair work by the Friends of the Moshassuck reminds me that mending can take a long time.

It was dark in the garage, where I once found refuge. There is light along the banks of the river, where a group of people believe they can transform the survival of an individual resource into a meaningful community for all of us.

Published by ABC Clio

The Industrial Revolution in North America began in Rhode Island with the construction of Slater Mill, the first mechanized spinning mill in North America, in Pawtucket in 1793. To power the mill Samuel Slater and John Brown built a dam across the first falls of the Blackstone River. Fishermen rioted when the dam blocked the fish runs up the river by salmon and shad and destroyed their livelihood. The federal courts ruled for the mill owners, here and in every contested case of damming rivers for the next 40 years (Jones 1992). Rhode Island became one of the industrial powerhouses of the world. By 1900 every creek had a dam and a mill at every place you could get 6 foot of head of falling water to power machinery. The Blackstone River and its valley, soon to be a National Park celebrating the mills, their communities, and the rebirth of the living river, had more than 1000 mills along its 45 miles, and other rivers in Rhode Island were nearly as densely industrialized. The textile industry gave rise to metal fabrication industries and the jewelry industry with their attendant pollution. The dyeing industry had the rivers running whatever color was hot in New York that year. Sediments in Rhode Island rivers carry a toxic legacy. The receding industrial tide left Rhode Island with many abandoned mills and an abundance of superfund sites.

The flip side is that Rhode Islanders love Narragansett Bay. It is the heart of the state, a water body surrounded by the state. It supports a huge tourism economy of swimming, surfing, fishing, sailing, dining, and has been at the heart of the development of tourism as an industry since Newport became home to the Mansions of New York Society in the later years of the 19th Century. The maritime industries have also been a powerful force in Rhode Island, with trade helping create many of the early fortunes, and commercial waterfronts and the fishing industry continuing to be a source of community prosperity.

Rhode Island has always had birders, beach lovers, preservers of open space and builders of parks. But like most of the country, environmental activism and efforts to “green” the community sprouted around 1970. Republican Governor John Chafee instituted the first public bonds for open space with the support of The Nature Conservancy and Audubon Society of RI. Struggles over the development on Narragansett Bay lead directly to the founding of Save The Bay, which has developed into the largest environmental advocacy and education organization in the state. A cast of hundreds “Zapped the Blackstone” in 1972, and in conjunction with the demise of the textile industry and the passage of the Clean Water Act the restoration of the Blackstone River had begun. Fast forward 39 years, and now, beyond the Blackstone, the watershed councils, federal, state, and local governments, and Narragansett Bay Estuaries Program are celebrating dam removals and the restoration of fish passages closed since the 18th century on the Pawtuxet, Pawcatuck, Woonasquatucket, and Ten Mile Rivers.

Rhode Island waters

Rhode Island has embraced the watershed approach. State agencies, municipalities, and the non-profit community increasingly see Rhode island as a series of watersheds and plan accordingly. With large point source polluters like factories cleaned up, the attention is now on controlling road run off, creating public access, and restoring habitat.

The Narragansett Bay Commission recently completed phase one of the Combined Sewer Overflow project and already swimming beaches are open more and shellfish beds can be harvested sooner after it rains because so much polluted runoff has been captured for treatment. When phases two and three are finished 98 percent of the overflows will be captured and treated before going into the rivers and bay. Eel grass, salt marsh, and shellfish restoration is going on throughout the bay. Inland, dam removals, the building of fish ladders, and other work, is restoring riverine habitat and it is estimated that several hundred thousand shad and herring will return to RI rivers for spawning in the next few years. Every river and pond now has a friends group working for its restoration.

While Rhode Island is making progress restoring water quality and habitat, there are issues with quantity. Watering lawns is such a large drain on aquifers that some of the smaller rivers are going dry for parts of the summer in drier years. Efforts to reduce lawn watering through better horticultural practices including planting for hardiness is catching on, but mandatory restrictions on watering are occasionally used to keep rivers from drying up.

Environmental Justice

Rhode Island once had some of the highest lead poisoning rates in the country, though concerted efforts and lawsuits have dramatically reduced the rate. Several years ago the City of Providence built a school on the former city landfill and another on a superfund site that had once been a silver manufacturing company, the Gorham site. Jointly these struggles spurred the development of the environmental justice movement in Rhode Island. Work on school siting, brownfield restoration, community gardens, food deserts and security, lead, and bad air quality all continue to move forward. Progress at the legislature is slow. A bill introduced in 2011 to prevent schools from being built on sites polluted with Volatile Organic Compounds did not pass. Progress has also been slow on rules for making sure low income and minority communities are notified and protected in the permitting of redevelopment on brownfields. Regulations have been written and debated publicly, but not finalized.

The changing demographics of Rhode Island and especially urban Rhode Island mean that justice and community development have become the heart of environmental action. In recent polls Hispanic voters were much more likely to favor strong environmental policies than other voters (Sahagun 2010), and the green movement is changing to better serve the only growing populations in the state. The Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council has been a positive force for change in the poorest neighborhood in the state and the Urban Pond Procession marches fish parades through the streets to focus attention on the rejuvenation of ponds in Providence. Rhode Island voters continue to overwhelmingly support bonds for preserving land and cleaning up our waters, and new outreach into low income and minority communities will continue that track record.

Green Jobs and Green Energy, Mass Transit

Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and the government and corporate sectors are unable to develop a workable strategy for economic revitalization. As a result a new paradigm is evolving of economic development being dependent upon ecological healing. An awareness is building that the way forward economically in Rhode Island is to heal our ecosystems, clean our energy systems, and grow our own food. Job training programs in green technologies and techniques have sprouted, but the new jobs are few and far between. It will take a more radical greening, a real healing of ecosystems; depaving streets, growing food and forests, taking down dams, and putting solar panels in the neighborhoods to break Rhode Island out of the doldrums.

The legislature did a pretty good job the last few years of passing legislation to mandate green energy in our electricity mix, and support off shore wind, energy efficiency, and green buildings. though the policies have yet to bear fruit, especially when compared to what is going on in neighboring states. Rhode island has become a leader in feed in tariffs for small scale generators of clean electricity. (Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources 2011)

Where Rhode Island has really fallen down is with mass transit. The Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) is primarily funded by the gasoline tax. This means that when gas prices go up and people drive less or drive more efficient vehicles, the amount of money available for subsidizing mass transit shrinks. At exactly the time when there are more riders and more need for the service the shrinking revenues force RIPTA to cut service and hours. In recent years the protests over transit cuts due to greater demand have become larger and more vocal. RIPTA and the legislature are well aware of the conundrum, but the legislature seems to be unwilling to actually fix the problem given all the budgetary constraints. (Environment Council of Rhode Island 2011) Air travel on the other hand seems to be on the favored list, for despite the objections of neighbors, in 2011 the Rhode Island Airport Corporation finalized plans to expand T.F. Green airport despite falling passenger numbers and amidst the growing realization that flying is returning to the status of a luxury due to high fuel costs fuel and climate change issues.

Offshore Wind

Rhode Island is a place of natural beauty, but few natural resources. But Rhode Island does have wind, and the effort to tap into the wind is moving forward. The state has a contract with Deepwater Wind to build an offshore wind farm, and the process is slowly grinding on. To facilitate the development of offshore wind the state’s Coastal Management Resource Council wrote the Strategic Area Management Plan (SAMP) for potential wind farm regions that is one of the finest examples in the country of coastal marine spatial planning. (Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council 2010) The document gives Rhode Island a reasonable start on finding the best sites to develop that would do the least harm to the environment and the people who make a living fishing. The state has also convened the Renewable Energy Siting Partnership a stakeholders group similar to that which created the SAMP to look at on shore wind, solar, and hydro power opportunities and -provide technical guidance to evaluate siting in municipalities.

This type of planning is critical. Already communities are passing laws to outlaw the building of wind turbines, so siting with great care must be done or else the whole state will be off limits to wind power. In the ocean it turns out that the continental shelf off of Rhode Island is among the most productive and biodiverse areas along the east coast and a hot spot for plankton, which attracts the sea turtles, whales, tuna, and other large sea creatures that are becoming progressively rarer. Knowing the hottest spots and planning to keep them healthy, will make this a much better process for all concerned.

Solid Waste

Rhode Island has a Central Landfill run by the quasi governmental agency the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation that serves 38 of the 39 communities in the state. It is closing in on its capacity, and in a small densely populated state, there are very places that one could fit a new landfill. It is also unlikely that any community would agree to become a sacrifice zone. It is generally agreed that the real solution is to produce much less trash. While Rhode Island was a recycling leader in the 1980’s recently the state has lagged behind. More and more communities are therefore implementing mandatory recycling, and the Central Landfill will soon be implementing single stream recycling. The legislature has passed a producer responsibility bill for certain kinds of electronic waste and some other products and Rhode Island is now in the process of implementing it. Rhode Island, unlike many of its neighbors, does not have a returnable bottle law. It shows up in the excessive litter through out the state, exacerbated by the near elimination of the state budget for litter control.

Rhode Island banned incinerators many years ago, though every year the incinerator industry tries to repeal the law. A better alternative is evolving in the movement to take all of the food scrap out of the waste stream so that it can be composted and returned to the land for growing more food. An anaerobic digester to capture methane and generate carbon neutral electricity from food scrap is set to open in 2013 and will go a long ways towards helping keep food scrap out of the landfill and returning fertility to the soil.

Agriculture and Land Use.

For 150 years Rhode Island was a place of mill villages fed by farms in the surrounding hinterlands. As the mills and farms disappeared the folks streamed out of the cities and created suburbs. Since World War Two the amount of land being used for housing increased nine times faster than the population grew. Pushed by Grow Smart Rhode Island the current thinking is to encourage redevelopment of the mill villages, town centers, and cities, taking advantage of existing infrastructure, while preserving the hinterlands for agriculture, forests, and other productive uses. Real estate development still drives politics, so it is difficult to make this cultural and economic shift, but some progress has been made. A housing driven recession has also slowed the suburbanization of rural Rhode Island. Land trusts and agricultural preservation programs are now found in nearly every town and have preserved for conservation and agriculture thousands of acres.

The one sector of the Rhode Island economy that is doing well is agriculture. The number of farms in the state has increased 42% in the last 10 years (USDA 2009), the number of farmers markets has quadrupled with nearly every town having at least one each week in the growing season, and the number of community gardens and gardeners has soared. Providence included in its comprehensive plan the right to grow vegetables in every type of zone in the city and has started developing community gardens in public parks.

Climate and Clean Air

What goes up in the air in the Midwest comes down in Rhode Island. Rhode Island is down wind of major cities and the electric power plants in coal mining states. It is an air pollution non attainment zone for Ozone. Asthma rates in the inner city are high. The compactness of Rhode Island means that drivers drive less than most Americans on, but Rhode Islanders make up for that by heating drafty old houses. Rhode Island is doing some of what it can, including helping people weatherize old houses, but clean air and the reduction of fossil fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions will take national and global solutions beyond what can be done locally.

Clean air and climate are inextricably linked as it is the combustion of fossil fuels that creates the air pollution, and the global weirding that we all see. Rhode Island has pretty good renewable energy standards in place, is taking action on energy efficiency, and approved using California CAFÉ standards. Maybe it is because Rhode Islanders know they are vulnerable to climate change and bad air quality. Rhode Island history includes some devastating hurricanes, but the floods of 2010 set records that underscored how older post industrial communities are increasingly vulnerable. In response the Rhode Island legislature created a Commission on Climate Adaptation. Rhode Island can do its share to reduce pollution by promoting green energy, and it is taking responsibility for reducing vulnerability to the changes that are already in motion. It is hoped that as the commission does its work it will explore actions that can simultaneously reduce Rhode Island’s carbon footprint, increase our community resilience, and help the state move forward economically.

Rhode Island is well positioned to contemplate global climate change. The University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography and other programs at local schools contain leading climate scientists who are engaged in the public debate The Coastal Resources Management Council has maps available that show what some of our communities would look like after sea level rises of three and five feet. (Coastal Resources Management Council 2008)

Conclusion

Rhode Islanders have a very strong environmental ethic. Translating that ethic into workable solutions to community problems in the 21st century will define how well Rhode Island weathers the storm.