The Port of Providence is the second largest deep-water port in New England and is an economic engine for the city. While cities in neighboring Massachusetts have Designated Port Areas (DPAs), the city of Providence does not own or control all the land in the Port of Providence—only that which used to be the city’s municipal wharf on the southern end of the coastline, near Fields Point. All other land to the north is an industrial waterfront, privately owned and regulated by the city only through its zoning ordinance. The land and businesses along Allens Ave—scrap metal operations, fuel tanks, etc—are subject to a patchwork of regulatory agencies and are frequently the subject of community concern.
Providence, located at the mouth of Narragansett Bay, has always depended on the bay’s shipping access. Dating back to the nineteenth-century, boats travelled into Providence, docking at the city-owned, then so-called, “municipal wharf.” In 1994, the Cianci administration worried about a large budgetary deficit that needed to be plugged. The City’s strategy was to sell its publicly-owned assets to private companies, including Providence’s municipal wharf, and raise cash. Today, the southern end of the Port is leased by the 501(c)3 nonprofit organization ProvPort, which contracts with Waterson Terminal Services to manage its operations.
Chris Waterson, Waterson Terminal Services CEO, explained that after ProvPort purchased the real estate from the City in 1994, financing “ultimately ends up looking like a prepaid lease.” He continues, after the initial purchase, “ProvPort leases the real estate to the Providence Redevelopment Agency (PRA). The PRA is able to float these municipal bonds, which are generally for investors—municipal bonds [are] considered secure because they have the full faith and credit of the city of Providence—in addition to the operations of the port standing behind them… That cash that is raised goes to the city. So, the city was able to plug their budget deficit with that cash.” The PRA then subleases the wharf back to ProvPort and ProvPort spends 30 years paying off the bonds. Waterson notes that ProvPort has never defaulted on its bond payments.
Waterson, under the authority of the ProvPort Board of Directors, leases land at the port to tenants who have warehouses, tanks, and equipment to manage their cargo. Approximately 452 ships came into ProvPort last year, importing cargo from ports all over the world, and exporting to other ports.
As a “bulk and break bulk” port, ProvPort does not handle shipping containers, partially due to the lack of space to store them; rather, the port deals with bulk building materials like concrete and lumber. ProvPort utilizes the industrial railway on its property to ship bulk materials to wherever they need to go domestically.
City Council Insists on Community Input into 30 Year Master Plan To Renew Its Lease
ProvPort is required to come before the City Council every 30 years to renew its lease with the City. And, as environmental and health concerns about the port have grown and gained more attention in recent years, the 2023 lease became the focus of both public and City Council interest. The lease was renewed, with the stipulation that a Master Planning Process and public outreach be completed and presented to the City Council. The Master Planning and public outreach began in May of 2024 after the lease was renewed.
The current Master Planning process has evolved since its initial provision as part of ProvPort’s lease extension. When ordinances to extend ProvPort’s lease were advanced by the City Council Finance Committee in November of 2022, public outcry was swift as community members questioned the Finance Committee’s perceived haste in passing the resolution with little deliberation.
“It was kind of the lame duck session of the previous City Council and Mayor’s administration. This is a 30-year lease that is a very long-term thing that had been worked on behind the scenes, and no one knew it was coming until it came up on a public docket and caught someone’s eye,” explained Julian Drix, a community activist and Chair of the City’s Sustainability Commission. The city’s Sustainability Commission, People’s Port Authority, and other community members organized to express their opposition to the ordinances’ passing and delayed the vote for further public input.
As a result, the ordinances were tabled with discussions of a Master Planning Process to better include the community in planning efforts at ProvPort. Trying to anticipate market and environmental conditions for the next 30 years is a significant challenge, but the hope and expectation is that, with public input, the port will become cleaner, more sustainable, and a better neighbor to the surrounding residential communities.
So far, the ProvPort Master Plan process has been a strategic planning effort including community meetings, an advisory committee, and a team of various consultants and collaborators working together in an effort to increase the transparency of ProvPort’s operations and to prepare for the next 30 years.
What Does Providence Import and Export?
Cement shipments from Canada make up the largest import volume. Powdered cement is moved through a series of tubes in order to load and offload it from cargo ships to the large domed storage facilities at the port. St. Mary’s Cement and Heidelberg, the cement companies who manage the shipments at the port, made capital improvements to the ProvPort infrastructure in order to accommodate the unique shipping infrastructure required for cement.
Meanwhile, ProvPort’s largest export is scrap metal in various forms. Car parts and old building materials are shipped out to other countries. And recently, Grimaldi Lines has begun shipping used cars to Lagos, Nigeria and Beirut, Lebanon via their specialized ships. Some cars are drivable but some are exported for parts, are undrivable and need to be handled by forklift. To hold the inventory of used cars, ProvPort expanded in 2022 to utilize a formerly Johnson & Wales owned parking lot.
Another commodity at ProvPort is road salt. Chris Waterson, CEO of Waterson Terminal Services explained that, depending on how cold and snowy each winter is, road salt becomes one of ProvPort’s biggest imports and huge economic boon as ProvPort doesn’t just import road salt for the city, but for all of Rhode Island (and some parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut). Neighbors are often critical of Morton Salt, whose large piles of salt, visible from homes in Washington Park, are an eyesore, and whose corrosive effects are substantial. These impacts are mitigated through pile covering, stormwater controls and regular sweeping.
In addition, Univar Solutions imports chemicals which it manufactures and distributes to a large variety of customers, ranging from beauty product manufacturers to water treatment facilities. Many in Washington Park are concerned about the chemical company’s proximity to their residential area due to fear of potential mishandling of dangerous chemicals like ammonia and formaldehyde. Univar is subject to a wide range of regulatory compliance from agencies like DHA and EPA to maintain safe operations.
The fossil fuel companies Sea-3 and WT Terminal/Global are the only fossil fuel companies on ProvPort land. WT Terminal/Global made headlines last December as their land was host to a biodiesel tank that caught on fire, an accident that was then the impetus for numerous Washington Park community meetings. Similarly, when the propane company, Sea-3, sought approval to expand their company’s capacity of propane tanks to support rail shipments several years ago, it was denied by local regulators. This denial was due, in large part, to an activist effort from the People’s Port Authority.
As a result of community engagement in the Comprehensive Planning process, new fossil fuel infrastructure is prohibited at ProvPort. “There’s really not a whole lot of new fossil fuel infrastructure out there, and we’re going in a different direction anyway,” says Waterson. In fact, the largest operation on the port (by value) is continual involvement with the offshore wind company (known as OSW) Ørsted They, along with other OSW tenants like WIND Cable services, have become the largest tenants on the port as well, their operations encompassing 25% of ProvPort’s land.
According to Waterson, this provision in the Comprehensive Plan aligned with the path ProvPort was already following, as both ProvPort and Waterson wanted to repeat the success of Ørsted and expand the port’s infrastructure for sustainable energy.
A Public/Private Partnership: Following the Money
ProvPort’s revenue can be broken up into buckets of income. Within the footing of ProvPort, there are land leases and separate port usage fees that encompass both dockage and wharfage. Dockage is the area in the water that cargo boat and ship owners pay to use. Wharfage is accommodation provided to load and unload the materials that are imported.
ProvPort pays Waterson for the service of operating the port through a similarly bucketed structure. Every month there is a fixed management fee that is approved by the ProvPort Board that covers a monthly itemized budget proposed by Waterson to cover all of its operations. In 2024, the terminal management fees came out to $6 million paid to Waterson. This fee is subordinate to debt services, meaning the bond holders get paid before Waterson does, another safeguard to both ProvPort and the City. If Waterson outperforms the budget and there is additional revenue that comes into ProvPort, there’s an additional incentive fee. This fee is based on the operating results and delivered quarterly. Annually, this incentive fee is verified by a third party auditor. This incentive fee is in place specifically because it incentivizes Waterson to make capital improvements and take on risks to improve the port despite being in a subordinate financial position.
Per the public/private partnership, ProvPort also pays the city. The city is paid 9% of ProvPort’s total revenue. Seven percent of that payment goes into the city’s General Fund and the other two percent is part of the master planning process which created two permanent funds, the Sustainability Fund and Community Benefit Fund. Each is 1% of PorvPort’s revenue, paid quarterly. The money comes to approximately $150,000 in each fund and will be spent on community projects in the area, to acknowledge the environmental impact that the Port has on the communities of Washington Park and South Providence.
While ProvPort was always poised to create its own Master Plan, the community engagement process is intended to make its intentions, investments, and strategies more transparent. Its task is to prepare for the future, consider options for expansion, make it resilient in the face of climate change and responsive to community concerns. While much of Providence’s port is now devoted to industrial waterfront usage, the Master Plan is shining a spotlight on the whole area, bringing it into compliance with zoning and environmental regulations.
TAKE ACTION: The Master Planning process is still in progress and to learn more, everyone is invited to attend a special meeting of the Special Committee on Environment and Resiliency, Wednesday, April 9 at 5:30pm in City Hall, Room 305 (25 Dorrance St.) GZA Consulting will make a presentation regarding early results of their ProvPort community planning work and zoning recommendations.
Also, The Providence Eye is presenting Port Day, which will be held on Saturday, May 17th, from 8am-4pm at the Johnson & Wales Harborside Campus. Free tours, lunch, and workshop presentations will help people in Providence better understand the Port of Providence, its opportunities and challenges. For more information and to register, click HERE
Note: This article is the second installment in a series on ProvPort, its Master Planning process, and the issues being contended with at the Port of Providence. It is being written in partnership with Communities of Hope. The author is working in collaboration with a research team of fellow student interns.
Abigail Stark, Alana Lemene, Anna Pellegrini, Jack Bransfield, Shania Brown and Zehra Atay contributed to this story.
Joshua Geaughan is a journalism and public health student at Roger WIlliams University. Through his experience working with Communities of Hope, a civic media group based out of the university, he hopes to approach news from a community first perspective.
