Editor’s note: This article is the latest installment in a series of articles about the Providence port and ProvPort’s Master Planning process, written and researched by the team of student journalists at Communities of Hope. Read previous articles here and here.
According to The Grantham Research Institute, the term “blue economy” refers to a broad approach to economic development that prioritizes marine life and ecosystems. Like its more well-known cousin, green economy, this concept stresses that you can’t have infinite economic growth without environmentally sustainable business practices. Though currently heavily dependent on fossil fuel tenants, the ProvPort’s 30 year Master Plan is attempting to create the conditions necessary for a blue economy to flourish here.
ProvPort, operated by Waterson Terminal Services, is currently working on its 30 year strategic plan and various affected groups have a vested interest — the immediate neighborhoods of Washington Park and South Providence, the city as a whole, as well as various scholars and environmental organizations geared towards coastal resilience. The port needs to be financially sustainable, it needs to be a better neighbor, and it needs to prepare for extreme weather and sea level rise. And, it needs to meet all of these objectives in a period of extreme economic and political uncertainty.
Currently, the consultants working on the plan, GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc. are exploring various options for the long-term. There have been three public meetings to date, and GZA is taking the feedback received from that community outreach phase to create a comprehensive direction for the port. This plan is unique compared to other business master plans as it attempts to not only provide for best business practices at ProvPort and Waterson over the next 30 years, but also to incorporate elements of environmental stewardship and climate resilience. The plan will have three buckets of substantive changes: increasing transparency and communication between Provport and the adjacent community, increasing resilience in the face of extreme weather, and charting a path forward into a blue economy.
Challenges to Going Blue
ProvPort is being both pushed and pulled into a more sustainable future. In the last few years, it has had a successful partnership with the offshore wind company Ørsted, and that has heightened interest in expanding the port’s renewable energy infrastructure. Chris Waterson, President and CEO of Waterson Terminal Services reflects that ProvPort is “one of the busiest offshore wind ports in the country right now, with over 300 individual vessel calls […] all related to offshore wind.”
Simultaneously, however, the city of Providence’s Comprehensive Plan expressly states that Providence “must be prepared for and facilitate a transition to an equitable, post-fossil fuel existence,” and it cites the ProvPort Master Plan (along with the city’s Climate Justice Plan and Hazard Mitigation Plan) as contributing efforts toward this goal. So, the master plan has to work within this limitation — no more fossil fuels. That may be easier said than done, however.
Kevin Williams, one of the Principal Planners at GZA and leader of the Master Plan consultant team, says “Previous [federal] administrations had put a lot of stock in diversifying the energy resources that the United States uses — whether it’s solar, wind, hydro power, renewable energy sources — to manage what is [a] very complicated near-term and long-term vision related to electrical demand in the United States, and to stem reliance on fossil fuel use from foreign countries.” Speaking to the rhetoric changes under the Trump administration, he continues “All of that has gotten turned upside down. One of the first acts that was put into place was this notion that we have an energy emergency, and that was followed by basically eliminating all support: pending leases, environmental reviews, and rollbacks of permits associated with offshore wind leases. That particularly causes issues locally.”
This transition away from fossil fuels is by far the most difficult question for all parties involved, as it requires slowly changing the entire nature of ProvPort, and with it, the city of Providence. “You know, in the community, you have to send your recycled metal somewhere, you have to have fuel to power things. A lot of things are still powered by traditional means like propane. You have to have salt to clear the roads. You have to have certain chemicals that are distributed through a facility there.” Williams explains. Although the city of Providence’s comprehensive plan restricts new infrastructure of fossil fuels, there need to be real alternatives or the status quo may survive.
Williams explains that there are possible alternatives through biodiesel and renewable energy, but those projects need to be funded and supported by all the parties involved. Even simple infrastructural changes like the electrification of industry become long and complicated in the face of a lack of federal grants and funding. Faced with the complicated factors of transitioning to renewable energy, GZA has turned to exploring other methods of economic improvement.
“We started this thinking that this is not going to be that complicated. We’re going to expand offshore wind right now. That’s a problem now. So we’ve had to look at things, building off of what they have, but also what other ports are doing, and other gaps in the market. So one was bulk goods and construction materials, “explains Williams.
Solutions to the fossil fuel restrictions include doubling down on the current industry at ProvPort, like increasing bulk shipments, are simpler than other solutions, but they aren’t the only ones. The area surrounding the Port of Providence along Allens Avenue features acres of undeveloped land. The Master Plan will address growing the Port to encompass some of that land, perhaps leading to development with businesses that are water-dependent, but which may look different than the traditional cranes, forklifts, and boat traffic currently at ProvPort.
The Port and Its Neighbors
Within the first months of the proposed plan being enacted, GZA hopes for substantive changes to the relationship between ProvPort and Washington Park. Williams notes that the Master Plan attempts to take some of the burden of organizing off of the community. He said, the “community only has so much bandwidth for this. There are already a lot of groups out there that are doing things, and then there is ProvPort and the city. We want a relatively lean process where the community has a say and a seat at the table. You have this three-part communication between ProvPort, the city of Providence, and the abutting community, South Providence and Washington Park.”
Some possible solutions include implementing tighter environmental regulations and allowing the community to have better access to information about possible pollutants. One challenge of enforcing environmental regulations is that the RI Department of Environmental Management can’t do specific tenant auditing at ProvPort. The Master Plan seeks to increase accountability measures for tenants of ProvPort through increased air monitoring and other systems of targeting emissions tracking.
Climate Resilience and Flood Prevention
Williams notes that with the increase in flood hazards due to climate change, “We’re seeing flood events…[with] inundation levels of like 11,12, and 13 feet on areas along Allens Avenue, on the Providence Riverside, and down to ProvPort.” The increased risks of intense flooding along the port could lead to, as he explains, “Environmental contamination, loss of jobs, dramatic impact on infrastructure in the area — whether it’s petroleum, whether it’s metal recycling, whether it’s salt storage — these things are not necessarily hardened against the storm.”
Effective climate change resiliency comes down to two types of infrastructural improvements, mitigation and prevention. Preventive improvements include adaptive improvements to sea level rise, like rising and floating infrastructure, but that doesn’t account for worsening weather conditions. Part of improving resiliency is preparing for the “100-year storm,” or storms that exceed normal weather conditions to an extent that you will only see one every 100 years. With climate change bringing more erratic weather conditions, one of the worries on the horizon for the port is that those one in a hundred year storms will become much more frequent. Infrastructural improvements for those storms might look like building elevated sea walls, installing methods of tide control, and bolstering the strength of the current infrastructure on ProvPort to withstand hurricane conditions.
Since ProvPort works on a tenant-based system where the nonprofit rents out its land to companies of various industries, there is an added layer of complexity to the Master Plan, as possible solutions that GZA proposes are completely dependent on the companies that are willing to rent at ProvPort for a 30 year term. In simpler terms, through the Master Plan, GZA is attempting to consider not only solutions to improve coastal resiliency, environmental outputs, and community transparency; but additionally, these solutions can’t interfere with ProvPort’s financial sustainability in an especially unclear future economy. It’s a tough balancing act.
TAKE ACTION: Learn more about all aspects of the Providence port at Providence Port Day on Saturday, May 17. The event is free with a suggested donation and will feature tours oif the port, lunch, and educational workshops. Information and registration HERE.
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.
