Judge Smith Allows RI Recycled Metals to Continue to Operate
GoLocalProv News Team
Judge Smith Allows RI Recycled Metals to Continue to Operate
The scrap metal facility has been deemed the “stain on the bay” by the environmental advocacy group Save the Bay.
The City of Providence has sought to close down the facility and, in March, it had issued a cease and desist order, but RIRM appealed the city’s action to Superior Court.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTIn a hearing on Friday, Judge Smith blocked the city’s actions. He has continued the matter until May 3.
Early Thursday morning, a fire engulfed the facility. Flames shot upwards of 100 feet in the air and spewed black smoke into the Washington Park neighborhood.
Firefighters extinguished the fire before 3 AM and continued to monitor the facility for hours.
It was the second fire at the Allens Avenue facility in recent years; a previous fire broke out on the site in March of 2021.
Providence Mayor Brett Smiley critiqued Judge Smith’s failure to close RIRM.
“We are disappointed in today's decision. Rhode Island Recycled Metals' continued operation without a proper license poses a critical safety and public health risk for all of our neighbors in this area. We will continue to press our case in Superior Court and ask the state to hold them accountable to improve this situation for our community,” said Smiley in an email to GoLocal.
For more than a decade, two Rhode Island Attorney Generals have failed to prosecute a series of alleged environmental crimes.
In April of 2023, GoLocal drew attention to the lack of environmental enforcement of the facility:
The scene looks like a battlefield in Ukraine—acres and acres spewed with discarded vehicles, metal, concrete, and waste tires. But the site is on Providence's waterfront at the head of Narragansett Bay.
For more than a decade, the Rhode Island Recycled Metals facility has been an environmental disaster — starting in 2012, state officials began to take action against the site, but over the years, the enforcement actions have been blocked by a complex legal action.
“Every time we find something on the site, we have to go back to court. That is the 100-plus times we have gone to court,” said Terry Gray, the Director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.
“Essentially, due to the travels of this case, the facility is unregulated,” said Gray.
The legal travels of the state’s actions have been endless and completely futile.
In May of 2023, Judge Brian Stern reversed the previous decision of now-retired Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein.
In 2016, a Special Master was appointed by Judge Silverstein. The attorney appointed to “oversee” the facility — Richard Land — and the court's involvement was designed to spark the clean-up of the property. But, the effect of the special master had the opposite effect. The facility operated immune from environmental enforcement.
In May of 2023, a court filing by the Rhode Island Attorney General's office, the state sought the court's approval to begin the process of environmental "inspection" and, ultimately, enforcement.
But, since Stern's decision, DEM has only taken one enforcement action.
For the first time in nearly a decade, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) has taken enforcement action against Rhode Island Recycled Metals (RIRM).
DEM has levied a $25,000 fine against the real estate company that controls the site and is legally intertwined with the scrap company.
"The [notice of violation] pertains to RIRM’s failure to submit a public involvement plan (PIP) by the deadline of December 15, 2023, and the submission of the site investigation report 12 days after the deadline of December 1, 2023. After the NOV was issued, DEM received the PIP on December 29, 2023," said Michael Healey, spokesperson for DEM.
"RIRM has appealed the NOV to the Administrative Adjudication Division (AAD), which, as you know, is the administrative court for all environmental matters originating from DEM,” added Healey. “The AAD adjudicates all appeals of enforcement actions taken by the many regulatory programs within DEM and hears enforcement appeals for alleged violations of statutes and/or regulations under the jurisdiction of DEM. Such hearings are mandated by the Administrative Procedures Act,”
The resolution of the appeal can take months.