But it's already there

The section along Allens Avenue in the Port of Providence has been an industrial and port area for a couple of hundred years. Now Allens Providence Recyling LLC wants to put a facility there to process and recycle construction and demolition materials, such as asphalt, wood, concrete and gypsum, in the industrially zoned area, which already hosts other materials-processing plants. It would also process solid waste. The processing work at the site, which the company has been clearing of contaminants, would take place entirely indoors and include, as with such facilities in general, dust-suppression systems. Not that anything is perfect…

As usual with such projects, there’s understandable neighborhood pushback, which reminds me a bit of the past opposition of homeowners near T.F. Green Airport, in Warwick, R.I., to a long-needed runway extension, which has since been built. The airport has been there since 1928 -- long before most or all of the complaining homeowners moved in. Surely they knew that airports tend to expand. And the proximity of the airport had probably made it cheaper to buy their houses in the first place – in part because of the noise.

The Allens Providence Recycling project is another example – and apparently an environmentally responsible one – of the sort of enterprise that has long been in that industrially zoned area, made attractive to certain kinds of companies by the proximity of water, road and rail transport and by the simple fact that the area has long housed such businesses.

Recycling (which is good for environment) and other materials processing has to be done, of course under rigorous oversight. And there are well-paying jobs in this industry.

A healthy local economy depends on having a mix of service and industrial jobs, in manufacturing and such functions as recycling.

— Robert Whitcomb