IVERTON -- North Tiverton residents were given a chance to freely express their feelings about living with their neighborhood's contaminated soil in a recent report completed by students from the Center for Environmental Studies at Brown University.
Though several sentiments in the document have already been aired to the media, some participating also discussed how displeased they are with members of the Town Council. Almost all interviewed praised the efforts of the community group ENACT.
"Overall, the response of the town government was perceived as inadequate," the 24-page report stated. "The respondents felt that only a few members of the Town Council had been willing to get involved, and they sensed that the town was dragging its feet."
One resident told the students that the council knew about the contamination before it was made public in late 2002 and tried to conceal it from the community.
"Our eyes were irritating, coughing, the whole thing," said the unidentified resident in the report. "That's how strong it was . . . I had told them [the council] it was contamination. They turned around and told me at the time . . . 'We know that it's a major problem.' They told me to keep my mouth shut and don't let the worms out of the can."
The nine undergraduate and graduate students interviewed 25 residents from a list of 145 names supplied by ENACT.
The list was supposed to be residents living in the affected area, however 21 "no longer lived in Tiverton and/or their numbers were listed wrong." Seventeen more did not have phone numbers listed, 21 expressed "very clearly that they were not interested, some more vehemently than others" and 2 households contacted resulted in immediate hang-ups, the report stated.
In addition, 15 weren't contacted because they were primarily businesses, 4 names listed said "do not contact ever" next to them, 18 said they were interested, but too busy and 2 did not speak English.
The report states that it is less comprehensive than it could have been because of the limited number of interviews -- only 25 -- and the limited time available to complete the project.. Yet, the group does believe the findings could play a role "in the political and policy response to this and similar situations."
The project was part of associate professor Christina Zarcadoolas's public perception of the environment class. Other projects in the past have been about the climate change in Rhode Island, strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transportation and lessons learned from Pascoag's water contamination, some of which have been used by state and local policymakers.
One student, senior Keally Dewitt, is taking the preliminary report further as part of her senior thesis. She is reinterviewing members of the community and has begun talking with town and state officials. She may also turn the project into a documentary film.
The report will be available next week on the center's Web site -- http://envstudies.brown.edu/projects.
ARTICLE TOOLS: 
