TIVERTON -- As Governor Carcieri sat with neighbors in Gail Corvello's living room Friday, looking at images of blue-stained, contaminated neighborhood soil and chewing an oatmeal raisin cookie, Corvello made her pitch.
She and other members of ENACT, the North Tiverton neighborhood group fighting for full delineation of suspected contamination and cleanup of soil in the Bay Street area, want Carcieri to earmark more than $58,000 in state money to the state Department of Environmental Management.
With that, ENACT could continue to pay a consultant to scrutinize the soil testing and cleanup recommendations from New england Gas Co. -- methods that, so far, have left the neighborhood unimpressed. She and other residents said this is largely a working class neighborhood, that they are not scientists, and they need help sort through complex information and the gas company consultant's assertions.
"Right now, we're living in fear because we don't really know what's there," Corvello said of the soil contamination suspected in the Bay Street area neighborhood. She added: "We're asking that we, please, have some money in that supplemental [state] budget."
Carcieri voiced support for the neighbors' plight and said he would look into things, though there was no flat-out promise that that specific amount of money was guaranteed. Besides, lawmakers in the House and Senate can change budget proposals. Carcieri said he wants to meet with the state Department of Environmental Management to learn more. And he voiced particular concern for neighbor's feelings about the pace of the gas company's attention to the issue. Carcieri said it "is moving too slowly."
"Not to do the right testing doesn't get you to the right result," Carcieri said. "I'm just concerned that we're getting the right information coming out of the investigation."
Adding punch to the neighbors' pitch was John A. Chambers, of the neighborhood's hired consultant Fuss & O'Neill. Chambers asserted to Carcieri that soil testing plans last year and news ones this year do not go far enough. Neighbors have said they want the gas company's consultants to go farther and fully delineate the potential extent of the area contaminated.
"We can tell from reading that plan that it's not designed to get to an endpoint," Chambers told Carcieri. "It's just very frustrating, because we know there's going to be other rounds" of testing needed.
Whatever comes out of the neighborhood's pitch to the governor, it was nevertheless a sign that the soil problem is on the map when the governor's black sports utility vehicle pulled up at 190 Bay St. around 1 p.m.
Carcieri emerged from the SUV to a group of reporters, and shook hands with Corvello and other affected neighbors. He saw the tiles that cover Corvello's backyard as she began detailing the neighborhood's fears. Colorful, yes, but the tiles have become a bleak symbol of a neighborhood's worries because they cover up the soil. Corvello runs a day care out of her home, and there are playthings outside.
Then they walked up the steps to her home, past the marigolds, through the kitchen and into the room where the Power point presentation was ready to go, a blue glow projected on a wall.
"Our vision: Our neighborhood restored to a safe, healthy environment for our children and all future generations," read the opening of the presentation.
Corvello, narrating the presentation, said the soil worries are having detrimental effects, including future physical health of families, emotional distress, fear of the unknown and, even, insomnia.
After officials became concerned, residents of the Bay Street area were told not to disturb soil -- an edict that still stands.
Children cannot safely play in yards. The simple pleasure of gardening is gone. Adding to houses or other structures is prohibited. A municipal sewer project, Corvello said, has been delayed.
And there are monetary concerns, such as property values that residents say have gone down and an inability to sell or refinance homes. All of it, Corvello added, affects financial stability and retirement plans.
Southern Union, the parent company of New England Gas Co., several years ago acquired the former Fall River Gas Co., which may have dumped waste that neighbors suspect was used as fill on developed and undeveloped properties from its coal gasification plant decades ago. When workers doing a sewer project a couple of years ago came upon discolored soil and odor, concern mounted.
Last year, New England Gas Co.'s consultant did a round of testing in the neighborhood, but state environmental officials and residents found it insufficient. This July, the gas company publicly released a new round of testing, in a couple of phases, for scores of properties. The state Department of Environmental Management gave the new plans a "conditional concurrence," and the testing began in August.
But as one of Corvello's presentation slides put it: "The supplemental investigation currently under way will not succeed in characterizing the nature and extent of contamination." Further, the presentation called the gas company's approach "iterative" and said residents are "being held hostage" by "stall tactics."
The gas company has maintained that it is trying to work with the neighborhood and state environmental officials to reach an appropriate conclusion.
ARTICLE TOOLS: 
