Let’s Take A
FIELD TRIP
Since we’re all staying close to home these days, let’s take a virtual field trip and visit some exciting projects in our communities!
Today we’re going to “visit”
Festival Pier This is Festival Pier, located in Pawtucket. Each year this public park hosts the Dragon Boat Races and the Taiwan Day Festival, and there is room to fish and boat. But this beautiful community space didn’t always look like this. It actually used to be an oil terminal!
Our team worked with the City to transform this space into what you see today. And while you will notice a lot of trees, you might not know that these trees are actually working! “Phytoremediation� is the use of plants to clean up chemicals in the ground. The roots of these trees speed up the cleanup of the soil by breaking down and absorbing contaminants and putting oxygen into the soil.
Fort Adams State Park This is Fort Adams State Park, which dates back to 1799, and sits in the middle of Newport Harbor and Narragansett Bay. Every summer for the past 35 years, the world-renowned Jazz Festival and the Folk Festival have taken place here. The Park offers fishing, boating, and picnicking. But before it was community gathering space, it was a jail!
We were thrilled to be part of this transformative project that aimed to keep the historical integrity of the space. Being so close to the water, stormwater management was a big part of our work, and we did this using subsurface techniques (meaning you don’t see them) so that the historic layout of Redoubt Jail was maintained and stormwater runoff was reduced.
Knowles Mill Park This is Knowles Mill Park in Richmond. While it is now a riverfront park for passive recreation (walking, canoeing, looking for wildlife, etc.), it used to be home to a textile mill. While helping the town redevelop the site, we had to first make sure it was safe to build on, and we did this by completing environmental site assessments and a cleanup.
We also removed an old concrete dam that was blocking the river and stopping fish from migrating upstream like they used to do before the mill was built. Today you can walk around and see the wildlife, clean water and clean grounds, or you can have a picnic or take a kayak trip down the Pawcatuck River.
We hope you had fun on our Virtual Field Trip to
Rhode Island!