Monday, March 18, 2013
Your guide for life in East Greenwich today, March 18.
Sustainability discussion: A kick-off event to discuss how to explore living more in line with earth-based values, with guided group discussions exploring ecological living. Topics will include choices for sustainability, healthy children, healthy planet, menu for the future, and voluntary simplicity. At Fertile Underground Grocery, 1577 Westminster St., in Providence at 7 p.m. Water Street closed: Traffic continues to be blocked on Water Street from Queen Street to Lion Street for at least another week. This construction is to replace the 90-year-old sewer main from the bottom of King Street to the Waste Water Treatment Facility. Work is supposed to be done by the end of March. If you have any questions, please contact the Department of …
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Starting at around 10 p.m. Tuesday, the crew shoveled, plowed, and vacuumed up snow from both the street and the sidewalks.
Snow is so pretty as if falls. But the reality of all that heavy snow from last weekend's blizzard was anything but pretty on Main Street by Monday. Drivers struggled to find places to park, pedestrians had to navigate through or over giant snow mounds, and store owners lost business. The EG Department of Public Works made it all – most of it anyway – go away in a significant operation Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. That Main Street snow? It's now piled up in the parking lot above the town boat launch on Crompton Avenue. "We understand the importance of Main Street," said DPW director Joe Duarte. "I wish we could have done it Monday." The rain Monday interfered with those plans, as crews did yet more snow plowing and had to …
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
The storm Friday to Saturday brought more snow to East Greenwich than the town had seen in decades.
If you've been on Main Street in the past two days, you know it's not at its best and the sidewalks ... well, for long stretchs of Main Street, they are impassable. "Most of the time they spent trying to widen the roads and clear drains," said Town Manager Bill Sequino Monday afternoon about the Public Works crew. He said he'd initially hoped the crew could clean up Main Street Monday night. The plan now is to clear the sidewalks Tuesday night. The DPW crew began work Friday morning and continued through the weekend, with little rest. As Sequino said, "It was a very messy storm." During the storm, the EG Fire District had 52 calls, according to Chief Peter Henrikson, but none of them serious. There were fire alarm soundings, a gas leak, …
Friday, July 6, 2012
The easement between St. Patrick's Cemetery and Bleachery Falls is being cleared by the town to access a main sewer line there.
If you've ever been to the falls at Bleachery Pond (between Sixth Avenue and Cedar Avenue), you know about the brush. It's kind of wild down there. And, fact is, that's part of the appeal. But the wildness wasn't so appealing to the folks at Public Works tasked with cleaning the sewer line there. So they have taken to clearing out the brush, making way for the trucks necessary to get the sewer cleaning job done. To a few of us, it was an alarming transformation. What was going on? At first, I thought the Department of Environmental Management might be responsible. The dam that makes the falls is listed as a "high hazard" at DEM and has been for years, so I thought perhaps they were going to work on it and needed access. But someone told …
Friday, April 27, 2012
Town holds a meeting for residents of Prospect, Mawney, Reynolds and Friendship streets to brief them.
On several streets on the Hill neighborhood of East Greenwich, gas and sewer lines have been replaced, roads have been torn up and patched, torn up again and patched again. "We've had lots and lots of calls from residents of Reynolds and Mawney," said DPW head Joe Duarte. The town will be repaving those and Prospect and Friendship streets in May. Because the Hill streets are narrow and there is little uniformity, Duarte invited residents to a meeting Thursday night to discuss the upcoming work. "This is not easy," said Duarte. "It's going to take longer than other roads." Some areas have curbing and sidewalks; some areas have an asphalt berm in place of a curb. Some areas have no curb at all. Unlike other neighborhoods, the Hill presents …
Friday, February 24, 2012
Councilman Mark Gee dropped a bag containing the carcass onto the table in front of the Public Works Director, wanting him to take care of it.
Mark Gee had a bee in his bonnet — or, shall we say, a skunk in his trash bag. The skunk, he said, had been lying on the side of Kenyon Avenue between First Avenue and Division Street for a couple of weeks. The more often he saw it, the more frustrated he became. “When’s someone going to pick this thing up?” the Town Councilor recalled thinking. “I was under the old-fashioned civic responsibility impression that someone from Public Works might notice this animal and pick it up and dispose of it.” After two weeks, Gee mentioned it to Town Manager Bill Sequino following a meeting. “I said, ‘How come our highway department doesn’t pick up dead animals on the side of the road?’” Sequino told him that wasn’t their job. Not satisfied with that…
41.66168
-71.45966
Kenyon Ave & Spring St, East Greenwich, RI
/articles/dead-skunk-in-the-middle-of-council-chambers
/locations/6444612
Friday, February 10, 2012
Snow to begin falling early tomorrow morning.
Local road crews are getting ready for an expected three- to five-inch snowfall that the National Weather Service announced will begin overnight and continue into Saturday. Wind gusts of 21 mph are also possible. [To see weather conditions in East Greenwich, check out the East Greenwich Patch Weatherbug page.] For those traveling outside town borders, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation announced that it plans to apply a brine solution to Interstate 95 from Exit 7 in West Greenwich to Exit 20 in Providence to keep snow from accumulating on the roadway. “We think this new technology will keep roads clearer longer, but motorists should not expect snow-free surfaces at all times, as all storms vary in intensity,” RIDOT Director…
41.660799
-71.451067
East Greenwich Public Works Department
111 Pierce St, East Greenwich, RI
/articles/road-crews-gear-up-for-saturday-snowstorm
1673371
/locations/6357950
Monday, August 22, 2011
DPW, farmers market end up in the same place almost at the same time - whew!
Every Monday afternoon, from May to October, the East Greenwich Farmers Market sets up shop at the top of Academy Field, on the strip of tree-shaded grass next to Rector Street. Earlier this Monday - Aug. 22 - a contractor for the Department of Public Works was deep at work at this very spot, installing a special type of storm drain. Although the town is aware of the farmers market (it's listed on the town's website), and a town department (the DPW) was overseeing the drain installation on Rector, the Farmers Market's manager, Tracie Truesdell, only heard about the work - which closed down that block of Rector - at 1 p.m., just two hours before the market opens. And she got the news from a friend. "It's frustrating that no one let me know…
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
The Town Council approves a $178,000 for the project, which will be paid for largely through federal grant money.
The Town Council approved a project that will place large dry-well-type structures at sites in the Hill-and-Harbor area of town. They will be paid for with grant money received in 2006 in connection with the federal Clean Water Act. “The impact should be substantial,” said Public Works Director Joe Duarte to the Council during a special meeting last week. Duarte said that 66 of the structures had already been installed in the Spring Valley neighborhood off South County Trail. “DEM has said that they reduced tons of pollutants flowing into the Hunt River Aquafer,” Duarte said, referring to the state Department of Environmental Management. The pollutants being targeted are animal waste and lawn chemicals, primarily. Duarte referred to the “…
Elizabeth McNamara
12:34 pm on Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Nope, but let me look into it. more ›