UPDATED with new info on Red-light cameras....Charlestown Tapas

Pumas? This, and many more threats to Charlestown’s peace and serenity in this week’s news briefs

By Will Collette

UPDATE: Red light cameras STILL not working

Even though the obstructing tree limbs have been clipped and the warning signs have been posted, Charlestown's red-light enforcement camera operator, Sensys, has still not activated the system. There are two sets of cameras covering the northbound and southbound approaches on Route One to East Beach and West Beach Roads. CPD Chief Jeff Allen says the problem is "Something about the modem."

It’s not just Charlestown’s Town Council that’s crazy

Sparks fly over Abel Collins selection as SK Town
Council Prez

Not for the first time, we have reason to wonder if there’s something in South County’s water that makes our area Town Councils act crazy. First we have Charlestown’s fake swearing in ceremony. Now, in South Kingstown, the nominally Democratic-controlled Town Council has erupted with some ugly in-fighting.

During their opening session, the SK Council tended to the first order of business, namely picking Council leadership. Margaret Healey (D), the top vote-getter was duly nominated as Council President, but proceeded to lose on a 2-3 vote.

Then independent Abel Collins, who works as a lobbyist for the RI Sierra Club, was nominated and then won by 3-2. Ms. Healey was then voted in as Council Vice-President.

At first, Healey was magnanimous in defeat, but later wrote on Facebook, "Thank you Abel for disrespecting me. I never saw you as a liar. I was wrong." Healey told the Narragansett Times that she thought she had Collins’ pledge of support.

Deepwater Wind gets its final federal approval – ready to build

Rhode Island’s first off-shore wind farm, Deepwater Wind’s pilot five turbine project to be built three miles off the eastern coast of Block Island, received its final federal approval. Plus, the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council has also given the project its go-ahead.

Construction is expected to begin in 2015.

The project will bring some much needed relief to rate-payers on Block Island who currently pay one of the highest rates for electricity in the US. Later, Deepwater plans to build a much larger wind farm on ocean waters it is leasing from the federal government.

The newly elected state Representative, Flake Bilippi, who now represents Block Island, in addition to Charlestown, was largely silent about this project throughout the campaign even though it is a gross violation of his libertarian principles on many levels.

More installments in the Copar saga

Steve Dubois photo submitted to DEM. Shows dust cloud over Copar

With a new Representative-elect Fake Bilippi and new Charlestown Town Council members expressly pledged to make the Copar-Armetta granite quarry on the Charlestown-Westerly line stop tormenting its neighbors, we should see a resolution to this long-standing problem by, oh, around the end of January, right?

That’s what local residents are counting on (click here). They also want the Department of Environmental Management and the state Fire Marshall’s Office to open up a new investigation about the dust and effects of blasting. The federal EPA recently settled its own charges that included the dust problem against Copar and stated the quarry operators had resolved the issues.

Copar paid $80,000 to settle the federal charges.

One of the central figures in the Copar scandal, Westerly Zoning Board chair Bob Ritacco, was in the news again. After being caught advertising himself as a CPA, the state Board of Accountancy (sounds like part of a Monty Python skit) found Ritacco is now in compliance, having removed the false claims from his website and his business signs.

Erstwhile Charlestown state senate candidate lands new job

Cameron Ennis, a self-described Swamp Yankee who ran a short-lived campaign for state Senate, was recently hired as the new Executive Director for the Education Exchange in Wakefield. The program was started in 1978 as the Washington County Adult Education Center and teaches GED preparation and English as a second language.

Ennis filed his candidacy as an independent last July only to have his candidacy self-destruct through a series of errors – he filed his signatures wrong, was uncharacteristically given a do-over by the Board of Elections, but still failed to make the ballot, falling just shy of the required 100 signatures. 

He officially folded his campaign on November 17 after racking up some fines with the Board of Elections for failing to file required campaign finance reports. I wish him well in his new job and hope he is more careful as the Education Exchange’s director than he was as a candidate.

Share of $2 million in new affordable housing funds goes to local groups

Rhode Island Housing announced a new round of grants to assist construction of affordable housing and two of the six recipients are local. South County Habitat for Humanity will get partial funding to build one of their classic single-family properties for a low-income family. The Washington County Community Development Corporation will get funding to rehab and convert a vacant house in North Kingstown into two rental units for low-income families.

Charlestown has already gotten the final funding it needed for the ChurchWoods low-income elderly housing on Old Post Road. This will probably be the last affordable housing built in Charlestown until the Charlestown Citizens Alliance either drops its vehement objections or is removed from power.

These grants were announced at the same time that a new report came out showing Rhode Island ranked the worst in New England for dealing with the problem of homeless children. The report puts the number of homeless children in Rhode Island at roughly 1,850. Of course, the CCA Party’s position is that this is not Charlestown’s problem, as Charlestown has no interest in attracting families with school age children. I’m not making this up.

Millstone’s “Dome” almost ready for Doomsday

The Millstone Nuclear Power plant’s emergency center called “The Dome,” located on the highest ground on the 520-acre campus, is nearing completion. The project is designed to withstand a worst-case scenario storm surge by at least 33 feet so the crew of the power plant will have a safe place to retreat to and launch emergency measures to prevent catastrophe at the plant. Millstone is only 20 miles to the west of Charlestown.

It will contain equipment and pumps that will hopefully enable the Millstone staff to handle five major “perils” – hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, tsunamis and severe snow and ice storms.

Millstone is also building a more remote emergency site in Norwich, CT, approximately 15 miles due north of the plant in Waterford.

Tick foe dies

Medical entomologist Wilhelm “Willy” Burgdorfer, the discoverer of the microbes that cause Lyme Disease, recently died at age 89. In 1982, he and another researcher were studying deer ticks, looking at them as the source of a New York spotted fever outbreak. Instead, they found the spirochetes that are the cause of Lyme disease which led to more research on how to prevent and treat this potentially deadly disease.

Let’s remember that ticks are hardy buggers and they are still active now, despite the cold.

Farm Bureau shakes up its leadership

Two years ago, Stamp had plans for a wind turbine on
Route Two.

Farmer and Republican activist Bill Stamp of Exeter is stepping down as president of the Rhode Island Farm Bureau after leading the organization since 1974. Stamp told the Providence Journal “I think 40 years is long enough. Hopefully agriculture will keep on going.”

Henry Wright, a West Greenwich farmer, was unanimously elected as Stamp’s replacement.

Scituate farmer Wayne Salisbury will replace Tyler Young as vice-president. Tyler was the longest-service farm bureau vice-president in the country having served the RIFB for 20 years.

Mountain Lion in Matunuck?

Move over fisher cats and coyotes…there may be an even bigger badass in our local woods. The Independent recently ran an interesting piece that noted evidence that the woods around Matunuck may be home to one or more mountain lions.

Who you looking at?

Several sightings have been reported to DEM since 2011. Recently, new South Kingstown Town Council President Abel Collins, who also works for the RI Sierra Club, found three deer that had been killed on his property and photographed what appears to be the track of a mountain lion.

Bill Betty, a national expert on big cats who also lives in Matunuck, believes there is at least one cougar in this area, but says that it will take more evidence to confirm these sightings.

He speculates that DEM is reluctant to confirm the sightings out of concern for public hysteria that could lead to demands that the animals be hunted down. He said that cougars are rarely aggressive with humans unless cornered.