By
CYNTHIA DRUMMOND/ecoRI News contributor
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| The Pawcatuck River flows past the Kenyon Industries mill in Richmond. The facility is renewing its state pollutant discharge permit, and some residents would like a public workshop held so they could ask questions about the types and amounts of chemicals that will be released into the river. (Cynthia Drummond/for ecoRI News) |
Kenyon Industries’ permit to discharge effluent into the Pawcatuck River is up for renewal, and some residents are hoping there will be a public workshop on the permit.
Built
in 1844, the mill first produced wool and cotton, and is one of the few
historic mills in Rhode Island that continues to operate. The facility, which
employs about 300 people, currently manufactures, dyes, and finishes fabrics.
The
Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) is responsible for
administering the regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency’s National
Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). DEM issues Rhode Island Pollutant Discharge Elimination System
(RIPDES) permits, which regulate municipal and stormwater discharge and
industrial effluent.
Joseph
Haberek, DEM’s acting administrator in charge of surface water quality,
oversees the permitting process. The discharge into the Pawcatuck River from
Kenyon Industries, he said, has been going on for so long that it pre-dates the
regulations.
“This
facility’s been discharging for many, many decades, certainly since the beginning
of Rhode Island DEM being authorized, the federal NPDES authorization in ’84,
so it’s nothing new,” Haberek said.
Kenyon’s latest RIPDES permit, issued in 2010, is expiring and DEM is preparing to renew it in what Haberek described as a “routine reissuance.” The draft of the mill’s new RIPDES permit would allow the mill to continue to discharge effluent into the Pawcatuck River at four locations, including a new outfall that would discharge excess groundwater and floodwater from the Sherman Avenue facility.
The
mill’s effluent contains a diverse mix of chemicals, including sulfide, total
chromium, total ammonia, copper, aluminum, nickel, lead, silver, and zinc.
Haberek
noted the limits on some of these substances have become more stringent since
the mill’s last RIPDES permit. He said monitoring requirements have also
changed and now require measuring two additional chemicals: hexavalent chromium
and phenol. Kenyon Industries will also be required to file a phosphorus and
nitrogen-removal engineering report within three years of the permit’s renewal.
The
problem is, according to Haberek, Kenyon Industries is not currently capable of
meeting the new, stricter standards. He said DEM and the company would
therefore need negotiate a consent agreement that would set a timetable for
Kenyon to comply with the state’s new effluent limits.
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| The Pawcatuck River receives a mix of discharged chemicals from the Kenyon Industries mill. (Cynthia Drummond/for ecoRI News) |
“We’ll issue the permit with those limits in it,” Haberek said. “The facility will have to appeal those limits, and then we’ll subsequently enter into a consent agreement … that’ll establish two things: one, it’ll establish interim limits so those are limits that will be in effect when they’re working on compliance, and it will also establish an enforceable compliance schedule for them to conduct the necessary studies and upgrade the treatment plant as necessary to meet the final limits.”
The
Pawcatuck River is part of the 300-square-mile Wood-Pawcatuck
watershed, which received a “Wild & Scenic” designation in 2019
from the National Park Service. One of the program’s
stated objectives is to “improve and conserve water quality and water
quantity,” leading some groups, particularly those that worked to achieve the
national designation, to wonder how discharging chemicals into the river
furthers that goal.
A
hearing on the mill’s permit application will take place if 25 or more people
request it. However, Haberek said members of the public will not have an
opportunity to ask questions.
“It’s
not a forum for question and answer,” he said. “It’s strictly just an
opportunity to, if people don’t want to submit written comments, they can give
us, you know, oral testimony. … Frankly, in the past, we haven’t had a lot of
interest or questions about this, so we didn’t do a workshop on this permit.”
Downstream
from Richmond, Charlestown Planning Commission chair Ruth Platner said she
hoped the state would hold a workshop, where residents could participate and
ask questions.
“What
we need is a public informational meeting, and DEM could just explain why this
is moving in a good direction, if it is, and why this is all that can be done,”
she said. “I think those are the questions. It’s not reasonable to expect that
[Kenyon] would meet all current regulations, because that facility would never
be allowed on the river under current regulations, but it’s been there for
hundreds of years and it’s one of the very last textile mills.”
Christopher
Fox, executive director of the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association
(WPWA), said it was unfortunate that the facility would not be immediately able
to comply, but like Platner, he understood the challenges that Kenyon’s parent
company, New York City-based Brookwood Companies, would face meeting Rhode
Island’s new pollution limits.
“WPWA is disappointed that Brookwood Companies is unable to comply with the recently updated pollution discharge limits,” he wrote in an email. “However, WPWA is sympathetic to the difficult financial constraints that complicate Brookwood’s ability to fully comply with the current standards.
Over the last decade
Brookwood has made solid, and expensive, progress toward lowering their mill’s
environmental impact on the Pawcatuck River. It is far more beneficial to have
an operational industry who is improving and working amicably with regulators
than an orphaned/failed industrial operation [Bradford Printing and Finishing,
Charbert Mill, etc.] full of legacy pollutants and no owner to take
responsibility for them.”
Brookwood
Companies did not respond to a request for comment.
The
deadline for requesting a hearing is Nov. 15. Questions about the permit can be
sent to Haberek at joseph.haberek@dem.ri.gov or to Max Maher at
maximilian.maher@dem.ri.gov.
Editor’s
note: This story was updated Nov. 11.