The contractor hired a cleanup company to address the spill at their own cost, according to RIDOT
By Christopher Gavin, The Boston Globe
PROVIDENCE – An excavator used in the ongoing work to demolish the westbound half of the Washington Bridge connecting Providence and East Providence leaked hydraulic fluid into the Seekonk River on Thursday afternoon, officials said.
In an email on Friday morning, Charles St. Martin III, a spokesman for the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, wrote the “accidental leak” on the north side of the bridge came from “a hydraulic line on an excavator working from a barge.”
“The workers immediately shut down the equipment and utilized a spill kit to mop up the fluid from the deck of the barge,” St. Martin wrote. “Some fluid entered the water.”
“The contractor hired a cleanup company to address this spill at their cost,” he said.
Crews have been working for months to demolish the bridge’s westbound span after its abrupt closure in December 2023, due to a critical failure of some of the structure’s original components from the 1960s. The bridge, which takes Interstate 195 over the Seekonk River, is the primary connector for Rhode Island’s East Bay and parts of Massachusetts to Providence and points west.
Jed Thorp, director of advocacy for Save The Bay, the nonprofit dedicated to protecting Narragansett Bay, said Friday the organization sent staff to observe the leak on Thursday and saw “fluid on the surface of the river going down to India Point Park all the way up to the Henderson Bridge.”
Though Thorp noted even a small amount of hydraulic fluid could create a sizable sheen on the water’s surface, “it had spread pretty considerably, both up and down the river,” he said.
According to St. Martin, the state’s Coastal Resources Management Council and Department of Environmental Management were both contacted. No violations were issued as of Thursday, he wrote.
“The contractor already had deployed a turbidity curtain several weeks ago to help contain any demolition debris,” St. Martin wrote. “That curtain contained much of the fluid spill.”
In a statement, Evan LaCross, a spokesman for DEM, said approximately a gallon of fluid is estimated to have spilled “with some entering an area of the Seekonk River contained by a turbidity boom.”
LaCross said there was “minimal environmental impact.”
“DEM considers this a small-scale incident, and any potential environmental impact has been mitigated and addressed,” LaCross said.
Thorp also said Thursday’s leak should not have a long-term environmental impact on the waterway.
But he does have concerns about how the demolition project is being handled, he said.
“We get that the bridge needs to be demolished, and they got to move forward with the project, but there’s basic best management practices. I mean, you know, bridges get demolished and rebuilt all the time. We know how to do this safely,” he said. “And our concern is that, you know, RIDOT isn’t making sure that their contractors are following all the proper safeguards.”
Responding to Thorp’s comments, St. Martin told the Globe in an email, “Both RIDEM and CRMC have confirmed that RIDOT and the contractor are following the necessary precautions and safeguards.”
In a March 7 update posted online, the Department of Transportation said work was progressing on the substructure demolition, and officials anticipated crews would focus on “removing elements of the substructure on land on both the East Providence and Providence sides of the river” this week.
“Demolition crews are using construction hammers to break up the old bridge components,” the update said.
“Demolition of substructure elements over water is expected to begin in early spring,” the update said. “RIDOT remains on schedule to complete the demolition of the bridge’s substructure by the end of the year.”