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4/6/2026
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Op-Ed: Upcoming Town Council meeting crucial to stopping sewage sludge facility
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By Rep. Julie A. Casimiro
At the March 30 Town Council meeting, North Kingstown residents made it clear that a pyrolysis sewage treatment facility is not wanted in our town. The road that got us to this point has been paved with a lack of transparency and a breach of public trust. The push-back against the Quonset Soil Solutions facility has been swift and absolute, and the community has been quite clear in its belief that this facility has no place in our community.
I learned about this project only approximately three weeks ago. The lack of public input and lack of public vetting should have every resident enraged. This proposal is going to affect our quality of life, our health and our home values. Quonset Business Park, once the “crown jewel” of Rhode Island, is turning North Kingstown into the armpit of Rhode Island.
The facility, if it is allowed to go forward, will sit upon an aquifer, the town’s sole water supply source. The technology has yet to be proven successful and this site would be the largest in the country with two of the three other sites having failed already. Experimental technology managing toxic chemicals is not okay in our community or in our water!
How does the Department of Environmental Management think it is acceptable to allow 83 pounds of mercury emissions per year into our air? What could possibly go wrong with 40 truckloads of toxic sludge transported through our area daily? The site is proposed to be operational 24/7, processing 159 tons of toxic sludge each and every day. A lot could go wrong – at the expense of North Kingstown residents.
North Kingstown residents are angry and have every right to be so. We need answers, we need proper public vetting, and we need this proposal stopped. I have already filed legislation to temporarily halt the facility, and I plan to file additional legislation if we don’t come to an acceptable solution on this, with that solution being no pyrolysis sewage treatment facility in our community.
I plan to attend the April 27 Town Council meeting. I encourage all of you to do the same and have your voices heard. And please contact Governor McKee’s office at (401) 222-2080 to have him stop this proposal permanently.
We need to take back our community!
Rep. Julie A. Casimiro, a Democrat, represents District 31 in North Kingstown and Exeter.
For more information, contact:
Andrew Caruolo, Publicist
State House Room 20
Providence, RI 02903
(401)222-6124
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