Former landfill in Barrington is getting 'capped'

Upland Way dump site will be used for passive recreation

EastBayRI.com ·

There is a flurry of activity on Upland Way near the Maria del Campo Cemetery and when it's all said and done the town will have more than 12 acres of open space that will be used for passive recreation.

The former Chianese landfills now play host to athletic fields.

The land is former landfill 3, one of four landfills the town operated until the mid-1980s. The $1.8 million project should be complete by spring of 2017, with most of the work done by Thanksgiving of this year.

Landfills 1 and 2, located where Chianese Memorial Park is today, were capped in recent years and are used as athletic fields. The newly capped landfill on Upland Way will not be used as playing fields.

This land was a rubbish dump that was covered over and generally went unused, albeit for dog walking and as a cut-through for students walking to Barrington Middle School. It will primarily be used as open space.

On a recent tour of the former dump, there was an abundance of household trash and other waste in plain view. Old nasal aspirators, plastic gloves, a muffler, Coca Cola bottles, tires and other garbage that doesn’t break down with time. 

Joseph Piccirelli, director of the Barrington Public Works Department, said federal and state laws require municipalities to cap the former dumps and this project is the largest year to date.

“Landfills 1 and 2 were much smaller than this one. This is bigger than those two put together," he said. "They are trucking in 40,000 cubic yards of fine clay that will cover the rubbish and a synthetic covering will stop runoff from entering the site. They are digging retention and monitoring wells for the escape of methane gasses. A detention basin in the rear of the property and a piping system along the perimeter will eliminate storm water runoff."

The cost of the project is $1.8 million and the work is being performed by J. H. Lynch & Sons Inc. They are experts in the landfill capping industry and are also doing a similar project on a much larger scale at the Central Landfill in Johnston. Pare Corporation are the engineering firm overseeing the job.

Travis Johnson, a field engineer working on the project for Pare, said the work is on schedule and there have been no roadblocks thus far. He said they have uncovered a few interesting items as they dug including a checkbook from 1965 with a balance of $69. 

Funding for the project comes from $1.5 million left over from a 2010 bond approved by taxpayers to cap landfills 1 and 2 and another $3 million bond that was approved in at the 2016 Financial Town Meeting to cap landfills 3 and 4.

Landfill 4, located behind the DPW facility, will be tackled in the next few years, completing the capping of former dumps in the town.