Julie Nora enlightened director of the school which teaches students in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, advocates dress code, no candies and no Halloween, organizes a meeting of the responsible parties. My wife drags me to the assembly of concerned parents, teachers, and representatives from the Gas Co., Health dept, RI DEM, Clean Harbors (The testers), City officials and law enforcement.

At the end of the meeting the attendees looked shocked and the panel sent to allay fears in the neighborhood sat looking exhausted and red in the face. I conferred with my next door neighbors who confirmed that they felt more afraid after the meeting.
I had heard some new terms which I had no idea how they could effect me.

Apparently the COAL GASIFICATION PLANT where the spilt mercury was stored was a BROWNFIELD SITE.

The story in the news was that four young vandals had brazenly broken into the abandoned Gas plant and stole a large jar of highly toxic elemental mercury, brought it back to their homes at Lawn Terrace Apartments smashed the jar in the parking lot and contaminated the complex and schools they attended. This caused an area wide search, massive environmental cleanup, an evacuation of all Lawn Terrace residents to a local motel for months, until the return of most of them just in time for Christmas.

For me I had to come up with evidence for my in-laws and my mother as to why I wasn't selling our newly redone home.
Like much of modern society I am only as smart as Google.
My first search, Coal GASIFICATION, comes up most in the thousands of lists of known carcinogens. After I recovered I refined my search, Coal GASIFICATION, Pawtucket.
This yielded an actual schematic of the Tidewater St. Coal GASIFICATION Plant, Pawtucket RI.
This was found on the site of Dr. Allen Hatheway a PHD in geology whose focus is former manufactured gas plants and their dangers. While I read the information on his site I emailed a note.
Thank You so much for your website, I need to read and learn all I can on this subject.

A recent break-in and mercury spill has brought attention to this (Tidewater) site.

My child goes to school and plays in the playground that is adjacent to the abandoned plant.

There are 4 school facilities right next to this site.

Is this safe?

Let me relate what I have learned about the gas manufacturing process in the simplest terms. Coal is heated in airless brick ovens; gas is released then cleaned, stored in large tanks then sold. Of course many nasty byproducts are created in this process that are highly toxic, volatile, and last forever in the environment.

Shortly, Dr. Hatheway called me, quite concerned and volunteered to help point me in the right direction as to how to get information on the Tidewater site and forward it to him for his evaluation. Meanwhile my wife and I decided to walk by the Lawn Terrace Apts and the plant instead of our usual Boulevard route.

In the initial meeting, law enforcement claimed that the youths cut through the fence and broke into the metal shop before they smashed through the door where the mercury was stored. Then they undermined their own case by citing the number of times they answered calls to that address. The building includes an elementary school and a high school.
But it was clear from the two holes in the ancient chain link fence and the smooth paths going through them that those kids probably were not the first intruders. Graffiti covered the buildings in the plant. A campsite near the fence had fresh beer bottles and burnt wood. From aerial pictures you can actually see a path worn from Lawn Terrace into the woods next to the plant. You could imagine teenagers for decades saying "I'll be back in a minute-"going out the back of the development into a wooded area for clandestine activities.

In the Rhode Island DEM report I read that most of the mercury was stored there after the death of a gas co. employee when they found a huge store of it among his personal effects. The spill was discovered when the gas co brought a vendor to look at the mercury in hopes of selling some.
The Gas co. maintains that the danger from exposure from toxic substances only exists on their side of the fence. But in an addendum admits that one substance, Chrysene, was found outside of the fence. This is not from them claims the Gas co.
Dr. Hatheway calls this improbable.
Meanwhile as we walked it became obvious that teens, homeless, dumpers, dog walkers and miscellaneous hikers have been through the property, have been exposed to and have tracked back myriad poisonous and carcinogenic materials.

Lawn Terrace is almost done being decontaminated. I have seen them remove the parking lot, the yard all but the concrete all around the three large apartment buildings. The buildings themselves were essentially rebuilt and the dweller's belongings packed into 30 yard trash haulers with their cars wrapped in plastic. The woods cleaned and the empty lot across Taft St leading to the plant excavated.

This has taken care of the mercury and any other contaminants that may be there, but what of the rest of the neighborhood and the four school properties adjacent to the site?
There the children are playing next to the lurking danger that may affect their futures.