When advertised bids go out later this year for the construction of Waterfront Drive in East Providence, it will mark the beginning of a pilot project run by the R.I. Department of Transportation as the first step to implement the new Clean Construction law enacted by the R.I. General Assembly unanimously to reduce emissions from diesel engines. It became law without the governor’s signature the week of July 1.

Under the new law, diesel-burning construction equipment on federally funded projects will need to be retrofitted to reduce emissions by January 1, 2013. The DOT will pay for the program with a 1 percent surcharge on projects larger than $5 million, to cover the costs of retrofits, according to Peter Healey, the DOT’s chief civil engineer.

The cost of retrofits at the Waterfront Drive pilot project – estimated by Healey to be in the $40,000-$50,000 range – will hopefully be reimbursed through federal programs. In the future, federal reimbursement for diesel retrofits will be an ongoing effort under the new law.

“This is government at its best,” said Joe Walsh, the Warwick-based lobbyist for the Construction Industries of Rhode Island, praising the manner in which normally contentious groups – the building trades, organized labor, environmentalists and health advocates, and government agencies – were able to reach consensus on the new law. “If you went to the hearings [on the bill] in previous years, you would never have thought the issue could ever have been resolved,” he said.

Besides Walsh, participants in the negotiations included: George Nee from the Rhode Island AFL-CIO, John Everson from the Narragansett Improvement Co., Nicole Poepping from Clean Water Action, Molly Clark from the American Lung Association, and Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown.

Walsh singled out the leadership of Sen. Joshua Miller, D-Cranston, who helped steer the negotiations to a successful compromise, in what Walsh said was actually a three-year process. “The construction-industry people and the building-trades union were all involved, and at the end of the day, we had [a new law] that everyone could live with.”

The construction industry was not against the bill, Walsh explained, it was more about working out the details so the new regulations wouldn’t hurt the industry while “they were trying to get clean air.” The primary motivation behind the new law, he said, was good public policy. “We will improve the air quality in Rhode Island, that’s the primary benefit, and I think it will benefit the health of our community.”

The positive health benefits in reducing air pollution from diesel emissions trump any cost concerns, DOT’s Healey said. “It’s important to note that the state of Rhode Island is one of the hot spots in the nation for childhood asthma,” he said. “And our diesel emissions are particularly high, compared to the rest of the country.”

Rhode Island has the eighth-highest child asthma rate in the nation, striking one in 10 children, a disease exacerbated by diesel fumes, according to organizer Nicole Poepping of Clean Water Action, one of the participants in the legislative negotiations. Diesel pollution is linked to 900 asthma attacks each year in Rhode Island, she said, according to recent data. She said preventable emergency room visits and other health care costs attributed to diesel-induced illnesses up to about $316 million annually in Rhode Island.

Some parts of the new law go into effect immediately and are aimed at reducing diesel emissions through the use of ultra-low sulfur diesel and anti-idling regulations, which limit idling to 15 minutes.

For Sen. Miller, the new law was an education in how to bring differing parties together. “It’s been a three-year process to get this into law, to get all the parties together,” he said.
Miller said that the pilot project in East Providence will demonstrate the importance of the new law. “The location of the project, in a setting where there is a densely populated area, near health care facilities, near schools, as well as the types of equipment that will be used, will be able to demonstrate the new law’s effectiveness.”

Healy said the value of the pilot project is that it would enable the DOT to “get a handle on how best to effectively apply retrofit technology,” such as the diesel particulate filter, or DPF. “The devil’s in the details,” he said. An additional takeaway, he added, is that there will be a diminishing cost to the department over time as the fleets of contractors’ vehicles are retrofitted. “I would expect that costs will drop dramatically, as the fleets become retrofitted with diesel emission-reducing technology.” •