Narragansett Bay cleanup expands with new grant

PROVIDENCE—An effort to remove debris including plastic chairs, wood pilings and old fishing nets spoiling the shoreline of Narragansett Bay will expand under a new federal grant, officials announced Monday.

The grant of $174,000 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will allow a partnership called Clean the Bay to continue a clean-up operation that began in the summer of 2006. The
group will focus on 80 miles of coastline in Portsmouth, Middletown, Little Compton, Tiverton, Narragansett and North Kingstown.

The group plans to use a 28-foot boot and a 58-foot Navy cargo landing craft with a crane that can pluck tires and other debris from the water and deposit them in a large rectangular trash bin on the cargo boat. The larger boat can pull onto a boat launch ramp, lower its bow and allow the trash bin to be hauled away by a truck.

Much of the debris is located on land that is neither accessible to big vehicles nor accessible on foot, said Andrew Tyska, a board member of Clean the Bay and co-owner of the Bristol Marine boatyard.

Since the effort began, Clean the Bay has removed more than 588 tons of debris from 120 miles of shoreline. Earlier stages of the cleanup effort focused on eliminating trash from Greenwich Bay,
Metro Bay, Jamestown, Aquidneck Island and other various bay islands.

“Narragansett Bay is one of our greatest treasures and one of our state’s most important resources,“ Gov. Don Carcieri said in a written statement.

Volunteers have recovered household items as small as resin chairs and car seats to items as large as intact abandoned boats. In the future, Clean the Bay will be documenting how fast debris accumulates in areas that have already been cleared of trash so the organization can better target its efforts.

“Anything that might be in someone’s backyard in a coastal community can unfortunately be dumped in the bay,“ Tyska said.