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Fishpart - I think many of the same jobs created in support of a Container Port would also be created if a Business / Corporate / Light Manufacturing went in there as well - and not have the potential for bad side effects.
Yes, I know Baltimore/Dundalk/Sparrow Point. I used to live on the water directly across from Sparrows Point and I used to boat into Baltimore Inner Harbor - very dirty water. Plus the traffic they are speaking of is a significant increase in ship traffic in the bay - with a goal of being more in line with NY/NJ than say Boston, already bigger than Prov.. Now it may be because it was an anti-port group saying that but I have'nt seen anything that really counters that either.
Agriculture is the biggest all-around polluter, but in Narragansett Bay, it's septic systems and home lawn care that do it as there is relatively little agriculture in the Bay. There are A LOT of towns and neigborhoods without sewer systems and treatment facilities. Oh yeh, and there is the storm run-off thing too....
I remember (and so will Schoolie Monster) what happened when the Boston Harbor Poop Tunnel opened up a few years ago, everyone said it would be better for the harbor and to make it cleaner. Well, the inner harbor got cleaner but not necessarily the outer harbor. I can remember a few times when an east wind would move things that didn't get "treated" like they were supposed to into wadeable bass water....
Anyway - we can all pull a bunch of reasons for and against the port. But from an ecology sense, anything that makes the Bay dirtier instead of cleaner is a raw deal for the people of Rhody. Anything done should have the track of making things better instead of worse... The Bay is the issue here and not the Port IMO. The Bay is also FAR more valuable than a Port.
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