Soil Remediation Work Starts at Former Riverside Jewelry Property

Ridding the soil at the former Vamco jewelry manufacturing company in Riverside of hazardous chemicals has gotten underway so the half-acre site can be offered for development.

GZA GeoEnvironmental of Providence began remediating the site this week by digging test pits to locate chemicals that were dumped or leaked into the soil over the years, said David Bachrach, East Providence’s community development director.

Then the crews began laying a grid of pipes that will help pull any volatile chemicals to the surface through the rest of the summer and into the fall before work stops for the winter. It will resume next spring.

Meanwhile, as the environmental firm worked inside a chain-link fence that surrounds the site, students in the East Bay Community Action Program’s summer employment service began installing privacy slats to shield the remediation from passers-by as it occurs.

Aprproximately a half-dozen students supervised by East Providence DPW workers installed the slats all day Thursday even as rain fell.

Cost of the remediation is around $500,000, Bachrach said, with all of the clean-up cash coming from a variety of federal and state grants.

“It won’t cost the city anything,” he said. “I’ve been cobbling together grants.”
Future development of the site is probably at least one to two years down the road, Bachrach said. 

But he hopes the parcel can be developed in tandem with a larger revitalization of Riverside Square just a few blocks away.