RiverzEdge Promotes Art, Life Skills, and Reuse

By DAVE FISHER/ecoRI News staff

Chris Ledoux, a CCRI freshman, works on designing computer wallpapers. (Dave Fisher/ecoRI News staff photos)WOONSOCKET — Just feet from the Blackstone River, in the basement of a former mill in Market Square, lies a refuge for local youth that defies connotation as an “afterschool program.” This effort to rescue and redeem at-risk youth starts with one idea: You can make money in art and design.

The RiverzEdge Arts Project is, in Executive Director Rebekah Greenwald Speck’s words, “A place-based visual and commercial arts mentoring program for youth. We’re trying to show these kids that if you love art, you can have it in your life. You can even make a living doing it.”

For a student to participate in the program, he or she must be enrolled in high school or on a track to attain a GED, maintain at least a C average, and must be at RiverzEdge at least four afternoons a week.

For these minimal requirements, RiverzEdge offers kids access to a wood shop, a screen-printing shop, a fine-art and graphic-design studio, a photo and video studio, and a green design program that encourages the participants to use reclaimed, found and discarded materials in their projects. It also gives them access to professional artists and designers that mentor the kids. “Make no mistake,” Speck said, “the kids do all of the work.”

And work it is. RiverzEdge is a functioning studio, that is, they have clients. The screen-printing studio has produced T-shirts, sweatshirts and tote bags for the Steel Yard, Farmstead and New Harvest Coffee Roasters. The graphic-design studio has produced literature for Social Enterprise Rhode Island, Family Resources Community Action and the Rhode Island Afterschool Plus Alliance. The fine-art studio recently let its students loose on a building on Main Street to create a large mural.

To get an idea of the great work coming out of RiverzEdge, click here, and check out the videos at the bottom of the page.

“Part of what we do is teach the kids workplace skills,” Speck said. "Having real projects and clients gives them real deadlines. Each of the students receives a stipend for their work, but it is paid on a point system, and not showing up or calling when you’re going to be late or absent will earn you a reduction in pay. Most students self-correct after a week or two of lower paychecks.”

They must be doing something right. One hundred percent of the program's participants attain a high school diploma or GED, and 98 percent of them go on to at least some college.  

Oddly comfortable reused hose chairs and footrests are available from the RiverzEdge Arts Project.Of particular interest to ecoRI readers is the RiverzEdge green-design program. Students fabricate usable items from discarded materials. Their signature piece has become the hose chair and footrest. Functionality trumps form here, but they are surprisingly comfortable.

“Environmental education is a component of all of our programs," Speck said. "Protecting the environment is a big part of community ownership.”

Students from the project participate in outdoor cleanups frequently, particularly in the Blackstone Valley.

To learn more about the RiverzEdge Arts Project, or to inquire about its design and printing services or products, visit riverzedgearts.org.

Recycle-A-Bike Keeps Providence on Two Wheels

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

Providence resident Chris Davies works on a bike during a recent Recycle-A-Bike Tuesday night open workshop at The Steel Yard on Sims Avenue. (Frank Carini/ecoRI News)PROVIDENCE — With their limited storage space — two semitrailers temporarily parked on Sims Avenue as The Steel Yard is renovated — already maxed out with bicycles and parts of all shapes and sizes, Recycle-A-Bike had to get creative.

Donated bicycles and their various components deemed unsafe to restore or reuse — many of the bequeathed bikes were waterlogged and so rusted they would have collapsed under any significant weight — were set aside for another purpose.

The rusty frames and useless parts were compressed into 3-foot-by-3-foot blocks that are now part of a cool-looking junk wall that has helped revitalize the downtrodden look of the former Providence Steel and Iron complex.

Recycle-A-Bike is a volunteer-based community bike education and maintenance collective that promotes bicycling as a safe, fun, sustainable and empowering mode of transportation. The group provides Greater Providence residents access to the skills, resources and space to maintain, repair and build bikes.

The group’s one full-time employee, Emily Lindberg — her modest salary funded by an AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) grant that expires at the end of this year — works from a desk in The Steel Yard’s faded-white office trailer. The Steel Yard is Recycle-A-Bike’s strongest advocate, providing the collective with workshop space, access to talented metal workers, including welders, and, perhaps most importantly, tough-love guidance.

The Steel Yard — founded in 2001 by Nick Bauta and Clay Rockefeller — this year, for the first time in its five-year-old relationship with Recycle-A-Bike, started charging the collective rent. This decision was a welcome kick in the pants, according to Lindberg.

“We’re trying to be more organized and find a place that we can truly call home,” said the Connecticut native, who is a recent Rhode Island School of Design graduate. “(The Steel Yard) is pushing us to grow.”

Recycle-A-Bike has spent the past several years bouncing around the new-look Steel Yard, setting up shop in various different spaces as the complex undergoes a renovation. Before that, the collective, which was established a decade ago, worked out of a church basement on Broad Street until flooding relocated the group of bicycle enthusiasts to The Steel Yard.

Currently, the collective is trying to raise money to build a more permanent home on property adjacent to its current landlord.

“We’re raising money to create a space that is more accessible,” Lindberg said.

With the help of volunteer shop coordinator Patrick McMillan — a metalsmith artist who moved to Providence from England, where he was in graduate school, about a year ago — and the work of four committees, the somewhat-disheveled cooperative is making organizational progress.

Recycle-A-Bike would like to model itself after the well-known Bikes Not Bombs organization that is based in Jamaica Plain, Mass.

“They’re our heroes, but we’re like the cousin they aren’t aware of,” Lindberg said with a laugh.

Recycle-A-Bike and its 480 or so members help facilitate conversations about the “exploding bike culture” in the United States, bike advocacy and basic bicycle anatomy. They talk about community engagement and of the communities across the country, such as Portland, Ore., that have embraced biking systems.

The organization holds an open workshop every non-winter Tuesday from 6-9 p.m., in an unheated space that is the size of a large walk-in closet. Often, the 10 to 30 cyclists who routinely attend this program spill out into a larger working area. Blue bike stands and a bevy of tools decorate the space.

Members, who pay a monthly fee of $20, have access to this semi-regular open shop; others have to pay $5 an hour, plus the cost of parts.

All the refurbished bikes and parts are for sale, but with six hours of volunteer time — Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. cleaning up the shop, helping better the group’s Web site or finding donors — one can earn a bicycle frame to build a bike.

McMillan also teaches a class called “Wrenching Wednesdays” from 6 to 9 p.m. The four-week class costs $50 or $15 per class. The classes are designed to give participants a solid understanding of bicycle mechanics and maintenance.

“We want the organization to feature all kinds of people with different interests and skill sets who share the same vision that Providence is very bikeable,” said Lindberg, a city resident who doesn’t own a car.

Northern R.I. Conservation District Empowers Students to be Environmentally Educated

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

GREENVILLE — The most effective way, many believe, to address climate change is to educate future generations about the importance of protecting and preserving the planet’s finite natural resources.

Gina DeMarco, the district manager of the Northern Rhode Island Conservation District, subscribes to that theory. She has spent the past two decades educating and empowering students from third grade to their senior year in high school about environmental advocacy.

“We want students to understand what a watershed is, what non-point source pollution is and the importance of protecting the quality of our water,” DeMarco said.

Since Rhode Island’s largest drinking water supply, the Scituate Reservoir, sits in the middle of DeMarco’s conservation district, it only makes sense, she said, that the organization focus on community outreach and education.

The Northern Rhode Island Conservation District is one of three in the state. The Southern Rhode Island Conservation District, which is based in Slocum, focuses on stormwater management. The Tiverton-based Eastern Rhode Island Conservation District focuses on agricultural issues.

In all, there are 3,000 conservation districts in the United States.

To engage students about such topics as non-point source pollution, rain gardens, plunge pools and environmental stewardship, the three-woman northern district staff leads various educational programs in and out of school, with the help of educators, environmental experts, community volunteers and business leaders.

Students in grades 3-8 in Scituate, Foster and Glocester get weekly visits from these people and others who lead them in games, puzzles and discussions on range of environmental issues.

Scituate High School science teacher Shannon Donovan teaches an environmental science class. With the help of two foresters — Christopher Modisette and Paul Dolan, both Scituate residents — the class’s 10 students, currently are taking inventory of the trees that stand between the athletic fields on Danielson Pike and the high school on Trimtown Road.

These junior and seniors are identifying property boundaries, researching the history of this woodland area, determining the species of trees on the property, identifying invasive plants and studying applied forest ecology.

Last year, Donovan’s environmental science class installed two plunge pools approximately 20 feet by 30 feet and 18 inches deep to control and slow the flow of stormwater runoff on Rockland Road. The project was accepted into the state Department of Transportation’s Adopt-A-Spot program and is maintained by students.

A total of 104 Scituate High School students also are currently participating in the Get Wet! program, which works with local students to create a long-term groundwater quality database for communities where there is shared use of groundwater resources — such as the public drinking water supply and private wells that make up much of the Scituate Reservoir watershed.

Using portable laboratory tests kits supplied by the University of Maine, through a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the students this week began conducting screenings of their tap water to determine its chemistry — nitrate, alkalinity, chloride, pH and hardness levels.

The goal of the program is to increase awareness, understanding and interest in the town’s water resources.

The district’s annual Water Festival, which will be held May 4 this year at Camp Aldersgate on Snake Hill Road in North Scituate, teaches youngsters about watershed stewardship and conservation.

For more information about the state’s three conservation districts, visit nricd.org, sricd.org or ri.nrcs.usda.gov.

Sailors for the Sea Focused on Protecting Our Oceans

The Newport-based nonprofit Sailors for the Sea was created to empower the U.S. boating community to protect the oceans and coastal waters it uses for racing and recreation. (David Thoreson/Around the Americas)By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

NEWPORT — Copper-based bottom paints are good at keeping barnacles, algae and other sea creatures off hulls, as these organisms reduce sailboat maneuverability, increase drag and decrease fuel efficiency.

However, as these toxic paints wash off, they start indiscriminately killing all types of marine life, or the poisons, which have accumulated in marina sediments, are absorbed by mussels, worms and clams and passed up the food chain to fish, birds and ultimately humans, posing health risks along the way.

Anti-fouling paints keep marine organisms from growing on boat bottoms because they contain biocides, chemicals that hinder the growth of barnacles and other marine life. Most of these paints also contain copper compounds along with anti-slime boosters, chemicals that dissuade algae from growing by preventing photosynthesis.

A local nonprofit, however, has made it its mission to make sailing a more environmentally friendly sport and hobby.

Sailors for the Sea was founded six years ago to educate and empower the U.S. boating community to protect the oceans and coastal waters it uses for racing and recreation.

Besides teaching boaters that using paints that contain naturally occurring biocides, such as zinc omadine and hydrogen peroxide, keep hulls clean without persisting in the environment or passing toxins through the food chain, the Newport-based nonprofit has identified other boating-related environmental impacts it wants to lessen.

“We want everyone who spends any time on the water to think about how their actions can improve rather than degrade the ocean environment,” said Daniel Pingaro, chief executive officer of Sailors for the Sea.

As a direct result of his work on the Pew Oceans Commission, David Rockefeller Jr. founded Sailors for the Sea in 2004, in Boston, to galvanize the sailing and boating community around ocean health issues, such as marine debris, overfishing, habitat degradation, non-point source pollution and inconsistent management policies.

“Most sailors and boaters are eager to protect the resource they spend so much time and energy enjoying, and Sailors for the Sea provides the resources and opportunities for them to engage in conservation and stewardship,” Rockefeller said. “As sailors, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to lead by example.”

The organization moved to the Seamen’s Church Institute, on Market Street, last summer, about a year after Pingaro was hired. From an office on the second floor, Pingaro, another full-time employee and a part-time employee run the organization’s day-to-day operations.

The move from Boston to Newport, according to Pingaro, was a no-brainer. “Newport is the center of the sailing world in North America,” he said.

The California native — he and his wife, Kim, and their dog, 11-year-old Tiller, moved to the East Coast because of the Sailors for the Sea job opportunity — previously worked in San Francisco for the Environmental Protection Agency.

He’s enjoying living in the City-by-the-Sea, and, as a surfer, swimmer and sailboat racer, believes strongly in the Sailors for the Sea’s mission. He hopes to grow the organization into the equivalent of what the Surfrider Foundation, Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited have done to preserve and protect the areas where members surf, hunt and fish.

About 70 million people went boating last year in the United States and Sailors for the Sea is the only organization working specifically with those individuals regarding environmentally sound boating practices, Pingaro said.

Leading education-focused events about oceanic issues and providing a link between information and the direct action that boaters can take will make a difference in the oceans’ health, according to the organization.

Sailors for the Sea has three core programs. Its nationwide Clean Regattas program assists and certifies yacht clubs and regatta organizers in providing environmentally friendly events that minimize impacts on the oceans.

In 2008, the voluntary program featured about 5,000 participants. Last year, the number of participants in these races grew to about 25,000, Pingaro said.

Among the races in 2009 that were clean-regatta certified included the St. Maarten Heineken Regatta, the Volvo Ocean Race at Fan Pier Boston, the New York Yacht Club’s annual regatta and the New Bedford Junior Regatta.

This certification provides independent, third-party verification that a yacht club or regatta is environmentally responsible in a number of areas, such as: providing proper receptacles for all garbage; prohibiting overboard discharge of trash or debris; banning discharge of untreated sewage; encouraging recycling on boats and at shore facilities; providing racers a list of earth-friendly cleaning products and using only approved “green” cleaning products at docks and shore facilities; prohibiting paint that leaches into the water and using only non-toxic bottom paints; prohibiting bottom cleaning in the harbor and in other sensitive water areas; and composting food waste.

The program also helps boaters stay ahead of the regulatory curve by preparing them for laws that will inevitably be passed — such as the changeover when tributyl tin (TBT) bottom paints were banned in 1989. Those already using tin-free paints were saved the trouble and cost of having to make that change.

The organization’s Web-based Ocean Watch program provides essays on current ocean conservation issues and resources. The still-in-development Certified Sea Friendly program will create, in association with the maritime industry, a voluntary, LEED-style certification program for recreational vessels. The program has the potential to transform the marine manufacturing industry and make the design, construction, maintenance and operation of vessels more environmentally friendly, according to Pingaro.

“We want to work with the industry to lessen the impact of their vessels on the environment and on public health, and at the same time help them keep their bottom line,” Pingaro said of the Certified Sea Friendly program.

He said Sailors for the Sea is working with industry experts, manufacturers and designers to develop a ratings system that would address all aspects of boat building, from finding alternatives to the toxic chemicals used in fiberglass to reducing a vessel’s carbon wake.

Sailors for the Sea also is heavily involved in the Around the Americas — a 25,000-mile clockwise circumnavigation of North and South America that began last May in Seattle. The scientifically equipped sailboat with scientists and educators on board during various legs of the voyage, will visit about 40 ports, including Newport last summer, in 13 months to draw attention to the changing condition of the oceans.
The expedition is a collaboration between Sailors for the Sea and Pacific Science Center, a Seattle-based not-for-profit science foundation. They are joined in this scientific undertaking by Capt. Mark Schrader, a world-record-holding, solo circumnavigator, and his experienced crew of three sailors, including Newport resident Herb McCormick.

The Williams College graduate is the former editor of Cruising World magazine and has also been the sailing correspondent for The New York Times. A veteran ocean racer, McCormick has competed in the Newport to Bermuda, Pacific Cup, Transpac, Sydney to Hobart and cruised and raced from Alaska to Antarctica.

“The health of our oceans is important to all of us, not just those who live by the sea,” said Rockefeller, who is partaking in the journey. “Our food sources, our climate and even the air we breathe are dependent on the vast ocean systems. Around the Americas will demonstrate both the current deterioration of the ocean condition and what we as individuals can do to reverse or at least slow the negative effects.”
The 64-foot boat Ocean Watch has passed through the Northwest Passage, and sailed down the east coasts of North and South America and around Cape Horn. The sailboat is currently off the coast of Chile, and is scheduled to return to Seattle this July.