Providence Emergency Response Officials Demonstrate Live Port of Providence Security Cameras
PEMA officially opened its doors to the new state-of-the-art Emergency Operations Center at PEMA headquarters

 

Mayor David N. Cicilline and Providence Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) Director Peter T. Gaynor joined U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Jim Langevin for the opening of the City’s newly completed Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in the City’s North End.   PEMA also demonstrated the agency’s new, state-of-the-art, live security camera system that enables emergency responders to monitor vessels as they travel through Narragansett Bay.

 

“I want to thank our Congressional delegation for giving us the federal resources we need to ensure that Providence’s Emergency Management Agency is more prepared than ever to protect our residents in the event of an emergency disaster,” said Mayor Cicilline.  “Under Pete Gaynor’s extraordinary leadership, PEMA has become one of the most professional emergency management agencies in the nation.”

 

“As a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I know the importance of securing our maritime communities,” said Whitehouse.  “This new Providence Emergency Operation Center will allow our Ocean State to be a leader in national maritime safety and intelligence.”

 

“Keeping our communities safe is our number one priority as elected officials,” said Langevin. “Opening this new facility with technology developed right here in Rhode Island demonstrates our commitment to equipping our first responders with state-of-the-art tools to keep us safe.”

 

The newly completed, 8,000 square foot EOC was constructed mainly through federal Homeland Security funding and includes state-of-the-art technology dedicated to managing and coordinating the City’s emergency response efforts. The following Federal funds were utilized for the realization of the PEMA EOC project (numbers approximate): Port Surveillance Cameras $570,000 (DHS Port Security Grant), EOC Technology $200,000 (DOJ Technology Grant), Port Sirens $130,000 (UASI Grant),

Miscellaneous Support $15,000 (EMPG Grant). The facility features an Emergency Support Function room equipped with computer-based management systems, live weather feeds, monitors and satellite communications.

 

“A tremendous amount of thought and time went into designing and constructing the new EOC,” said Gaynor.  “Every detail has been reviewed and compared to national standards as well as lessons learned from other communities that have experienced disasters.”

 

Port of Providence live security cameras
The agency’s new Port Area Waterside Video Surveillance System (PAWSS) enables PEMA to respond immediately, when seconds count, to an emergency disaster involving a vessel in the bay.  The state-of-the-art system provides emergency response officials with live camera feeds throughout Narragansett Bay, between the Port of Providence and the entrance to the bay in Newport.  PAWSS was funded through a $570,000 Department of Homeland Security grant and was developed in collaboration with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, RI Economic Development Corporation and Raytheon. 

 

[return to top]

---

Feature: My City
Neighbors Help New Trees Take Root

 

 

In the early 1900s, Providence was known for being a “Forest City,” home to 50,000 street trees.  After the Parks Department’s Forestry Division released the results of a 2006 tree tally, we accounted for 25,000 street trees.  Several factors played a role in the drastic depletion of our tree population, like the onslaught of Dutch elm disease that nearly wiped out the majority of the Elm trees that lined our streets.  Replanting of trees was also at an all-time low during the mid-century and it wasn’t until the late 1980s, when the Providence Neighborhood Planting Program (PNPP) was formed as a partnership between the City of Providence and the Mary Elizabeth Sharpe Street Tree Endowment that a concerted effort to replant neighborhood trees began.

According to PNPP’s director and Fox Point native Liz Downing, even with that rise in replanting, it still requires a tremendous amount of effort to keep up with the mortality rate of trees, which are caused by a number of things – natural aging, accidents, and extreme weather.  So to makeup for the loss, the PNPP turns to its neighbors for help.  Twice a year, they accept applications from neighborhood groups that are willing to plant and maintain new trees within one to three blocks in their neighborhood.  In turn, the neighbors get the trees, and assistance in planting, at no cost to them. 

City News caught up with Downing before this Saturday’s spring tree planting kicks off across neighborhoods in Providence.

Tell us about what’s happening around our neighborhoods this Saturday.
This Saturday, we’re going to be planting trees with a number of neighborhoods.  In the morning, we’re going to be on Patterson Street, Elmgrove Avenue, and Emeline Street.  In the afternoon, we’ll be on Carr Street and Alger Avenue.  These events are part of the PNPP’s neighborhood street tree award.  The way that comes about is that neighbors that are interested in planting street trees come together and they fill out an application.  Their proposal has to consist of at least five properties, each of which needs one tree within a consolidated area, one to three blocks.  They submit those applications either June 1 or December 1.  We approve them for spring or fall plantings based on the strength of the application. 

Neighborhoods that are awarded these grants receive sidewalk preparation and free delivery of trees, all at no cost to the neighborhood groups.  They come and help plant those trees on Saturdays in the spring and fall for six weeks total.  The neighbors agree, when they fill out these applications, that they will help plant the trees and help maintain them.  People get really excited about it. 

Explain the benefits of having street trees in an urban area like Providence.
Street trees cool our streets in the summer time.  Summer can get unbearable in the city during July and August.  We’ve got temperatures flying into the 90s.  On a tree-less street you will find that heat compounded because the asphalt is radiating that heat back up.  When there’s a tree covering that street, it refuses that radiation and temperatures get much cooler.  Trees provide relief from extreme hot temperatures. 

Tree leaves take in carbon dioxide, a huge benefit not only for our air quality and our breathing, but also the ozone depletion is reduced when there’s a high concentration of trees in an area.  Those trees are working hard to balance those gases in the atmosphere.  They can also block dust that is coming in from the highways that can come into a schoolyard or your own backyard.  That’s all part of the air quality or particulate matter that comes from highways and roads where cars are just emitting exhaust and toxic stuff for our lungs.

Trees also reduce the amount of water that goes into our sewer system because they’re taking it up as it rains.  That’s a big problem for rivers that have archaic sewage systems; when they overflow, raw sewage could flow into them. 

Studies have been done demonstrating that trees on a residential property improve property value by about 10%.  There are also studies done on people’s perception of businesses that have trees around which find that people are more likely to linger outside of established businesses that have trees outside.  They perceive that the business is taking care of the neighborhood, which could produce positive results for business owners. 

What has the PNPP done since the results of the 2006 Street Tree Tally came out?
The city forester, Doug Still, is on our management team.  He compiled a canopy study based on the tree tally.  Based on that canopy study and the tree tally, we had identified some target neighborhoods that really needed the most trees.  We identified ten neighborhoods: Elmwood, Federal Hill, Olneyville, Reservoir, Upper and Lower South Providence, Smith Hill, Valley, Washington Park, and the West End.  Over the next few years, we will be reaching out to those neighborhoods through neighborhood meetings, word-of-mouth, and just generally encouraging people in those neighborhoods to start filling out applications for tree planting because it’s such a cost-effective way of getting trees in those neighborhoods. And more and more meeting organizers are inviting PNPP and Trees 2020 to come to their meetings.  So hopefully we’ll get more people interested.

Another response PNPP has had to the tree tally data is to increase the diversity of the trees we plant.   This spring we are planting 230 trees, using 29 different species.  On average, the PNPP plants about 400 to 450 trees a year.  Sometimes it feels like we’re not able to do enough.  We still feel like we need to plant more but we can only do as much as the city allows and our endowment from the Mary Elizabeth Sharpe Street Tree fund is matched by the city contribution.  So the more funding we get allocated, the more trees we can plant.

The City is also undertaking an ambitious program to plant 40,000 trees by 2020, how is the PNPP playing a role in this effort?
Our role is to plant as many trees as we can.  We’re promoting the Trees 2020 campaign as we do our own outreach.  For those people who cannot plant street trees for whatever reason, for example their sidewalk is too narrow but they have more space in their backyard, we offer Trees 2020 as an option to them.  So we’re just promoting tree planting as much as we can. 

Do you believe we can achieve this goal?
I think it can be done if everybody buys in.  There’s a change in consciousness that needs to happen.  We need to reinforce the value of trees and change people’s thinking around that.  People who are already invested in trees have to help spread the word that this effort is one of the best things we can do for our city. 

It can’t be just the city doing the planting.  People like former city forester John Campanini to Doug Still have said this all along.  They’ve done the research and done the work themselves.  The numbers show that in order to get to this 40,000 goal, we cannot do it alone.  It would be impossible.  Besides, there’s not enough space on city property for us to plant that many trees and so we need neighbors and business owners to take part.  Their participation is critical to this effort. 

The PNPP works in such a communal way.  The visionaries, like John Campanini and the Mary Elizabeth Sharpe Street Tree Endowment, crafted this program into something that neither one could walk away from.  Our city partners are just amazing and we would not be where we are without them – from Tom Morra to Doug Still – we’re so lucky to have people in the parks department and forestry division who care so much about trees.  Also having Groundwork Providence as our fiscal agent for over a decade has allowed us to operate as a non-profit agency, with the ability to have a staff member like me on board and have volunteers like Peggy Sharpe, Tim More and Fraser Gilbane, who manage the relationship with the endowment. 

As a Providence native, what is your vision for the future of your hometown?
I would like to see every street with trees on it, every sidewalk having trees where it’s possible to have trees.  We’ve got a lot of sidewalk and asphalt but we don’t have it as bad as in cities like New York, where people can’t plant trees in some areas because they have underground cellars underneath the sidewalks.  Providence has the potential to really line our streets with trees.  What we really need, as I mentioned, is a change of consciousness, where people value those trees.  My vision is to see Providence residents understanding their roles as stewards of the Providence environment.  I think that would be huge.

For more information, Downing encourages neighbors to visit several websites:
· PNPP: www.pnpp.org
· City of Providence Forestry Division: http://forestry.providenceri.com/forestry/urban.php
· Trees 2020 Campaign: www.trees2020.org
· RI Tree Council: www.ritree.org

[return to top]