The state enforcement action targets hazardous chemical storage in Providence’s Wanskuck neighborhood, where industrial runoff sat near residential streets and soil tested close to hazardous waste thresholds. Shop-floor employees remain without public answers from federal workplace safety regulators on whether they inhaled dangerous levels of hexavalent chromium.
When inspectors from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management stepped into the plating shop at 10 Houghton Street in Providence, they were looking at containment pits that had become permanent holding tanks. According to an enforcement notice issued on Friday, a company manager told state officials that liquid waste had been sitting in two of the concrete pits since at least February 2020. That is more than six years of hazardous liquid sitting under the floorboards in the city’s Wanskuck neighborhood.
The agency issued a Notice of Intent to Enforce against Electrolizing Inc., an industrial chrome-plating operation run under the Armoloy corporate banner on property owned by B&J Properties. The notice outlines alleged hazardous-waste violations, from unlawful storage and missing inspection logs to a failure to train personnel and unreported chemical spills. Electrolizing has 10 days from the date of the notice to respond in writing, facing potential penalties that could climb as high as $25,000 per violation per day…