About 300 deteriorating wooden pilings will be removed from the Providence River near the Point Street Bridge later this year, state and conservation officials announced Friday.
The Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, The Nature Conservancy and the city of Providence plan to remove 250 tons of derelict creosote timbers and piers from the river this fall. The project is funded by a $2.3 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program.
The pilings are remnants of the Point Street Bridge’s old swing system, which lifted and turned the bridge from 1927 to 1959. When the Fox Point hurricane barrier was constructed in 1966, it blocked larger vessels from entering the harbor and made the swing feature obsolete…