Warren's reluctant candidate fighting for Kickemuit

Barry Lial's platform is simple — "free up the dam pipes"

By Ted Hayes
Posted 10/10/18

Warren Town Council candidate Barry Lial never wanted to run for public office.

He doesn’t trust many politicians, thinks their priorities are misplaced and believes they waste money, create …

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Warren's reluctant candidate fighting for Kickemuit

Barry Lial's platform is simple — "free up the dam pipes"

Posted

Warren Town Council candidate Barry Lial never wanted to run for public office.

He doesn’t trust many politicians, thinks their priorities are misplaced and believes they waste money, create problems by neglect and shrug their heads when little issues become big ones.

Still, the retired Providence school teacher filed his paperwork to run for office this past June, spurred on by a singular issue that he sees out the front window of his family’s ancestral home on Serpentine Road every day: The upper Kickemuit River.

Last summer, Bristol County Water Authority officials announced that they plan to remove a large dike just north of Schoolhouse Road that since about 1960 has helped regulate the flow of water up and down the river. It’s a project that will take several years to begin and will cost upwards of $250,000.

With BCWA officials shutting down the Child Street treatment plant and well along with a move to expand the authority's water supply network all the way to Pawtucket via a new, $30 million pipeline, officials said in a public meeting last June that there’s no longer a valid reason to keep the Kickemuit as a backup source of water and thus, no need for an aging and failing dike that will require regular and costly maintenance costs.

They believe that removing the dike — and possibly raising the height of the state-owned bridge adjacent to it — will save the utility on costs and will allow the free flow of water upland of the Kickemuit down to Child Street and beyond — a move they, Save The Bay and others believe will help restore the heavily silted and impacted river to its natural state and will help reduce flooding along Schoolhouse Road.

But Mr. Lial, who grew up on the river and has never left his family’s home, thinks the whole enterprise is a sham.

The heavy sedimentation and other environmental impacts along the river, and the flooding that has long occurred north of Schoolhouse Road, aren’t necessarily due to the dike itself, he said, but the lack of maintenance and stewardship he claims the authority has shown over its system of check valves, gates, culverts and pipes. Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to remove the dike and give up a viable water source, he said, officials should free up the culverts under it, fix the flow valves and allow the river to run free again. If that happens, the river's health will take care of itself — and the water supply will be preserved.

“This all has to do with incompetence and neglect,” he said.

“The silly pipes to the dam don’t work, so you have the flooding and problems we’re seeing. I need to run for town council like I need another hole in my head. But the town needs to be aware of this, that the water authority wants to (screw) up this whole area. Economically, how is this going to help the town?”

Mr. Lial said the dam’s problems are far from new.

He said there is plenty of evidence that for years, water officials put maintenance of the river’s hydraulics very low on their list of priorities. Anyone who has spent time along the river and remembers what it used to be like will understand, he said. For those who don’t, he points to evidence, including a memo written earlier this year by Robert Patterson, a former officer of the Waterview Condominium Association on Child Street.

Speaking of the Kickemuit Reservoir’s height and health, he wrote in a notarized statement earlier this year that during his tenure as an officer from 2009 to 2016, “never was there a time when the condominium officers felt at ease with the regulation of the water level of the Kickemuit Reservoir by the BCWA. We took the task on ourselves for the protection of our homes. This situation exists today.”

Though he is a reluctant candidate, Mr. Lial believes helping get the word out about the berm, and Bristol County's water and maintenance, make his run necessary and worthwhile.

"By nature, this isn't my thing," he said. "Quite frankly, I detest it. But I'm doing this to blow my horn. If I don't get on the council, I'm still going to blow my horn. They're not going to get rid of me."

"They've got something here that is workable and they do nothing with it," he said. "This business of taking down dams is fashionable, but it's not fashionable to step back and say, 'Heck, how much fresh water is there in Bristol County?' Apart from Brickyard Pond in Barrington, this is it!"

On Friday, BCWA Executive Director Pamela Marchand countered many of Mr. Lial's points, saying the river cannot be restored simply by freeing up the impacted portions of the berm and its infrastructure.

"Removing the dam doesn't really do much," she said. "The dam was built to prevent water from moving upstream; really to prevent saltwater intrusion. It's a pretty small dam and it's really not needed. Why should we put money into it?"

Taking it out, and working with the state DOT on a plan to possibly raise the surface of the bridge adjacent to its she said, will have real, positive impacts:

"It would improve the river (and) it would open up Schoolhouse Road as an emergency exit out often. (Schoolhouse) can't be designated as an emergency exit out of town because it does flood."

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