Senator Jack Reed joined a contingent of local and state officials this past Thursday at Jamiel’s Park on Market Street to learn more about the Market to Metacom development plan that could potentially reshape the geographical, environmental and economical future of Warren.

Bob Rulli, Warren’s Director of Planning and Community Development, along with Town Manager Kate Michaud, Town Council President Keri Cronin and representatives from the state Department of Transportation and URI’s Coastal Resources Center were available to brief Sen. Reed on the goal of the project and its potentially unprecedented scope.

The plan, at a macroscopic level, seeks to address the issues caused by the encroaching threat of climate change and the resulting sea level rise that accompanies it — a problem that Mr. Rulli has learned will leave significant parts of Warren, particularly the Market Street area, continuously flooded by 2035. The proposed solution is to slowly, over the course of decades, move people and businesses out of the Market Street area in order to established reclaimed wetlands in the area to act as a natural buffer from storms and rising sea levels.

Concurrently, a new development plan for Metacom Avenue will hopefully result in more places for those displaced to live and work in Warren.

“It is a long process,” Mr. Rulli said of the Metacom development strategy, saying it could take 10 to 15 years to start to see results from that. He added that the Market Street angle will be even more complicated, as the town will have to nail down many millions in funding from various possible sources and figure out how to buy out residents and businesses from their existing properties.

“We’re trying to be as transparent as possible with the public, but we don’t have all the answers yet. This is not going to happen tomorrow,” Mr. Rulli said. “But what we do know is going to happen is the sea is going to continue to rise, and in 14 years we know there are going to be properties under water.”

Teresa Crean, Associate Coastal Manager for the Coastal Resources Center at URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus, spoke about how their program had utilized student volunteers to a detailed GIS mapping of the area, and how Warren’s work could serve as an example for the rest of the state regarding preemptive action against climate change.

“There’s an appetite for people to learn and hear about this,” she said. “Climate change can be kind of paralyzing, so to be able to say Warren is taking these steps, they’re like, ‘Okay, we can follow this.’”

Sen. Reed also learned of a pilot program in the works between Warren and the state DOT regarding road adaptation — a comprehensive redesigning of roadways to safeguard them from the effects of climate change — in the Market Street area. Sen. Reed was able to offer assistance in trying to help acquire detailed mapping of National Grid infrastructure underneath the ground, something Mr. Rulli said has been near impossible to acquire.

“Through his offices, if we can now make that available, that’s huge,” he said. “Because we don’t know what’s underneath here.”
Sen. Reed said he was impressed at the amount of coordination happening on such a large-scale proposed project, particularly in its early design phases.

“They have very good leadership,” he said. “They understand that it’s a collaborative effort. You have to engage other parties and they’re also looking ahead, which sometimes you don’t get that when you’re so focused on the day-to-day business. I think it’s a very good model for what other communities should start doing…They’re taking a very advanced look at what the challenges are.”