ecoRI News reporter Colleen Cronin interviews senior reporter Frank Carini about his latest article that brings historical context to how and why Rhode Island’s Department of Environmental was defanged by an overzealous state legislature in the 1990s, and how that experience has diminished the agency’s capacity to hold polluters to account today.

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This transcript was edited for clarity and length

Colleen Cronin 

Welcome to the Blab Lab, a twice monthly podcast and reporters of ecoRI News where we unpack the critical environmental issues facing southern New England. I’m reporter Colleen Cronin and today I’m here with senior reporter — emphasis on senior — Frank Carini. Hi, Frank.

Frank Carini 

Present. I hope I can make it through the whole thing without dropping dead.

Colleen Cronin 

You’re not that old. You’re not that old! I’m here with Frank today to talk about a story he wrote about the decline of DEM enforcement, since one of its most proactive directors Louise Durfee was fired in the mid 1990s. Frank, can you start off by talking about what DEM is for anyone listening who might not know?

Well, the acronym stands for the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. And it’s charged with protecting Rhode Island’s open space, protecting Rhode Island’s environment.

Colleen Cronin 

And who is Louise Durfee? And what did she do at DEM?

Frank Carini 

Louise Durfee was appointed by Governor Sundlun in 1991. Senate confirmed her as the director of DEM, and she was there from 1991 to 1994. She was fired in 1994, because she disagreed with the governor on budgetary needs and asked for more staff and more funding for enforcement, more funding to do its job. He asked her to resign. She said no, she got fired.

Colleen Cronin 

Why did she feel like DEM needed more funding? Or what was she asking for?

Frank Carini 

She was asking for enough people and enough budget for DEM to do its job. It’s not just enforcement and fining business after the fact or citing them for doing something wrong. It’s making sure they’re in compliance and you have to go back and check. You just can’t say, ‘Oh, here’s your stormwater management plan, put this in,’ and then you just walk away and don’t return for three years. You have to keep checking on it, making sure they’re in compliance. Before she got there, Save The Bay sent the EPA a letter and submitted it to the governor. The 16-page letter was scathing, about lack of enforcement from the DEM, lack of resources, lack of staff. So when Louise got started, she made a bunch of changes. I’ve talked to former people that worked under her and worked for the department, then have glowing reviews. But I mean, for the most part, she was well respected. She was fair, tough. And this is what the department needed to do to balance the needs of businesses with the protection of the environment.

Colleen Cronin 

Can you talk a little bit about sort of the environment around her that asked to resign, and then the refusal of that, and then the firing,

Frank Carini

You can protect the environment, enforce environmental regulations, and also have a healthy business environment and business atmosphere. And she was trying to do both. And people in power didn’t like that. So then, two years after Louise was fired, the Kennedy Commission started and that basically was Festivus. It was just an airing of grievances. There were people in the hallways with flags, and there was bumper stickers on cars out front, because people didn’t understand that you have to protect the environment. Nature needs to be protected. And, you know, they thought it was affront to their personal freedom, or it was bad for business. And it became that thing which exists to this day.

Colleen Cronin 

So, you’re talking about companies that are operating illegally violating these rules that they’re supposed to be following, in part because people aren’t. No one’s enforcing them.

Frank Carini

People think it’s DEM’s fault. It’s not. I don’t look at it that way. They’re not given the resources to do their job. It’s the governors and the general assemblies that have been doing this for decades. This isn’t something new. I think Louise Durfee was the exception to the rule for the most part, because, as I said, she made known that enforcement wasn’t good enough. And then after she left in 1997, EPA had to send a letter to the governor saying, “You’re not funding your agency well enough to enforce federal regulations and clean water, clean air.” So it’s been an ongoing thing. It’s because the people in power, the General Assembly members — and I don’t mean just the current ones. But going back to the 1980s. And the governors. They don’t put protecting the environment as a high priority. All that the previous administration, the Raimondo administration, was, in my view, was all about the environment was there for people to use, how much tourism dollars we can bring in; how much this means for money and businesses, jobs.

It’s been like that for decades. And it’s Louise who tried to make change. And she did a little bit. But she got fired, she wouldn’t resign. I agree with Terry Gray, the current director, talking about how times are changing, and there’s more people at the Statehouse — you’ll have senators and reps that are learning what DEM really does and what they need to protect the environment; it’s just going to take a while to change. And while it takes up decades to change, we’re making it worse for future generations and for the current.

Colleen Cronin 

And you said to in the article that DEM is also now although maybe the sentiment is changing positively.

Frank Carini

There are fewer people working there now than there were when Louise started. Her last year there was 630 DEM employees, that was the all-time high. Now there’s like 400. DEM’s budget is higher but I I didn’t look into how that tracked with inflation.

Colleen Cronin 

What is Louise doing now?

Frank Carini

She lives in Tiverton. She’s an attorney. She was a well-respected one. She’s now retired.

Colleen Cronin 

Can you talk at all about the current state of DEM, Do you see any hope of it returning to what it was like when she was there?

Frank Carini

Louise spoke highly of current director Terry Gray. He’s has been at DEM for 36 years. So he worked with a lot of the people that I spoke to that are retired no longer work there. They all had high praise for Terry, but just like Louise, it just a matter of is Terry going to be allowed to, you know, balance — ike Louise wanted to — balance of the, you know … it shouldn’t be attacking business and trying to put them out of business, but it should be enforcing the laws fairly. Selective enforcement is BS, and it happens all the time. And I don’t necessarily blame DEM. For example, Rhode Island, Recycled Metals. The state government allowed that to happen if you asked me it wasn’t DEM or CRMC or the city. It was more of like you can’t pick on businesses. For example, the state doesn’t even send out press releases — like Massachusetts will send out, when a business violates, send out a press release. DEM doesn’t do that. They do it for like if somebody’s caught catching extra stripers you know, embarrass the individual, but they won’t embarrass the business.

Terry has mentioned that one civil one’s criminal, I get it, but I don’t know why they’re not both criminal. And I mean, we’re polluting the waters the people pulling the fish out of, and those people are getting press releases on them and, you know, embarrassed and a lot of them are immigrants speak English as a second language, fishing to try to feed their families.

And these businesses don’t care about the environment. They’re like, we don’t want to shave into our profits. So we’ll pollute and we’re just dragging on forever and ever. The example I used in my story, and I think it makes sense. But again, I’m no politician or all that smart … but the Cardi brothers subsidiary owns a quarry next to the Big River Management Area. And they’ve been basically operating without a RIPDES permit, which is a discharge permit for stormwaters, for 16 years. And a lot of their stormwater, all that gravel and sand and stuff flows into the Big River Management Area. So while they’re fighting this and dragging their feet to put in the proper mechanisms to stop runoff Cardi Brothers Corporation, the main corporation, is getting contracts to do roadwork in Rhode Island. Well, they should be like, “You can get bid on contracts for roadwork once you fix your subsidiary’s problem up here. It’s polluting a conservation area. Once you fix that, then you can go back and get contracts for roadwork here.

Colleen Cronin 

So you said that, you know, DEM is trying to be more proactive about some of this stuff, but is there only so much in their control because of budget and staffing? Is there any sort of movement in the state Senate or House or from the governor or from local municipalities to try to change any of this or provide support?

Frank Carini

I think it’s changing over time; there’s more people that have been elected, there’s more people that have, you know, have seats up there that realize the climate crisis and realize the importance of protecting the environment. Now it’s going to take generations for that to keep filtering its way up. But I do think change is coming. I think it’s better than when ecoRI News first started reporting in 2009. I think the environment and climate crisis is on people’s agendas more. I think there’s more efforts to do something about protecting the environment and mitigating the climate crisis, but we’re not really doing enough, but we’re trying to or at least more so than we used to.

Colleen Cronin 

I was sitting in a RIPTA meeting recently and they were talking about all the money that they’re going to need to to become a green agency, and I’m just curious DEM is saying something similar. And if there’s any federal funding that they expect coming that might help them.

Frank Carini

It’s not just the funding. That’s part of it, obviously, funding and staffing, but a part of it is to is giving DEM giving support. Support doesn’t always mean a bunch of money. It’s just the support in general. And I think that’s, it was lacking for most of DEM’s existence. But I think people are beginning to understand what DEM does, how they do it. And the importance of it; they shouldn’t be a chamber of commerce, for business interests, like I think the previous administration kind of was turning it into.

Colleen Cronin 

And so it’s slowly over time trying to undo some of the damage from Louise’s firing. Would you say? I’m just curious if that if the firing scared people, made them afraid not to ask for more money made them afraid.

Frank Carini

Yes, more DEM people have said that it was the whole point of Louise’s firing. She was trying to take the agency to be more balanced in terms of protection and business interests. So ,she was trying to manage that better, and they didn’t like that. It scared them. So, they fired her. And then on top of that, they created the Kennedy Commission to let people vent about DEM and suck the morale out of the room. … so it was like enforcement is bad, and trying to put them in their place. That was the message I got from talking to former staffers; obviously, they have an agenda. But I reached out to Kennedy multiple times through the stories I’ve done, and he’s never got back to me. But yeah, that was the whole goal that I mean, that’s how I read it. Then I did go to state archives and went through all the news coverage back in the day they are they have on all in a lot of it was from the Providence Journal, and it was that they wanted to reshape the agency.