Only Disconnect: The Problem of Stormwater in Providence, Rhode Island

After serving for two centuries as a sink for toxic effluent, the Providence River (Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.) is becoming fishable and swimmable again. This is thanks in part to the Combined Sewage Overflow Abatement Project (CSOAP), a network of tunnels 300 feet below the city that capture sewage-leaden water after heavy rains. Meanwhile, green infrastructure sites throughout the city complement the work of the CSOAP, diverting surface runoff from local rivers and streams while providing habitat for wetlands plants and pollinators. It is a remarkable transformation, but tentative, and by any measure, far from complete. For it is unclear how present-day infrastructures will hold up against more frequent storms and rising seas. And it remains to be seen whether resilience planning will empower frontline communities, as pledged by the city’s Climate Justice Plan, or merely deepen the city’s yawning wealth divide. Does watershed restoration lay the groundwork for a more just and habitable city, or is it just a way, to quote Erik Swyngedouw, “to sustain capitalist urbanity so that nothing really has to change”? Are constructed wetlands, rain gardens, bioswales and similar interventions “trivial,” as one analyst remarked to me, or do they provide an opening to reimagine urban life? What kinds of futures is this green turn seeding? In this paper, I situate the recent emergence of green infrastructure in the context of Providence’s sanitarian legacy of hydraulic governance. I then consider how the city’s still-evolving combination of green and gray systems work to reassemble the hydrosocial order, and to what effects.