From the Patch Files: Mayor Sues Landfill, Chief of Staff Resigns from Resource Recovery Board

Mayor Joseph Polisena, right, goes to Rhode Island Superior Court in December, 2011, to file a lawsuit over the odor problems at the Central Landfill.

Image: Johnston Patch

Latest in a series.

Over the summer and fall of 2011, residents of Johnston and neighboring communities dealt with some of the worst odors ever from the Central Landfill — and at the end of the year, Mayor Joseph Polisena filed suit against Rhode Island Resource Recovery and Broadrock Renewables over the smell problem.

In the midst of the lawsuit filing, I asked Polisena’s chief of staff, Doug Jeffrey, what he would do about his position as chairman of the board of commissioners for RIRRC — a pretty obvious conflict of interest. [He’d previously gotten an opinion from the state Ethics Commission that said he could serve both RIRRC and the town, but should return to the ethics board for further guidance or recuse himself on financial matters concerning the town.]

A couple of hours after Polisena went to Superior Court in Providence to file the suit — and while I was shaking off the chill from the December morning — Jeffrey gave me the answer by text message: He resigned from the Resource Recovery board.

Now, I’m not claiming credit for my inquiry leading Jeffrey to resign from the RIRRC board — but I was the first [and, I believe, only] journalist to ask the question, and I did get the scoop within minutes after he’d faxed his resignation to the corporation.

Postscript: Within five weeks of each other in 2013, Rhode Island Resource Recovery agreed to pay the town $3 million, and Broadrock settled for another $3 million, to which RIRRC added $2 million more, for a total of $8 million. Polisena said the RIRRC settlement will be used to rehab the sports complex at Johnston High School, and the Broadrock money will go into a facilities fund to fix up town buildings.

This also followed a PR nightmare for Broadrock, where a substandard repair job on gas-extraction pipes apparently led to an explosion at one of the company’s sites at the Landfill in July.