Attorney General Neronha targets 6/10 Connector contamination settlement money toward child dental care

“This should be the beginning of an acknowledgement by government that we have failed the people of Rhode Island regarding dental and healthcare, and committing ourselves to fix it," said AG Neronha.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha announced on Wednesday that Barletta Heavy Division (Barletta) has paid $11 million to resolve its violations of Rhode Island solid waste laws by unlawfully dumping tons of contaminated fill during the construction of the Route 6/10 Interchange and lying about it. Proceeds from the $11 million settlement negotiated by Attorney General Neronha will fund dental care services for Providence city youth.

The case:

Barletta’s violations included disposing of tons of contaminated Massachusetts fill during the construction of the Route 6/10 Interchange. Further, when confronted by suspicious state regulators about the imported 6/10 fill, Barletta deceived them about its true source and contaminated nature.

“The material wasn’t hazardous, but it was contaminated for certain,” said the Attorney General. “Barletta had an obligation by contract and under the law to only bring fill approved by DEM to that site. They knew that was their obligation. They ignored that obligation for expediency, if nothing else. When the Departments of Transportation and Environmental Management (DOT and DEM) confronted them, they lied. That is why the price of this case is unprecedented and extraordinarily high for them.

“Companies that treat our state as a dumping ground and place the health and welfare of Rhode Islanders at risk, as Barletta has here, must face real consequences for their unlawful conduct,” said Attorney General Neronha. “When the federal case against Barletta was resolved some time ago, I strongly believed that Rhode Islanders deserved a better outcome, so we proceeded with our state case. I am pleased that, because of our demonstrated willingness to take this case to trial, Barletta has paid an unprecedented $11 million to resolve our case. Of that amount, $10 million will improve children’s dental and physical health in Providence neighborhoods near the 6/10 Interchange. In addition, Barletta will pay legal fees to this Office and DEM of $1 million. Whether Barletta learns from this experience remains to be seen. But they have paid a heavy price for their unlawful, irresponsible, and deceptive behavior, and deservedly so.”

Here’s the press conference video:

Dental Care? Dental Care!

“So, what to do with the $10 million?” asked Atteroney General Neronha. “How do we use that $10 million to benefit Rhode Island and link it to 6/10? We spent some time thinking about ensuring this money impacts people with some link to that area. I had the team reprint an article that greatly impacted me. Johnny Williams of the Providence Journal wrote it. [Link behind a paywall here.] Johnny’s reporting left me heartbroken and speechless. The story begins with Dr. Greg Stepka, who does a lot of work in the Providence schools. He has examined the teeth of thousands of Providence students, but one student in particular haunts him to this day. It was a 7-year-old girl. She was crying, and Dr. Stepka promised that everything would be okay. They did a pinky swear so he could look in her mouth. And when she opened her mouth and he saw her bottom teeth, he knew.”

“They all had to be extracted,” said Dr. Stepka. “It was awful to see.”

“This little girl had to have all her bottom teeth removed,” said Attorney General Neronha. “Think about that for a minute. That changes your life forever. It’s about self-confidence as you grow older. There’s no child in Rhode Island who should face that experience.”

According to the Rhode Island Department of Health, one in three kindergarteners and almost half of all third graders in the state experience tooth decay. This situation is particularly dire in Providence. According to data collected by Dr. Stepka, during the 2023-2024 school year, more than one in four Providence elementary and middle students had unmet dental care needs, like deep cavities and gum infection, and 520 students required urgent care for abscesses, tooth decay, and infections – a 56% rise in the number of severe cases from the prior year. Moreover, multiple studies have highlighted oral health disparities by socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity. Children attending schools with more than 75% of their students eligible for free or reduced school meals, including many in the Providence Public School District, are twice as likely to have untreated tooth decay as those in wealthier districts.

“How do we expect children in Providence and elsewhere to get good grades and function if their teeth hurt and they’re lead poisoned?” asked Attorney General Neronha. “We talk a lot about how their test scores aren’t where they need to be and that it is the teacher’s fault. But the truth is, we’re all at fault if we as a people can’t provide basic healthcare and dental care to our citizens.

“And the longer we wait, the worse it gets. I couldn’t read the article about that little girl and not talk to my team about trying to do something because it’s pretty clear that if we don’t do something, nobody else will. There’s no momentum in this state to lift Medicaid reimbursements the way there should be. We talk about it, but we’re not committed to doing it so that more dentists will take Medicaid. We’re not serious about that.

“We’re not serious about fixing our primary care problem because we’re not serious about spending the money to do it. We don’t think about dental care for an eight-year-old child when we’re building our budgets. It’s not at the heart of what we do when we do our budgeting. It’s on the outside. It’s viewed as optional.

“Well, for me, and I think for most Rhode Islanders, it is not optional for children to get basic dental care. We should all be ashamed of ourselves. If one more child, for lack of dental care, loses a tooth, let alone all of their bottom teeth, and the government doesn't intervene - Who are we?

“I don’t know exactly how we’re going to spend this $10 million yet, but I know one thing: It’s going to be spent on dental care for children who can’t get access. That’s where it will focus: On kids who live in the three neighborhoods closest to the 6/10 Connector. And if we can expand that out, we will.

“This should be the beginning of an acknowledgement by government that we have failed the people of Rhode Island regarding dental and healthcare, and committing ourselves to fixing it.

“Alright, so we got $10 million. It’s going to go to the Rhode Island Foundation. There will be an advisory committee that my successors and I will appoint, and someone that the Rhode Island Foundation will appoint to gather ideas and quickly get this money into the field. Whether that means mobile dental units or something else, I don’t know. What I learned when discussing healthcare is where the ideas come from. This is not from people like me; it comes from people who work daily with children and know what it takes to improve their lives. That’s where the money’s going to go.

“It’s going to go to children’s health first and foremost. We will get great ideas from people who are already doing it. There are a lot of doctors like the ones next to me and others. We’re going to get great ideas from the Dental Association. We will move this ball forward, and I hope that others will join us.

“$10 million can be everything we spend, or it can be a start. I hope others will see the need and match the money to contribute to the fund. We’ll figure out a way to keep this going. I want every kid to have a smile they’re proud of. My parents did that for us when we were growing up. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it. Even braces today are much more fun than when I was a kid. Whether braces or nice white teeth, I want kids to be proud of their smiles.”

More about the case:

On January 18, 2023, Attorney General Neronha charged Barletta and a former senior employee with illegally dumping tons of contaminated fill at project sites in Providence during the construction of the Route 6/10 Interchange project.

The Attorney General charged Barletta, a Canton, Massachusetts-based construction firm overseeing the Route 6/10 Interchange construction project, with two counts of illegal solid waste disposal, one count of operating a solid waste management facility without a license, and one count of providing a false document to a public official.

The Attorney General also charged Dennis Ferreira of Holliston, Mass., a former senior employee of Barletta, with two counts of illegal disposal of solid waste, one count of operating a solid waste management facility without a license, and one count of providing a false document to a public official.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Barletta admits all of the conduct alleged against it in the civil complaint. Specifically, the state alleged that the defendants authorized the disposal of more than 4,500 tons of contaminated stone and soil at the Route 6/10 Interchange construction project.

Under the State’s contract with Barletta, the company was required to analyze any fill brought to the 6/10 project site for contaminants and certify that any fill would be suitable for use. In 2020, defendant Dennis Ferreira, as the Superintendent of the Route 6/10 Interchange construction project, possessed broad authority over the project for Barletta, including the acquisition of material to be used on site.

Despite its legal obligations to the contrary, Barletta used contaminated fill from the Pawtucket/Central Falls Commuter Rail Station site on the border of Pawtucket and Central Falls, and from a Barletta materials stockpile in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston, Mass. The Pawtucket/Central Falls Commuter Rail Station site has been used as a rail yard for nearly 150 years, and the presence of soil contaminants, including arsenic and PAH’s, has been previously confirmed. At the Jamaica Plain site, Barletta stockpiled contaminated stone generated from railbed replacement work they conducted on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Green Line.

As alleged and now admitted by Barletta, Ferreira authorized Barletta to transport approximately 1,114 tons of known untested soil from the Pawtucket/Central Falls site and approximately 3,460 tons of contaminated stone from the Jamaica Plain site to the 6/10 project site. As further alleged and now admitted by Barletta, in late July 2020, state officials with DEM and the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (DOT) asked Ferreira for an environmental certification for the transported stone. On behalf of Barletta, he provided an environmental testing report with analysis from another site, hiding that the 6/10 site stone was contaminated.

In short, Barletta now admits that they not only deposited fill that they knew was contaminated at the 6/10 site but also lied about it during and after they dumped and processed it.

Today’s settlement resolves the criminal case against Barletta. Mr. Ferreira pleaded guilty in Providence County Superior Court to one count of filing a false document and received a one-year suspended sentence and one year of probation. His other charges were dismissed.

Under the terms of the settlement, Barletta has agreed to:

• Pay a civil settlement of $11 million total to the State within ten business days of the effective date of this settlement agreement;

• Fund the Attorney General’s 6/10 Children’s Fund with $10 million to be paid directly to the Rhode Island Foundation, which will administer the funds;

• Pay the Attorney General’s Office $750,000 in compensation for costs of investigation and prosecution; and,

• Pay the Department of Environmental Management $250,000 in compensation for investigation costs.