We measure time as “BC” and “AC”

“Before Copar” and “After Copar”

By Sue Clayton

Woody Hill Marsh (from Misquamicut Runner)

I live in Charlestown on the town line with Westerly, the frontline of the battle against the Copar Quarry in Bradford. 

This is my third article in Progressive Charlestown where I try to describe what it is like to live with such an unneighborly neighbor. In this article, I will talk about how life used to be, “before Copar,” and how our community might heal “after Copar.”

Recently, the Charlestown Town Council decided to spend 2.1 million taxpayers’ dollars to buy almost 80 acres owned by Larry Leblanc. This money is to be spent to halt the possible building of a wind turbine farm on that acreage.

I wondered why the Westerly Town Council hasn't considered doing something similar with the quarry site, since it is also an environmentally important location that abuts the Woody Hill management area. Access could have been provided for people to enjoy the area. Westerly may not realize what is being lost.

Westerly quarry workers, c. 1900 (Babcock-Smith House)

According to Rhode Island Geology for the Non Geologist (1973) by Alonzo W .Quinn, Westerly red granite was formed 250 million years ago. It is a finite element. Westerly Red and Westerly Grey are famous, the grey being considered the best known rock in the scientific world because of its uniformity. Both have been quarried extensively, since Orlando Smith opened the first quarry in Westerly in 1847, but never so brutally as it is now.

Westerly granite was used to sculpt the Roger Williams Statue on Prospect Street in Providence. It’s found in everything from hurling disks and coffee grinders to buildings all over the world.

Roger Williams Monument, Prospect Terrace, Prov.

The same book states that in the year 1900, between 400 and 500 men could be seen walking down the hill back to their homes after a day's work. These are the men from Scotland, Italy and Ireland who came here to make a better life for their descendants. Many fought in two world wars.

They came as strong men and they came as artisans. They weren't a handful of men with monster trucks, ripping apart the stone and leaving a noxious mess as we see today. 

The history books I read say the men knew the stone well and could identify the differences in color and quality and were proud to work the stone into things of beauty. I'm very proud of those men, the backbone of America, who surely have raised our standard of living.

Before Copar began to rip open our community, the spring-fed quarries looked like still serene lakes surrounded by well-trod paths. 

In the spring, you'd smell honeysuckle and beach rose as soon as you entered the space. Pussy willow closest to the water and the osprey families flying overhead with their young, taking great swoops down to the water to catch fish. Their enormous nests would be balanced on the abandoned massive quarrying poles buried deep in the water.

Returning geese and ducks alighting for a sip of water before continuing on their way. Funny little quail and elegant pheasants darting from the underbrush. 

In summer the area is green and lush, with blueberries, wild blackberries and raspberries, so much fun when you are taking children on a nature walk. All ripe for the picking and growing all around the outskirts for the water.

Sustenance for all manner of birds and some of the humans, too. The stillness provides a wonderful place to sit and contemplate or to organize your thoughts. In the fall the paths are at their most enticing, the color of the falling leaves a gift. The soil underfoot earthy and strong, the scent of the ripe grapes hanging overhead enticing you to keep walking just a little farther and farther.

Winter is harsh and frozen and stark but the colors have a beauty of their own. The magnificence of it all is so distinctly New England. 

No matter where I end up I will always be beguiled and thoroughly in love with all the beauty my children and I have experienced  in the quarries.

The trails that ring the quarries interconnect, hiking trails ready-made. They all branch out to the Woody Hill Management area where they become more numerous and complicated.

This area was farmed by five different families, according to "In and about Westerly" by Thomas O'Connell. This land is a natural wonder! It is where the deer and the coyotes, the bobcats and the wild turkeys have lived for ages.

From Misquamicut Runner

Stone walls abound, made of boulders so large you can't imagine how the humans placed them so perfectly. There are the remains of foundations that are a living history to the way houses were built before machines. 

There are the most beautiful wide paths made for horse and wagon that are still stone free and covered with a fine grass that beckons you to walk barefoot.

Most interesting are the oldest paths, almost certainly carved out by the ancestors of the Narragansetts. Thin and well worn, they remain unchanged through the elements and are most certainly ancient. 

On some of the paths are enormous stones that line up in such a way as to seem to guide you in the direction of the sea.

Once you are in deep forest, it becomes magical. There is a heaviness and stillness to the air that requires you to stop and take notice. Observe what is around you and what is underfoot, and the animals warning each other that you are present.

Oftentimes my imagination has let me see Indians surefootedly passing through on the land that was theirs. Farmers turned patriots meeting clandestinely to plan their next move. Farmers and their wives and children working from sun-up to sundown, clearing the land and building those walls to enclose their livestock and their crops, trying to earn a living.

Westerly granite workers, c. 1900

Back at the quarries, imagine the men at work, sitting and eating lunch from their pails, so happy to be in this country and for opportunity. Our collective history is everywhere you turn.

So one has to wonder why the Comolli Brothers, owners of Westerly Granite and so proud of their own heritage, are leasing their land to a company that is intent on depleting such a fine, but again, finite commodity. 

This is not being done with care and finesse that characterized Westerly stone work. Instead it looks like an enormous strip mine such as you would see on a mountain top in Kentucky or West Virginia. For shame!

If there is a misplaced loyalty from the people of Westerly to Copar quarries, ask how many Rhode Islanders are actually employed there. This company and its owners are based in Connecticut. All the profits go to Connecticut. Their trucks are registered in Connecticut. Even Copar’s “resident agent” actually lives in Connecticut. 

One of Copar's giant rock crushers, taking beautiful stone and crushing
it into gravel and dust

Copar’s methods of extraction are making a shambles of the once pristine environment, chasing away the native species. 

Then perhaps Phil Armetta's children will offer up the deadscape as the newest best site for a garbage dump or transfer station or some other form of waste disposal site. NIMBY that!

The Copar Quarries’ background and those of its owners are open to each and every reader of this piece. Click here to read. Peruse it at your leisure and decide for yourself.

Perhaps there is an alternative for the site. The town of Westerly could consider buying out the Comolli brothers to end this nightmare the way Charlestown plans to buy the Whalerock site.

Bids could be taken on the quarry portion, with those applying willing to follow a standard set by the town, of respect for the quality of the product and for the neighbors surrounding it. 

But I believe it is not too late to try to reclaim that land and do what we can to restore it to the way it used to be. It could perhaps be dedicated to those men who strived so hard so our lives could be better. 

We owe them a better debt of gratitude than the pillaged site that is Copar quarries today.

For Sue Clayton’s previous articles, click here and here.

To find out more about the battle that Sue and her neighbors are waging against Copar, click here for the website of the Concerned Citizens of Bradford-Charlestown and contact them to find out what you can do to help.