RI DEM Brownfields Digital Archive

This CDS project is a partnership with the State of Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (DEM) and Brown’s Superfund Research Program (SRP). Funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the project aims to digitize the DEM’s document library of historical environmental site assessments of brownfields in Rhode Island. Covering the 20th century to the present, these site reports provide a rich history of the environmental impact of Rhode Island’s industrial past and its legacy, including contaminated soil and water, and the partnership of the public and private spheres to remediate former brownfields and return the land to residential, recreational, or commercial use. The collection will be enhanced with metadata to create a searchable public online collection for use by scholars and the public as a corpus for research, such as an ethnographic study utilizing various methods, including text analysis.

Contributors to this project include Scott Frickel (PI), Andrew Creamer (CDS Lead)