The title alone — “What the Heck is that thing down the street?” — speaks volumes about the violation which the Cullion Concrete Plant is to the community of Cranston. From Mr. Kerr:

Come on, Cranston, you can’t let this happen. You can’t let an entire neighborhood get mugged.

We have a serious civic failure in the making here. Residents are worried that they might have to move out because of the growing blight down the street. They also worry that they won’t be able to sell their houses for the same reason.

Just take a walk down Hamilton Road, off Pontiac Avenue, past all those modest, well-tended houses with the high dog and kid count. And when you get to the end, with Bethany Lutheran Cemetery on your left, take a look at the hideous affront to the community taking shape on a low-lying piece of land near the Pocasset and Pawtuxet rivers.

It’s a concrete wet-batching plant. All the pieces haven’t been put together yet, but it’s very easy to look at the huge conveyer and other large metal hulks and realize that if they are all put together and put into operation, life in the Eden Park neighborhood and beyond will go into a steady decline. The noise, the dust, the trucks rumbling along narrow, residential streets — they all will add up to a miserable collapse of municipal responsibility. [full text]