- [Pamela] Tonight, in the wake of the Washington Bridge debacle, how worried should we be about the safety of the state's other bridges?

- [David] You can see where the concrete has started to crumble and the rebar is exposed.

- [Pamela] And we visit a local distillery, where land and sea mix, creating oyster vodka and seaweed gin.

- We hit a good sweet spot with like, "Oh, the ocean state, ocean stuff.

We can make this taste good."

- [Pamela] Then, what a senior who paddled the length of the Mississippi can teach us about perseverance.

- And there's a big world out there when you get off your couch.

- [Pamela] Finally, Rhode Island legislators kicking the can on the bottle bill with Ted Nesi.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) - Good evening.

Welcome to "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

I'm Anaridis Rodriguez.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We begin tonight with another look at bridge safety in Rhode Island.

- The Washington Bridge has been grabbing headlines for a year and a half, but it's just one of several hundred in the state.

Over the last several weeks, our senior investigations editor, Jeremy Bernfeld, and correspondent David Wright, have been looking into how safe those structures are.

Some of their findings may surprise you.

This report is part of our series, Breaking Point: The Washington Bridge.

- Major thoroughfares are the bloodstream of our economy.

That's why we call them arteries.

The life of the region depends on a steady flow, so a sudden blockage (car horn honking) can ruin your day.

Even then, it could be worse.

That's what former transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, said when he toured the newly closed Washington Bridge.

- Lives were saved by the inspection that found this issue so that it could be addressed through construction rather than after something bad happened.

- [David] But what about the rest of the state's infrastructure?

How worried should we be about Rhode Island's 782 other big bridges that carry motor vehicles?

Only four other states have a higher percentage of structurally deficient bridges.

Here in Rhode Island, more than 15% of the bridges, that's more than twice the national average.

Plenty of them are getting long in the tooth.

Some were already crumbling back in 2016 when Vice President Joe Biden came to see for himself.

- For 10 years, you've had Lincoln Logs holding the damn thing up?

No, I mean, go look at it!

The press went and looked at it.

If everybody in Rhode Island watched the news tonight and saw that, they tried to go around the damn bridge.

- That was nearly a decade ago.

The McCormick Quarry Bridge in East Providence has since been repaired, so have many others, but not nearly enough.

Our own review of public records found a total of 119 bridges rated as poor in the most recent available data.

75 of them have been listed as poor every year for nearly a decade.

Those poor bridges are scattered all over the state.

Some are so small, you barely even notice them, like this one in Central Falls, which carries more than 7,000 cars a day.

This bridge in Central Falls has been listed in poor condition for more than a decade now.

You can see where the concrete has started to crumble and the rebar is exposed, and this bridge poses a unique hazard.

Reinforced by Lincoln Logs, it passes right over Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.

(train whooshing) You don't have to be an engineer to see the potential disaster waiting to happen.

On a bigger, grander scale, there's the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge, where the bumpy ride provided by potholes is actually the least of your worries.

The National Transportation Safety Board recently flagged the Pell Bridge among 68 US bridges in need of urgent inspection.

The concern here is that large ocean-going vessels passing under the bridge might strike one of the pylons, bringing the whole thing tumbling down.

Just like what happened in Baltimore, only here in Narraganset Bay.

We reached out to the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority, which owns and operates that major bridge and three others.

They told the NTSP they've conducted their own "comprehensive internal review" and determined that the vessels navigating these waters are smaller than the container ships entering Baltimore Harbor.

They said they have "initiated engagement" with an engineering firm to perform vulnerability assessments.

That report is expected within the year.

We reached out to the Rhode Island Department of Transportation too on the 783 motor vehicle bridges they're responsible for.

They won't talk about the Washington Bridge, citing ongoing litigation.

Earlier this year, RIDOT director Peter Alviti was eager to reassure state lawmakers.

- The bottom line is people wanna know that that bridge is safe.

- [David] He said RIDOT is making good progress on repairs, having fixed 290 bridges during his tenure.

He said they're now doing multiple inspections to make sure bridges are safe.

- Not only have we instituted the practice to go way above even what is normally practiced throughout the United States, we have instituted practices that both increase our surveillance and the level of detail at which we analyze and inspect more complex bridge structures, particularly the more complex ones.

- [David] RIDOT declined to let us speak with any bridge inspectors or see the process for ourselves.

Bottom line, Alviti's message to the public is, "Trust me," despite the Washington Bridge fiasco.

- We spent the last 10 years at DOT building a wonderful trust between us, the legislature, and the people of the state of Rhode Island.

And we don't want to see this one incident and this one bridge disrupt that trust.

- [David] But earlier this month, two of the subcontractors the state is currently suing claimed RIDOT ignored a 1992 inspection report, recommending additional tests.

They insist RIDOT knew, or should have known, visual inspections weren't good enough.

- The remarkable thing looking at the Washington Bridge project is that here we are a few years out and it's still unclear to the public who is ultimately responsible for this debacle.

- [David] Marc Dunkelman is a fellow at the Watson Institute at Brown, and author of the bestselling book, "Why Nothing Works."

- There's no clear authority, in most of these cases, of who exactly is in charge, who's responsible?

- Well, presumably, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, no?

- Yes, but they let contracts in which the risk is shared with the contractors who are doing the work.

It's still, there are ongoing lawsuits.

How did this happen and how at this point do we not have a clear picture?

- Bottom line, it sounds like you have compassion for the Rhode Island Transportation officials who were charged with maintaining infrastructure.

- My general view is that people in the bureaucracy want to do the right thing and feel constrained.

- So the intentions are good, but the roadblocks are real and significant.

- Yes.

- To see a map of Rhode Island's poor bridges and find more of our stories, please visit our website ripbs.org/breakingpoint.

Up next, coastal cocktails.

Some 100 years after prohibition, a distillery in Providence is serving up local liquor.

It's not just your run of the mill alcohol, either.

It's both organic and oceanic.

Rhode Island's marine life is adding a dash of flavor to these high spirits.

- We're actually transforming things that came from the ocean and from the land into something that then we are putting out into the world.

It's this kind of beautiful transfer.

- I remember the first time I went to my local liquor store, which is the one that I just go to to buy wine for my wife, and I was like, "Oh, that's my vodka.

I made it."

- [Pamela] Making it in the vast sea of liquor varieties are Dan Neff and Manya Rubinstein.

Neff, a Rhode Island native, and Rubinstein a Brown University grad, started ISCO, Industrious Spirit Company, five years ago.

It's in the valley neighborhood of Providence's West End.

- We're on the site of what was the Providence Steel and Iron Company.

They made structural and ornamental steel for over 100 years.

We really see ourselves as a continuation of that maker community, but in a different way.

- [Pamela] Way different.

As in what do you get when you mix agriculture and aquaculture?

An ocean potion of organically crafted spirits.

Oyster vodka is a first of its kind in the nation, named Ostreida, and seaweed gin is the newest offering, christened, Seaflow.

ISCO CEO Rubinstein says sustainably sourced vodka, gin, and bourbon, as well as a splash of experimental elixirs, allows them to.

- Have some fun, make delicious things, and do something that was not negatively impacting the environment and then sort of throw it in the creative hopper and you get us.

- How did you land on the idea of concocting sea brews as liquor?

- We were having some cocktails and we were enjoying some oysters and it suddenly occurred to us that a martini with your oysters is a delight, but why had nobody ever combined oysters and vodka together into one spirit?

It just seemed like a no-brainer.

- We hit a good sweet spot with like, "Oh, the ocean state, ocean stuff.

We can make this taste good."

- [Pamela] Speaking of taste, at Matunuck Oyster Bar, visited just days before it was devastated by fire, we were told these outpace even the state's beloved clam, the quahog, in popularity.

But still.

A lot of people love oysters, but you'll forgive me, there's a lot of people who say, "I'm not going to drink an oyster."

- Oh yeah.

- "Oyster liquor?

Ew."

- People have a strong reaction one way or another.

It's not fishy at all.

When you smell it, you get a little bit of almost like an ocean breeze.

When you taste the product, you get salinity, a little bit of brine, and minerality.

Sometimes a chef or a mixologist will add a little drop of saline or a little salt to wake up a flavor in a drink or in a food.

It basically does that.

- So what's next?

Like quahog grog?

- We're good with the mollusks.

- [Pamela] However, they are creating another classic Rhode Island flavor, Pizza Strip Vodka.

- We basically took all of the herbs and spices that you would use to make a delicious tomato sauce and we put those into our still.

We also had special pizza strips made for us and we put those in the still as well.

- You put pizza strips in the still?

- Yes.

- We did some tasting in the morning and then later on in the afternoon I burped and I was like, "Oh, we did it, we did it."

- It smells like bread in here.

It smells like a bakery.

- It does.

- ISCO distiller Eric Olson is a former brew master and Baby is a custom built 500 gallon hybrid kettle made of copper and brass from Louisville, Kentucky.

So this is a high end still?

- Very, this is the Ferrari of stills.

We started big.

(laughs) - [Pamela] Olson says the base spirit starts with regeneratively farmed corn.

- So everything for ISCO products starts as, its grain right on the farm, and we partner directly with small farms to give us the best organic grain to cook that down.

- [Pamela] Yeast is added to the still for fermentation.

Liquids combine and flavor is infused, sometimes with shellfish from Matunck's seven acre oyster farm in Ninigret Pond or seaweed from a Stonington kelp company or locally made pizza strips.

Olson describes his job as a mixture of the scientific and the artistic.

- I get to wake up every morning and make booze for a living and make whiskey and have all my friends and family think that life is just a big party when I come to work.

- [Pamela] The latest celebration, a Coastal Cask Bourbon to mark ISCO's five year anniversary.

- Which was also another riff on the sea, where we took a bourbon barrel and filled it with salty brine and dumped it out and then put our bourbon into it.

So I can do this all day.

(laughs) - [Pamela] The last stage for the local spirits, a final filtering of the alcohol for consumption, labeling, and distribution.

- Everything's by hand.

We have nothing computer, everything's analog.

Everything we do is a small batch.

You know, if you compare us to like a big maker, they're doing 40,000 gallons a day and we are doing 500.

- [Pamela] ISCO toasts itself as the first distillery in Providence since the days of prohibition, which may be true in theory, but in truth, ever independent Rhode Island largely ignored the 18th Amendment.

Famed New England crime boss, Raymond L.S.

Patriarca, is believed to have made bootleg booze in the basement of Camille's Restaurant on Federal Hill, serving it in coffee cups to mobsters meeting in the back alcoves.

But nowadays, instead of a speakeasy, ISCO's owners are glad to have a gathering spot for the community.

And from ripple.

(waves whooshing) - Cheers.

Five years.

- [Pamela] To tipple, the founders of ISCO hope customers find their ocean inspired drinks intoxicating.

- Ooh, that's delicious.

Wow.

- Delicious.

- ISCO's owners say their ocean liquors mix best in martinis and Bloody Mary's and even some tropical fruit drinks.

Their Pizza Strip Vodka won a gold medal at the prestigious San Francisco Spirit Awards.

Up next, we introduce you to a man born and raised in Cranston who knows a thing or two about perseverance.

66-year-old Paul Mellor has accomplished remarkable feats on foot, bicycle, and boat.

Along the way, he's learned some hard fought lessons, which he shares with us tonight.

The segment is part of our continuing My Take series.

- In a 17 year period, I've run a marathon, that's 26.2 miles, in all 50 states.

I've bicycled across America and I've paddled the length of the Mississippi River.

My name is Paul Mellor, and this is my take on perseverance.

(bright upbeat music) I've done these feats 'cause I wanted to explore.

My family traveled across the country when I was young, and just the beauty of America and its people, and I've always been an adventurer.

Perseverance comes into play in every aspect of my endeavors.

It's one thing to go out for a run from your back door.

It may be easy to quit.

But when you're out in California or Pikes Peak, Colorado, running a marathon up a mountain, you say to yourself, "I have to go on.

There's no alternative."

One acquires perseverance, you have to have the mentality that you're going to go on, and so many people think about ready, aim, aim, but they don't shoot.

Instead of saying, "On one day I'm gonna do it," you have to say, "On day one," and that's the main thing.

Just take the first day and then get ready for the next day.

It's been said that a marathon is like a mini Mount Everest that comes to a town near you.

When I moved to Richmond, Virginia, I learned that the marathon was coming to town and I wasn't much of a runner, but when I took part in that race, I just put one foot in front of the other.

I was one of the last ones to finish, but my proudest moment was crossing the finish line, and that's what every runner looks back, not so much of the time, but you know what?

I finished this darn thing.

(bright upbeat music) Shortly after running a marathon in Virginia and then Pennsylvania and then Ohio, I thought, "You know what?

There's only 47 states left."

I knew that I would finish them all.

I wasn't sure when, but once you circle a date on the calendar and go out to North Dakota or Texas or Utah, you finish the race and look forward to the other one.

(bright upbeat music) The most difficult aspect of cycling was probably the first couple of weeks in Virginia.

You wouldn't think it, but the mountains in Virginia were more of a strain than the mountains of Colorado because the grade is steeper and very hot and hilly.

(bright upbeat music) The first 300 miles of the Mississippi River resembles a giant question mark, and then it questions itself whether it should go to the left or to the right, which it does for the next 2,000 miles until it enters out into the Gulf.

During that time, from top to bottom, you've encountered wing dams and bog jams and beaver dams and 27 locks and dams and floating debris and flying fish, mud and mayflies, wind and wonder.

The greatest example of perseverance was probably the paddling trip because it was dangerous.

Any second, my world could have been tipped upside down.

(bright upbeat music) (thunder rumbling) I think you have to get scared sometimes in your life.

We can sit in bed thinking, oh, we want to do this, but you just have to go out and do it.

For people who want to get out of their comfort zone and pursue challenging endeavors, do something out of the ordinary and then decide what you want to do and circle a date on the calendar and by golly, do it.

You'll look back and say, "You know what, I'm glad I did that."

And I've met so many wonderful people across this country, have seen so many wonderful places, and I did it because, well, quite frankly, I got off the couch and there's a big world out there when you get off your couch.

My name is Paul Mellor and this has been My Take on perseverance.

- Finally on tonight's episode of Weekly Insight, Anaridis and our contributor, WPRI 12's politics editor Ted Nesi discuss why lawmakers kick the can down the road on the so-called bottle bill.

But first, a deeper dive into the state's upcoming budget.

- Ted, welcome back.

Since we last spoke, we've had a little bit more time to digest the $14 billion state budget plan that Rhode Island lawmakers unveiled on June 10th.

We talked about some of the taxes and fees that will be going up in this plan, but you've also been crunching the numbers and finding a trend when it comes to spending.

- Well, it's really striking, Anaridis, because if you go back to right before the pandemic and the eve of COVID, the state budget was a little under $10 billion in Rhode Island.

People already said, "Oh, that's a lot of money."

And then it went up really fast during the pandemic.

Billions of dollars added to the budget.

But what we were often told, when reporters say, "Wow, these numbers have gotten really high," people would say, "Well, there's a lot of federal money flowing in to help with COVID, relief money after COVID, that'll get spent, the budget will get bigger, and then it's like an accordion.

It's gonna get smaller again once that money weans out."

Well, that money's fading out now, and the budget is not getting smaller.

And part of the reason for that is that state lawmakers are adding more state level revenue that's kind of replacing a lot of that federal revenue that had come in for temporarily in the last few years.

And I think that's a big reason you're seeing all these tax and fee increases in this budget, the Taylor Swift tax on houses, the gas tax going up, the health insurance assessment fee, all the different fees and revenue things are doing in this budget.

- Estimates are finding that spending from the State General Fund will go up by almost 4% during this new fiscal year, which starts July 1st.

And you're finding that that's slower than the pace of spending during the pandemic, but higher, a lot higher than the rate at which the tax receipts are coming in.

- Yeah, and that's the eternal question, right, Anaridis?

The effect that, you know, tax revenue goes up like this every year and spending goes up like this.

Well, you don't have to be Albert Einstein to see the math gap there.

And you know, there's a reason for it.

Every year there's demand for more spending on things like healthcare, on education, on transportation, and the legislature is nearly all democratic.

The Democrats generally have sympathy for those goals, so they wanna do as much of it as they can, which means they have to go look for new revenue sources, 'cause the money is just not keeping up with the demand there.

And bigger picture, I just don't know of anybody with a theory, Anaridis, on how you get out of that dynamic.

- Yeah.

- Right?

How you stop, how you get to a point where the budget is roughly in balance, so every year your tax receipts go up this much and then what you wanna spend on goes up this much.

Which is why this dynamic continues.

- And analysts are already predicting that we are gonna see deficits in the years to come.

Let's turn to another topic long discussed on Smith Hill, and that is the bottle bill, which is a proposal that would make consumers pay a 10 cent redeemable deposit on cans and bottles.

A study looked at this for 18 months, but this week, the House speaker and the Senate president came out and said, "We're not moving this bill forward.

Instead, we need another needs assessment."

And here's what the speaker had to say about this decision.

- This is a professional needs assessment.

Looking at what other states have done, the best way to implement it, the cost of it.

You know, do we need a bottle bill at all?

Do we need EPR?

Do we need a combination thereof?

There's a lot of conflicting data that came out of the study commission, so this is a way to kind of sift through all that data and look at the best practices.

- Ted, we should say that EPR refers to extended producer responsibility, which requires manufacturers to deal with the entire life cycle of their products, including the recycling.

This latest development, Ted, certainly a big disappointment for advocates.

- Yeah, many of them, Anaridis, thought this was their year to get a bottle bill.

I mean, as you said, this has been discussed for so long, back to the 1980s, I think, was when this was first brought up, but there was major, major pushback from industry up on Smith Hill.

A lot of companies were calling this a beverage tax, not a bottle bill, saying this is a tax on consumers when they buy a bottle or a can, even if you say it's gonna get redeemed at the other end.

I think Speaker Shekarchi was kind of hoping that, with some time, there'd be some consensus development.

Not everyone's happy, but everyone could live with it.

He never really saw that, and so that's why I think he's kicking it along with the Senate president to this new needs assessment, which is gonna take another 18 months, won't report until the end of 2026, which means it'll be after the next election and 2027 is the first we'll see them take it up again.

- Certainly not the last time we'll hear about this.

- I don't think so.

- [Anaridis] Ted, thank you for being here.

- Good to be here.

- That's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Anaridis Rodriguez.

- And I'm Pamela Watts.

We'll be back next week with another edition of "Rhode Island PBS Weekly."

And you can now listen to our entire broadcast every Monday night at seven on The Public's Radio.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and YouTube, and you can also visit us online to see all of our stories and past episodes at ripbs.org/weekly, or listen to our podcast on your favorite streaming platform.

Goodnight.

(bright upbeat music) (bright upbeat music continues) (bright upbeat music continues)