The fire station that served the former Navy installation on this little island in Narragansett Bay is caving in. The roof has collapsed and windows are shattered. A row of porcelain sinks visible through a doorway have crumbled like so many broken teeth.
The station sits opposite the rusted hulk of a water tower that has toppled, partially blocking the only cleared road across the island.
As part of a federally funded cleanup of the long-shuttered torpedo complex, the fire station will be torn down and its debris hauled away. But the water tower? It will remain untouched.
“It is a glaringly obvious question: Why that and not that?” Gary Morin, of the Army Corps of Engineers, said while standing between the two structures on a recent visit to the island.
The answer comes down to an assessment carried out in the 1980s, when Congress created the Formerly Used Defense Sites cleanup program and put the Army Corps in charge of it.