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It’s not just the handsome, suburban-like homes off Phillips Road that will be changed forever by the big Parallel Products’ trash transfer station planned for the Far North End of New Bedford.
The New Bedford Business Park, one of the most attractive industrial parks south of Boston, will also be changed forever when 184 trucks a day, all of them laden with solid waste, begin rumbling down Duchaine Boulevard to South Coast Renewables from dawn to dusk. Another empty 184 trucks will rumble back up the tree-lined boulevard after they’ve dumped their garbage at the far end of the industrial campus.
It’s a shame — that didn’t have to be.
The New Bedford Business Park is one of the best-designed parks you’d ever see. Blessed by hundred-plus-year-old spruce trees up and down a broad island in the middle of its main boulevard, nearly every one of the businesses located along Duchaine and Frederick Rice boulevards are tailored with beautiful brick fronts.
The industrial plants’ front yards are well-landscaped — one (Reynolds Dewalt) even has a patio table with an umbrella amidst a garden out front; another (Milhench) has a wooden bench set among shrubs that look out onto a heavily-wooded island of both leaf and pine needle trees.
Yes, there are a couple of businesses — Titleist Ball Plant III and Eastern Fisheries — that deal with heavy, industrial processes in the business park. But even they are well-laid-out and extensively landscaped. The whole park, with its broad avenues and sculptured gardens, almost seems like a business development that doubles as a nature walk.
Until now.
Whoever thought it was a good idea to bring a very busy trash recycling plant to this setting has massively hurt the future of the New Bedford Business Park. So add that to Parallel Products’ devaluation of Pine Hill Acres’ single-family homes, not to mention the damage to the city’s reputation as a whole.
The whoever in this case was a bunch of parties: the short-sighted administration of Mayor Jon Mitchell, an asleep-at-the-switch City Council, and a politically-oriented Economic Development Council. They have all played a role in taking one of the best industrial parks in New England, run under former executive director Tom Davis, and greatly endangered its quality for the future.
How will the New Bedford park attract replacement businesses to a boulevard that is subjected to 368 trash-truck trips a day, not to mention the trash-laden trains that will now cut across Samuel Barnet Boulevard at the back end of the park? Those trains will also travel every day, all day, full of compacted garbage.
It’s not that the site has ever been pristine.
The old Polaroid plant where Parallel Products’ South Coast Renewables recycling facility now sits was a problematic business itself. Mike McHugh, a resident of nearby Pine Hill Acres, grew up there and he talks about a film that greeted residents on their car windows many mornings. It was apparently from the release of effluent from the old chemical factory that manufactured film for cameras. But at least the Polaroid plant did not require all these rumbling trucks, funnelling trash from across the state of Massachusetts into New Bedford, in-and-out, in-and-out, every day, all day.
One of the big legacies of the Mitchell administration will be that under this mayor’s tenure, the city grew from just one of many post-industrial environmental justice communities in Massachusetts that struggled with hazardous waste sites to the community with the highest concentration of landfills and transfer stations anywhere in the state.
That’s quite an achievement for a community that geographically is shaped like a string bean, only two miles wide and 14 miles long, with a 1,000+ acre freshwater swamp covering a huge portion of its North End.
This type of business would have been more appropriate to Shawmut Avenue, a heavily industrial area in the center of the city, near the airport and far from any residential neighborhood. You might have even gotten away with putting it at the North End site of Waste Innovations truck storage off Church Street, also near the railroad line.
But the New Bedford Business Park, the jewel of clean, well-tended industry in New Bedford, was absolutely the worst location. Indeed, Parallel Products, which is essentially a national real estate development company, previously located its bottle recycling operation on Shawmut Avenue. That is, before it noticed the old Polaroid site was available and was located right on a rail line being planned for refurbishment.
Shawmut Avenue is where the city’s other big transfer station, run by Harvey Industries, is located. You know Shawmut Avenue. It’s that grimy street leading to New Bedford Municipal Airport where massive trucks from around the region line up to dump their trash and debris every day.
In May, the Harvey Industries transfer station had an enormous fire that sent rats scurrying across the adjacent neighborhoods, including to an airport that is desperately trying to grow.
But at least Shawmut Avenue is a road designed for this kind of heavy, dirty industry. There are no tree-lined landscaped fronts to the businesses located on Shawmut Avenue. Well, unless you count the very modest effort at the city’s Department of Public Infrastructure building half-way down the street, a quarter mile or so before the Harvey transfer station. Everything else about Shawmut Ave. is without pretense — largely trash, recycling and machine-related businesses.
Unlike the New Bedford Business Park, the Shawmut strip is definitely not clean, tech-oriented businesses.
They say the South Coast Renewables transfer station will be state-of-the-art and all the dirty work will be done inside big corrugated iron buildings. They say they have the technology to keep the smell and the noise and the er… rats under control.
The residential neighbors are understandably more than skeptical about this. And so should the neighboring production plants and warehouses in the Business Park.
Almost 300 people turned out to the Board of Health hearing at Pulaski School auditorium two weeks ago to hear the latest dog-and-pony show of the transportation and environmental experts hired by Parallel Products.
Yes, the Conservation Law Foundation put up a fight trying to outline to three poker-faced Health Board members why this business poses a health and safety risk to the nearby community. But of course, the devil is in the details with these kinds of regulations, and lawyers can argue until the cows return to New Bedford about whether or not this or that activity poses a health and safety risk. It’s all a he said/she said.
It’s important to remember how we got here, New Bedford.
Six years ago I wrote a column about the city having a $2 million a year bill just to ship out its sewage sludge. Never mind the solid waste, which is also increasing exponentially. In that column in 2019, I wrote that New Bedfdord had quietly signed a deal with the cities of Fall River and Brockton to accept their sewage sludge, to be processed in New Bedford at a Shawmut Avenue facility called an anaerobic digester.
That project never came to fruition, but the very next year, the Mitchell administration told the City Council that Parallel Products might move its glass and plastic bottle recycling operation out of the city if it did not get a special tax agreement to move it to the New Bedford Business Park.
The council — including councilors Brian Gomes and Linda Morad, who are now among the most vocal opponents of the Parallel Products project — voted unanimously in its favor.
Since the Business Park’s zoning regulations for industrial uses also allowed the operation of a transfer station, once Parallel was in the park it was free to grow its bottle recycling business into a full-scale solid waste trash transfer station. The operation was in keeping with the zoning, which you wonder how the Business Park arrived at in the first place.
For the record, Parallel no longer has the special tax agreement, as it moved to an adjacent parcel in the park, previously occupied by Eversource.
After it was established in the Business Park for a few years, Parallel Products informed the city it intended to import the same kind of sewage sludge that the city had signed a deal with Fall River and Brockton to import.
But soon after the residents of Pine Hill Acres erupted in universal outrage, the mayor and councilors changed their tunes. The mayor announced he would sue Parallel, a path that ended in a predictable compromise that gave the company a big portion of what it wanted in the first place — the ability to recycle and ship massive amounts of compacted trash. In return, Parallel promised not to import the smelly sewage sludge.
The company agreed to give the city the lowest rate of any entity across the state to bring its trash to the site. And the whole operation was estimated to save the city a million dollars a year, between $800,000 in additional fees for the trash brought in, and an additional $200,000 in property tax revenue as the site became more valuable.
Mayor Mitchell had succeeded in addressing the escalating costs of trash disposal in the city, but it was at the expense of the hundreds of city residents who live near the park. Almost as bad, it devalued the highest-end industrial park in the city.
Now, it’s easy to second guess the administration and council, the planners and Economic Development Council. Hindsight is always easier than foresight. But what else are the affected citizens left to do in a situation like this?
In some ways, the city was faced with a no-win situation between the escalating cost of trash disposal and the protection of a residential neighborhood. Although it seems to have paid little attention to developing better recycling incentives to decrease its trash stream.
Tom Davis, long retired, six years ago said he would never have let a business like Parallel Products into the Business Park. He has said that during his 15-year tenure as executive director of the park, he prevented undesirable businesses from locating in the park by persuading property owners to put deed restrictions on their property.
Derek Santos, the Economic Development Council’s executive director, said six years ago that this was essentially a private transaction. A business bought into a property that was zoned for what it wanted to do there. There was not much the Business Park could have done.
I’m not convinced of that.
According to its website, “in conjunction with the Mayor’s Office, the (Economic Development) Council sets the agenda for the city’s key strategic economic development areas.”
This raises the question of why the city did not foresee the danger the rest of the park and the residential neighbors were in if that zoning was not changed — especially if the rail tracks were ever improved to the point that large amounts of solid waste could be shipped out.
Clearly, the mayor’s office can sponsor ordinances to change zoning in the city when appropriate.
It’s not over yet. The Health Board has been tight-lipped and asked few questions at the experts’ meeting. They are also appointed by the mayor and approved by the council. It’s not clear which way they will go.
Councilors Gomes and Morad have vowed to take the matter to President Trump if all else fails. That may sound absurd, but former Bristol Sheriff Tom Hodgson ran Trump’s Massachusetts campaign, in which the president gained votes in nearly every South Coast community. And the president has already waded into both the fishing and wind industries.
Maybe it’s not over yet. But even if it is, one can’t help wondering what this single business will do to the most successful business park in New Bedford. And how it is that the city ever got to this point.
Email Jack Spillane at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.
Well said Jack Spillane!!!!!
To the Board of Health Members:
The Far North End residents and surrounding neighborhoods, Pulaski School teachers, students AND the Business Park will be forever grateful. DO THE RIGHT THING, DENY THIS TRASH TRANSFER STATION FROM GOING IN !!!!!!!!!
The Business Park was designed to showcase clean industry and attract new jobs. Instead, we’re looking at 368 trash truck trips a day cutting through it, with the burden falling squarely on nearby neighborhoods. At the last meeting, it was suggested that monitoring Exit 5 to keep trucks off Church Street (where I live) would be New Bedford’s responsibility and expense, not the company’s.
Beyond the traffic, the fire risk is very real. We’ve seen what happens when transfer stations catch fire toxic smoke and fumes spread quickly. Here, the facility would sit just 600 feet from homes and surrounding businesses.
I hope common sense prevails. A project of this scale simply doesn’t belong in this location.
This is such a travesty, shame on the Mayor and all State Officials that have done nothing to stop this. You would think with the long history of problems with polluted and contaminated sites in our area (the Aerovox, Cornell Dubilier, Sullivan’s Ledge, the Parker Street Dump, Atlas Tack in Fairhaven, the Re-Solve Site in Dartmouth, and the 18,000 PCB-laden acres in New Bedford Harbor it would have been enough to not take the chance of destroying and contaminating another neighborhood, creating poor air quality, and putting people’s health at risk.
Well done Jack. Now we wait and see.
Well stated. Sadly, this shows an Environmental Justice classification means absolutely nothing in Massachusetts! It is just mumbo jumbo used by the state to give the illusion of doing something. Their inaction show it is absolutely worth less. Thanks for the incompetence Mass!
If the city council had put some effort into incentivizing private sector growth over the last few years instead of just feuding with the mayor at every turn perhaps New Bedford would have economic prospects beyond simply ‘trash’.
Jeff, you mentioned Aerovox. How many ex-employees suffer from illness due to that plant. Guess what Barney Frank didn’t care either. New Bedford “south coasts dumping ground”. Wow that will surely bring in more tourizm. Unless it functions like WDW underground trash system, it makes New Bedford a big loser!
This is my point. Who cares where they put this abomination. They would have made another one, someone would have, and for that matter, where are they supposed to put it. ( where they can ) im not that young, not that old, and ive seen it since I was a boy. Its getting to close to money, so obviously thats an issue, right? suck it up, we have been in hellin a hand basket and it won’t smell like flowers lol. I dont have a solution, but im glad they are spreading spreading stink around. Jk.
Good article Jack.
I stood at the intersection of The Business Park and counted 560 vehicles, including trucks, go through the intersection from 5-5:25 on 8/21/25. On Tuesday, 8/26 a friend who was with me counted 1200 vehicles go through this same intersection from 3- 4 pm . This count was done before Pulaski reopened for school session so did not include school buses or parents picking up their children. And now add another 384 trucks if this project is allowed.
The Board of health deliberations are public. The first meeting will be on Monday 9/8 starting at 6 pm. I have included the zoom link if you’d like to listen to the debate. I have included the entire agenda for the meeting in this comment, it was difficult to find. Athur Krieger, the hearings officer for the previous Board of Health Hearings, said that two meetings would debate this: 9/8 and 9/16 with a decision rendered by 9/19/25.
AGENDA
1213 Purchase Street• NEW BEDFORD, MA 02740 • TEL. (508) 991.6199 • FAX (508) 991.6291
CITY OF NEW BEDFORD
Jonathan F. Mitchell, Mayor
9/4/2025 2:26:39 PM City Clerk’s Office
Regular Meeting of the Board of Health
Monday, September 8, 2025 at 6:00 pm.
Board to Convene Via Hybrid Participation
Alternative Means of Public Access Provided: Zoom Meeting/ Telephone Conference Call
TO JOIN ZOOM MEETING: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/3966365159
Dial-In: 1 646 558 8656 US Meeting ID: 396 636 5159
1. Call To Order
2. Approval of Minutes
Regular Meeting on June 30, 2025
Regular Meeting on July 16, 2025.
3. NEW BUSINESS
A. Massachusetts Association of Health Board’s Local Board of Health Authority
Presentation.
Invitees: Michael Hugo, Director of Strategies & Government Relations
Cheryl Sbarra, Executive Director and Senior Staff Attorney
B. South Coast Renewables, LLC Site Suitability Discussion.
Invitees: Adam Brodsky, DROHAN TOCCHIO & MORGAN, P.C.
Mark Tocchio, DROHAN TOCCHIO & MORGAN, P.C.
Stephanie Sloan, Director of Health
HEALTH DEPARTMENT
BOARD OF HEALTH
ELIZABETH BLANCHARD, M.D, FASCO
ALEX J. WEINER, MSN, MPH, FNP-C
MICHELE TSALIAGOS, BSN, RN
DIRECTOR OF HEALTH
STEPHANIE SLOAN, MPH
C. Request for Hearing: 127 W. Rodney French Blvd., Ste. I-53A, Establishment:
Whaling City Tattoo Company. Re: Requesting a license for Body Art Apprentice
approval for Caitlyn Barbosa.
Invitees:
Caitlyn Barbosa, Apprentice Applicant
Tim Creed, Owner
Zach Ramos, Sanitarian
Joseph Carvalho, Environmental Health Program Director
Stephanie Sloan, Director of Health
D. Request for Hearing: 191 Pope’s Island, Ste 2, Establishment: Flyin Aces Tattoo.
Re: Requesting a license for Body Art Practitioner approval for Jay Souza.
Invitees:
Jay Souza, Apprentice
Ken Tetrault, Owner
Geralyn Carr, Sanitarian
Joseph Carvalho, Environmental Health Program Director
Stephanie Sloan, Director of Health
E. Request for Tobacco Permit transfer from New Bedford Vape & Smoke located at 1861
Acushnet Ave. to 1873 Acushnet Ave.
Invitees: Jewel Rana, Manager
Megan daCosta, Public Health Program Manager-Tobacco & Marijuana
Joseph Carvalho, Environmental Health Program Director
Stephanie Sloan, Director of Health
F. Request for Hearing: Appeal of the Correction/Cease and Desist Order, $1100 fine, and
3-day suspension of tobacco sales permit issued to Union Food Mart located at 518 Union
St. New Bedford, MA 02740.
Invitees: Mohammad Hossain, Manager
Megan daCosta, Public Health Program Manager-Tobacco & Marijuana
Joseph Carvalho, Environmental Health Program Director
Stephanie Sloan, Director of Health
G. Request for Hearing: Appeal of the Correction/Cease and Desist Order, $1000 fine, and
3-day suspension of tobacco sales permit issued to Expos III located at 1643 Acushnet
Ave. New Bedford, MA 02746.
Invitees: Jitendrakumar Patel, Owner
Bhavik Vyas, Representative on behalf of Mr. Jitendrakumar Patel
Megan daCosta, Public Health Program Manager-Tobacco & Marijuana
Joseph Carvalho, Environmental Health Program Director
Stephanie Sloan, Director of Health
H. Formal appeal of the Correction/Cease and Desist Order, $1000 fine, and 3-day
suspension of tobacco sales permit issued to Expos Liquors located at 281 County St.
New Bedford, MA 02740.
Invitees: Kyle Duarte, Owner
Megan daCosta, Public Health Program Manager-Tobacco & Marijuana
Joseph Carvalho, Environmental Health Program Director
Stephanie Sloan, Director of Health
1213 Purchase Street• NEW BEDFORD, MA 02740 • TEL. (508) 991.6199 • FAX (508) 991.6291
4. NEXT MEETING DATE
Possible dates for Board of Health Zoom Meeting in October:
Monday, October 6, 2025
Thursday, October 9, 2025
5. HEALTH DIRECTOR’S REPORT
A. General Updates
6.
NEW BUSINESS NOT REASONABLY ANTICIPATED AT TIME OF POSTING
7. ADJOURN
I encourage everyone to go to Google Maps and take a look for themselves. The Business Park is nothing like the “nature walk” fantasy described by Jack. Please—do not walk there. There’s no sidewalk. It is an active industrial site, not a leafy boulevard, and it’s not safe for pedestrians, with or without Parallel Products.
The park isn’t being transformed—it’s being used exactly as designed: for heavy industry, logistics, rail, and manufacturing. Again, go look. The Parallel Products site is no different than Farland Corporation, Eversource, or Eastern Fisheries in terms of visuals or impact.
I’m all for listening to the concerns of neighbors—especially on Phillips Road—but let’s be honest about what this park is and what it isn’t.
No, look at the history of Super Fund Sites in New Bedford and there is not one good reason to ever take a chance on an industry that could possibly risk the health of residents and contaminate another neighborhood again.
Have you ever followed a garbage truck that is leaking and smelled the odor on the ground from its leakage? Well how do you think the roads in and out of the Business Park and surrounding areas are going to handle those odors that permeate from 300 garbage trucks six days a week ? How can the largest Ward and highest tax values become the city’s pig sty? Not only is our Mayor responsible but the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency also sold us out when they approved this project.
I pray that the Board of Health does it job and protects the health and welfare of the residents that are at risk and deny this project.
It bothers me the focus is mainly on the location, stick it in the heart of the city and let the rats run there they said. Insanity, come up with something new, instead of kicking the dirt around where you think it fita.
I find this disgustingly disappointing in every way not only will wildlife once again be destroyed but the businesses will be hurt i dont know what goes through these people heads that are in office it blows my mind literally instead of building a useless wasteland in a welcoming business park worry about. homelessness and high rent cost its so astonishing how we’re focused on the wrong things
Jack Spillane has brought back his veteran style of journalism in the coverage of the Parallel Products scheme at the Business Park. It is substantive enough for the Attorney General of MA to initiate an investigation which should begin with an interview of Mayor John Mitchell who caused this debacle in the first place. The mayor is in hiding and is causing excessive damage and distress to the North End residents. The public has heard enough on this issue. It is time for action. The City Council must request that the Attorney General investigate this corrupt project immediately. For now, New Bedford is known as “The Whaling City”, but Mitchell is set to turning it into “The Garbage City”.
“That is, before it noticed the old Polaroid site was available and was located right on a rail line being planned for refurbishment.”
Be very vigilant about this! Could the rail line go behind neighborhoods? Will they add siding to store the trash and with all the noise and odors that come with it??
We have that here in Taunton near the Myles Standish industrial park! See the railroad abutters unite Facebook page!
A good article, but the idea that Shawmut Ave is so much better a location is at best silly or worst disingenuous. I agree with the notion we shouldn’t have this anywhere, but the neighborhoods south of the Hathway / Shawmut is full of working class / subsided housing, and if there is any toxic smell any sort of north or west wind would carry it over not just those immediate neighborhoods but most of the north end. It is a lot closer to the center of the city than the NB park is, which the author argues is better, but which would put a dirty industry much closer to population.