East Providence resident Jim Taylor wears a hazard suit and mask as part of a rally outside East Providence City Hall on Thursday against TLA Pond View’s recycling facility on Dexter Road. The company was appealing a zoning violation Thursday.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

EAST PROVIDENCE — Placard-bearing residents turned out at a Zoning Board of Appeals meeting on Thursday night to demonstrate their opposition to their industrial neighbor, TLA Pond View, the state’s only major private handler of construction and demolition waste.

But the meeting at City Hall was devoted not to their accusations that Pond View is a nuisance but to the Rumford company’s ardent challenge of a zoning violation notice it was served last spring by enforcement officer Edward Pimental.

The board was still hearing testimony at 9:30 p.m., nearly 2½ hours into the meeting, and did not reach a decision on the appeal of the notice by press time.

Pimental had determined that Pond View was violating its 1998 use variance in several ways. Among them was handling unapproved materials such as street sweepings, metals, concrete and stone; operating outside approved hours; using areas of its property not authorized for storage and processing; and illegally expanding to more than 150 tons of material trucked in daily.

Pimental said the company would risk losing its variance and being shut down if it didn’t correct these violations.

Pond View appealed the notice and lawyer Kevin Bristow, representing vice president John Walsh, defended the company before the Zoning Board on Thursday.

He raised questions about whether documents that Pimental cited were ever legally recorded. He also questioned how Pimental was sure of his findings since he relied upon aerial photographs taken nearly a year earlier and did not follow up with an on-site inspection.

Pond View processes construction waste, culling out such recyclable materials as wood.

Residents have fought for years against Pond View, located in an industrial park on the Seekonk River. They objected when the state Department of Environmental Management increased the company’s daily volume to 500 tons in 2003. And their battle was renewed when Pond View asked the DEM to triple that amount to 1,500 tons a day.

The DEM granted that request in May but emphasized that it was up to the city to enforce zoning violations that are outside the department’s “legal authority.”

Pond view neighbors complain of noise, odors, dust and health problems that they blame on the company. Before the hearing, about 50 neighbors rallied outside City Hall wearing red T-shirts with the message “Enforce the law and protect us” and waving stop-sign-shaped placards that said “Stop Pond View.”

“Close down, clean up and move on,” said Ken Schneider, addressing his fellow residents. “Pond View should never have been located where they are or anywhere in the city.”

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