How Rhode Island's Central Landfill became a modern marvel

JOHNSTON – Humans have been talking trash for thousands of years, and today is no exception as Mayor Joseph Polisena Jr. makes a slow, dusty ascent to the 250-foot summit of the state's Central Landfill.

He's riding in the back seat of a Ford pickup driven by Jared Rhodes, director for policy and programs for the Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corp. , the agency that operates the landfill.

Rhodes is a Rhode Island native – "born and raised and proud of it" – who cites succinctly the Central Landfill's significance to both himself and, by extension, all Ocean Staters:

"Almost everything I've thrown away in my life is here."

This is where every community's trash ends up.

How the landfill got here is a combined story of state need and private opportunity.

And in the 60 or so years that the landfill has been in operation in some form (first by a private property owner), it's evolved, no longer just a dump.

Not by a bottle throw.

Recovery corporation folks have described it in reports as an "environmental engineering marvel!" where trash by the hundreds of thousands of tons a year is spread out, compressed and buried in layers, like a lasagna.

To carry the unappetizing simile further, the casserole dish in this case is about 290 acres large. Much of it is now lined on the bottom to prevent contamination from leaching into the ground and water. As each landfill section is filled to capacity, it's topped with a layer of grass or, the newest offering, artificial turf.

As Rhodes drives higher up toward the working face of the landfill, Polisena points out the black pipes poking out of the grassy mounds like pins in a cushion.

"They have some really, really interesting technology that helps capture methane, and we don't have the problems that we had 15, 20 years ago with odor coming from here," Polisena says.

Resource Recovery now captures the methane gas, naturally produced as trash breaks down, and uses it to produce electricity.

"You would not know that the landfill is here unless someone told you, right?" says the mayor. "That's something we want as the host community: out of sight, out of mind."

The property was once owned by a man named Albert Silvestri.

He was 66 years old in 1982 when he described to a reporter for The Providence Journal how he got into the garbage business almost by accident.

He first bought about 500 Johnston acres in the 1950s to start a concrete and sand and gravel business.

As he dug up the land, truckers coming to pick up sand or gravel would ask him if they could leave off loads of building materials and other refuse.

"As we dug up the land, people dropped in loads, so by 1960 or so, I was in the landfill business, too," he told the newspaper.

Silvestri formed a firm called Silvestri Bros., which started contracting with towns to handle their garbage. Within several years, his centrally located landfill was handling municipal garbage from around the state.

Some of what he was taking in, however, was also hazardous waste.

That realization became apparent around 1975 when officials in Rhode Island and other states began enforcing laws requiring hazardous waste haulers to keep records of what was being dumped at Silvestri's.

The information wasn't good.

Records kept by Massachusetts officials, for instance, showed Bay State companies dumping tens of thousands of gallons of chemical compounds, latex material and laboratory waste at the Johnston site.

Rhode Island companies, too, were dumping solvents and machine coolants, water contaminated with ammonia and acid from General Dynamics; and marine resins, pigments and solvents from other companies.

For two years prior to the state buying Silvestri's 500-acre landfill in 1980 for $10.1 million, Rhode Island officials kept precise records of what went into the dump.

Those records found that 1.5 million gallons of hazardous waste had entered the landfill just during that period.

At that time, the original landfill area lacked the protective liners it uses today. Chemicals leached into groundwater, prompting the federal Environmental Protection Agency in 1984 to declare that section of the Central Landfill a federal Superfund site requiring cleanup.

The state bought the Silvestri Bros. land for $1 million more than its accessed value, but officials at the time said some intangibles still made it a good buy.

Not the least of which was that by then, Silvestri Bros. owned the largest operating commercial landfill in the state, was centrally situated with ample room for expansion, and had contracts with 22 Rhode Island communities.

Further, it was the only licensed landfill for sale, with other private buyers prepared to snatch it up if the state didn't.

That posed a potential problem for those communities already under contract with Silvestri if the landfill's new owners imposed exorbitant rates.

On the landfill summit on this windswept day, Rhodes and Polisena point out the landmarks in the distance: the steel and stone spindles of downtown Providence a half-dozen miles away and the spires of the Pell Bridge scraping the horizon to the south.

The entire landfill campus today, with recycling center and composting grounds, sits on a 1,200-acre footprint. Some Rhode Islanders and visitors think the landfill, at 570 feet above sea level, is the state's highest point. Actually, that honor goes to Foster's 812-foot Jerimoth Hill .

Back down at the base level, Rhodes points out Resource Recovery employees laying down a black liner for the near future when the working face of the landfill creeps slowly east.

The latest estimate says the landfill will reach capacity in 2046.

Long before then, Rhode Island will have a difficult decision to make: Should it expand the landfill farther, truck its trash out of state at a much higher cost, or perhaps burn it as some other states do?

The question has swirled around for decades, like seagulls over the latest arriving trash truck.

But, says the mayor: "The trash has to go somewhere, right?"

This story initially published Sept. 1, 2025.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: How Rhode Island's Central Landfill became a modern marvel