Environment

The Narragansett Town Council is holding a public meeting tonight that could be critical to the plans for an offshore wind project off the coast of Block Island.

The Block Island Wind farm would place five wind turbines off the southeast coast of Block Island. The company in charge of it is Deepwater Wind. It plans to connect the wind turbines and the Island to the power grid on the mainland with a 21 mile underwater cable. Deepwater Wind wants that cable to come ashore in Narragansett.

Eleven students at the Rhode Island School of Design are occupying the office of President John Maeda. The students are asking him to support a divestment of all RISD’s investments in fossil fuels.

While the students camped out inside the president’s office …

… Almost one hundred other RISD students took a break from their year-end projects to protest the design school’s investments in fossil fuels.  The protesters gathered at RISD Beach and marched down College Hill to protest in front of RISD’s administration building.

Scientists at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center said they hope to get some answers from a necropsy being done on a huge basking shark that washed ashore at Misquamicut Beach over the weekend.

Nancy Kohler, a scientist at the center, said the 28.5-foot long shark was a mature male, in good condition, and it’s unclear why it washed up dead. Her research team is doing a necropsy on the shark, on the beach, and she said that’s drawing a lot of attention.

In Cumberland, a colony of beavers is bringing down trees at Diamond Hill Park. The town is busy deciding how to stop the animals.