Rail tracks along Davisville Road in the Quonset Business Park. Photo: Raime, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Bitumar USA told North Kingstown officials it would have the smell coming off its Quonset asphalt terminal under control by the end of October. October is over. Now the town, the state and a group of neighbors with a federal lawsuit are all waiting to see whether the complaints stop.
“It’s been going on for too long,” Town Manager Ralph Mollis told NBC 10 last month.
The lawsuit
Three residents, Vanessa Mascaro, Russell Botvin and Josh Oleson, filed a class-action complaint against Bitumar on Oct. 16 in U.S. District Court in Providence. They accuse the company of private nuisance, public nuisance and negligence, and they’re asking for damages, court intervention and a jury trial.
The suit proposes a class of homeowners and renters within 1.25 miles of the facility at 275 Compass Circle in the Quonset Business Park. The plaintiffs estimate more than 2,000 households fall inside that circle. A judge would have to certify the class before the case could go forward on that basis.
According to the complaint, the trouble started after Bitumar began handling liquid asphalt at the site in December 2025. Asphalt arrives by rail, gets heated and is moved into trucks for paving jobs. Neighbors say the fumes drift into their yards and sometimes into their houses. They describe giving up time outdoors, and the complaint argues the odor has pushed down property values in the surrounding neighborhoods.
“It’s so thick, it’s almost like you can feel it. It’s almost like it’s tangible,” Mascaro told NBC 10. “It kind of just impedes on everything.”
She said she keeps her windows shut. “You never know when you’re going to get hit in the face overnight with the smell, and once it permeates it’s throughout the house.”
What the state found
The complaint says the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management logged 164 odor complaints from 54 households between late March and mid-July. When a DEM inspector visited in July, the filing says, the “objectionable” odors left the inspector nauseous. DEM found the company had violated the state’s air pollution control rules and fined it $8,500.
DEM told NBC 10 it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. Bitumar didn’t respond to the station’s request for comment.
Town says November is the test
Mollis said the town has sent Bitumar letters and that town leaders met face to face with the company’s CEO. His concern goes beyond the smell itself, he said, to “making sure that anything that they are putting into the air is not hazardous.”
He was clear about what happens if the promised fix doesn’t hold. “But in November, if we’re still getting complaints, if they’ve said they’ve done everything, then we need to take some sort of action,” he said.
He didn’t spell out what that action would be.
A new odor rule, with a hearing Nov. 13
DEM has separately proposed a new regulation meant to make odor complaints easier to report and act on. A public hearing on the proposal is set for Nov. 13. Town Council President Greg Mancini said the proposal could help with the Bitumar situation, though Mancini, a lawyer, also questioned why the draft includes both a list of industries it covers and a list of exemptions.
“Is it ok for a company that isn’t on either list to stink? No,” he told The Independent.
For the people living near Compass Circle, the next few weeks will tell. Odor complaints go to DEM’s Office of Air Resources, and the count since the end of October is what the town will be watching. If the complaints drop off, Bitumar can point to its fix. If they don’t, the town has already said it won’t wait much longer.
