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WEST WARWICK — On a sliver of land bordered by Pulaski Street and the Pawtuxet River, a longtime symbol of Crompton’s roots as a mill village no longer stands. 
“It’s bittersweet,” Jason Licciardi, councilor of West Warwick’s Ward 4, where the old Crompton Mill smokestack was located, said of watching as the piece of the past was knocked down Wednesday. “This is history that we’re living right now.”
The West Warwick Town Council began to discuss razing the approximately 120-foot-tall smokestack last year amid concerns over the structure’s safety. Surrounded by occupied buildings — Lil Rhody Storage sits only some 30 feet from it — and situated beside a somewhat heavily-trafficked road, Public Works Director Don Ouellette warned during a recent council meeting that the tower, which had cracked bricks and was leaning, could fall at any time. An engineer had also deemed the chimney structurally unsafe.  ....

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