 Okay, good afternoon. Go through the road, the road call, roll call. Mike. I'm here. Great, Leslie. Here. Wonderful, Joe Barr, not here yet. Jill, I know is absent, Natasha, yes. Marvin. Here. Great, Jim. Here. Great, and then we have Claire. Here, you. Perfect, and Joe Conley, I believe is joining us late. Okay, what I'll do is keep an eye on the chat over here. I'm also going to, before we get too far into this, make sure that the security settings are not locked. Meeting, you have locked the meeting. I didn't mean to do that. Okay, I don't wanna, I wanna unlock the meeting. Unlock the meeting. Okay, so anyone should be able to join us. Well, I guess I'll say officially we are here at the Tuesday, February 20th, 2024 meeting of the Arlington Artificial Turf Study Committee. Oh, I see Joe Conley joining us. So tonight we have a lot on the agenda, the sooner we get into it, the better. So first things first though, one more preliminary matter. I hope everyone had a chance to review the meeting minutes from our last meeting. And if you have and you're comfortable with it, I would entertain a motion at this time. Move to accept. Your second. Second. Great, and I'll go right. Yep, call the roll. Okay, Mike. I will abstain, I wasn't there. Okay, Leslie. Yes. Joe Barr is not presently here. Jill is absent. Natasha, yes. Marvin. Yes. Okay, and Jim. Here, yes. Okay, one, two, three, four. So we have four approvals. And I believe that motion will pass with the one absent, one not present and one abstain, or abstain, I'm sorry. Perfect. Well, so the first part of tonight's meeting, as I mentioned last week, will be another guest speaker who will stay with us as long as we want him to. And I think he's gonna be very interesting and bring some interesting perspectives. And then the second part of our meeting, we will start to start, but not complete a review of our first deliverables, which I wanna thank everyone for getting in a timely way. And I looked at them and they were very interesting. And I can tell people have been really working the last two months. So, but first, I'll introduce Ian Lacey, who's our guest speaker for tonight, who is his official title, his lead project advisor for Tom Irwin. And he can tell you a little bit about Tom Irwin, the company he works for, but I'll tell you a little about Ian. And Ian, if I get any of these things wrong, you can correct me when I turn it over to you. But Ian, as you'll probably tell from his strong Texas accent, I'm joking. He's a product of Great Britain and you'll probably be able to realize that pretty quickly. And I'm just reading this, Ian, from your biography. So these aren't my words, but traces his love of sports and turf back to his childhood dream of playing professional soccer, although I think you would have called a football for your beloved Liverpool who were doing very well this season. The dream led Ian to signing as an apprentice professional soccer player for, I'm never sure, is it Hartlepool or Hartlepool? Hartlepool, yes. Hartlepool, that's what I thought, Hartlepool United in Northeastern England. And this is the sad part after a serious ankle injury forced him to abandon football. He found a way to keep connected to sports and turf by becoming an apprentice groundskeeper on an English golf course. And then that's sort of the start of why he's here tonight. So after years of work and dedication, Ian became the head of the professional services division of the Institute of Groundsmanship, the IOG. And at the IOG, he helped develop the sports turf industry's first performance quality standards, the PQS. An innovative assessment tool for measuring a playing field condition and performance sustainability. PQS is now employed by the British government for all field construction projects and those same standards form the basis of his work now at Tom Erwin. His work has taken him all across the world, not just in Great Britain, but to parts of Africa and several other continents, which he may talk to us about, especially his work with FIFA, the International Soccer Association. I came to contact Ian because I saw his name referenced in a very interesting story, which I think I shared with some of you about artificial turf and towns trying to move away from artificial turf, particularly the town of Sharon. And maybe he, at some point tonight, will tell us a little about his experience in Sharon, but Ian offers a lot of experience and a lot of know-how about both natural turf and artificial turf, the pluses and minuses, the costs and benefits of each. And so many of our questions over the last few weeks have been about the cost differential between installation of each of these types of fields and the way how the playing services affect the games that are played on them and their sustainability to New England weather. And frankly, I just can't think of someone better to address these issues and have a more interesting personality to address these things than Ian. So Ian, I won't fill a bus journey longer. I'm gonna turn it over to you. And Natasha, I think Ian's gonna wanna share, we should share the screen with Ian so he can share some initial slides. And then I think we'll probably have a very robust Q&A with him when he's done. Okay, Ian, I'm going to make you a co-host. Thank you. You should be able to share your screen. Okay, let me do that first. And then I'll pull the presentation up and then I can sort of, I can get moving on this and talk as I go along. So first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity to come and talk to you this evening. As Jim said, I've had a very varied career just touching on 40 years now. Yeah, the sadness of losing the professional soccer career or football career as it was in those days to me actually opened up so many different doors for me. So I never look at it with too sad a heart. I always look at it and think, well, it created an opportunity to spend the last 40 years in this wonderful industry. And fortunately, as Jim said, I've managed to take a lot of time I've managed to travel pretty much around the globe. I wouldn't say I've visited every continent in the world but a lot of them. And I've seen some very interesting and different things. And I think that one of my loves was an ambitions was to come and live and work in the United States. From a young, I was a greenkeeper as Jim mentioned and there was an exchange program that was available when I was back 17, 18 years old and unfortunately it was very expensive so I couldn't afford to join it. But it kept the fire burning and then one day quite out of chance, I met the owner of Tom Irwin, Chris Peterson and as they say, the rest is history. So yes, I'm fortunate to have had a long and varied career and hope it continues a lot longer still. Obviously the reason for being here this evening and to talk to you is, as Jim mentioned, part of my work with FIFA, the world soccer governing body was actually in Africa and FIFA had this program called win in Africa with Africa. And it was around bringing and developing the game of soccer into areas of Africa where it was very difficult to even grow natural turf. So the idea was that they would replace the natural turf which was very difficult to grow and unstable and various other things with synthetic turf. And that's how I first got involved in synthetic turf. So during my time as a consultant for FIFA, I visited a lot of countries, a lot in Africa where these facilities were being built and installed. And so I got to sort of learn about synthetic turf and obviously it's benefits and it's downsides if you like and everything in between. And so I probably have a really good insight to artificial turf and I always like to start this type of presentation and this type of discussion by, at this moment, we will get to this a little bit later in my presentation, but let's not think about all the negative things about synthetic turf. In much the same way, let's not think about any negative things about natural turf. And I think that's a great place to start from. And I'll always start by, and I'll just start moving the presentation along, I'll always start by what we believe in at Tom Irwin and why I personally believe in. And that is that outdoor recreational green spaces, they are essential to our life and wellbeing and no more so than COVID proved that to pretty much all of us that the only place that most people could go and recreate and live in a sense was on green spaces, whether it was parks, open, passive recreation spaces, athletic facilities, golf courses, you name it, but they were the place where we all at least felt as though we were a little bit more alive and weren't restricted in the same way we were with obviously the situation. Excuse me, what was that? Yeah, so when I look at natural turf and synthetic turf and whichever way around you wanna start with that, I always look at it very simply is that you can't compare them and most people want to and I understand that, but they're two completely different systems. And if I start with synthetic in this case is every single synthetic turf field or area is designed, engineered and built with that in mind. Most of our natural turf surfaces, green spaces, are usually a green space that somebody's come along to one day, long ago in the past and said, well, that looks big enough for a soccer field or a football field, let's turn it into one. So generally, natural turf fields are far less abundant when it comes to those that are designed and built. So when you look at the professional level of sport, yes, you will definitely see designed, constructed, engineered, built natural turf fields. But as you move further away from that sort of level, then mostly it's indigenous fields that we've just come to be able to adapt over time to be able to play our sports on. And so therefore, how can you possibly compare the two when one is a highly engineered system and one is not? And that's just the start point if you like. So as you can see from this slide, I'm not gonna go through everything on this slide and I will send this presentation to Jim and he can pass it around to everybody this evening and please use it as you feel necessary. There's nothing really confidential in here that we're precious about. We would rather give you the good, solid, simple advice that you may find in this presentation because I've heard it all. I've heard everything I've heard. Every extreme you can think of in my time, synthetic turf makes you grow three years. You name it, I've heard it and natural turf poisons you and so on and so forth. So I'm hopefully here to dispel a little bit of that either way. So yes, we obviously have benefits to both for sure. No one's arguing with that, at least of all me. And we also have limitations to both. And again, I'm not gonna argue with that. And as you can see from just some of the information I've got on this slide, nobody would argue that synthetic turf is more durable than natural turf. I managed professional soccer facilities at one point in my career. There is no way I could get the same amount of usage out of natural turf fields with a high level budget and also with a great organized team. There's no way I could get the same usage levels out of natural turf than I could synthetic turf. So we appreciate that. And that's just the way it is. Are there things that we can do to synthetic turf that we can't do to natural turf? Yes, we can actually plow both surfaces but the opportunity of the natural turf coming out of a plowing scenario in a healthy form is probably pretty much nonexistent unless it was completely frozen in the first place. So would we plow a natural turf field? Nope, we would try not to. Can we plow a synthetic turf field? Yes, absolutely you can. Will that in turn reduce the lifespan of that field? Yes, it will. So obviously everything has to be done in moderation as we try and say with these situations. So yes, there are definite benefits and definite limitations to both surfaces. And I'm actually not here tonight to say to you choose one over the other. I think I just want to give you a little bit more of the honest facts around both and then allow you hopefully to get to the right decisions somewhere in the future. And as you can see here, I've actually put no comparison. And as you can see why, you know, there are some comparisons here in a sense, drainage, irrigation, but then it changes. Then it changes into things like the carpet, a shock pad, which is sometimes utilized under synthetic fields. You look on the other side, you've got the root zone, a sand and a soil mix of some type. As you can say, mostly they reclaim green spaces at some point or the very few are designed. And then you look on the other side and I'm just flip flopping across. And you can see that, you know, with any highly designed and engineered field, no matter what it is, there comes a higher cost. High usage capacity, as I've said, somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 hours per year. And then high usage in a sense of natural fields, 800 hours per year would be phenomenal if you can get that. I think I was just about achieving that when I was manager of the professional soccer facility. Maintenance varies from time to time and could be affected by resources. But I think one thing that I really wanted to try and identify for everybody is the maintenance requirements for synthetic turf because sadly our industry, and I'm part of this industry, so I can't disown it, I'm part of it. Sadly, our industry has often sold synthetic turf as all year round use, 24 hours a day use. I don't know anybody that I've ever seen use it for 24 hours a day, but I suppose it could be. All weather, well, they do freeze from time to time. They do obviously get snow on them and they do often flood. And we've had a number of situations just in Massachusetts alone last year where the intensity of rainfall has not been able to be dissipated by the actual obstinthetic field. And I've actually been to sites where the carpet has lifted with the pure pressure of water and has concertinaed down into one of the corners which is horrific for the client because at that point it's a complete recap, as we would say, so very, very expensive. In the same situation, we've had natural turf fields that have flooded also and they have struggled to dry out and to drain and to enable usage. So again, although I'm asking you not to compare, there are similarities in that sense. Just moving on. So one thing I really wanted to do is I wanted to get into the mystique of the costs of synthetic fields and natural turf fields. And I'm happy to share, as I say, this presentation and this presentation, it's not designed to say that one is worse than the other. It's just to show you the difference in the cost and how that pans out or works out over a longer period of time. So if I just draw your attention to the initial cost of a synthetic field, let's say it's a million dollars and I obviously worked on relatively round numbers just for ease of understanding. That's a huge investment, a million dollars. A million dollars for any town, any city is a huge investment for one athletic field. And that's basically what you get for a million, one athletic field. And then you look at things such as the average cost of maintenance. Now, I know you may have heard different things from different people, $15,000 a year for maintenance. That's terrible, that's rubbish. You know, they don't need any maintenance. And I'll show you why they do need maintenance in the next few slides, but just quickly, you know, going over this. So again, the average lifetime of a carpet is somewhere between eight and 10 years where we would classify it as still reasonable quality and safe for use. So we say eight to 10 years, I've rounded it to 10 years, but I've done the same as you see in the next slide with the natural turf just to keep it consistent. And at that point, usually the synthetic field needs to be replaced or the carpet aspect of it needs to be replaced. So again, at the rate that we're looking at at this moment, you know, you're somewhere in the region of $6,000 to $700,000 at the moment for that to be replaced. So if you think about the million that you spent in year one, in year 10, you spend another half a million to maybe three quarters of a million, then you can start to see where the 1.9 million comes in when we add in the maintenance. So then I thought, well, hold on a minute. When you have these facilities, you're not looking to have them just for 10 years. You're hopefully having them for a lifetime of a community. So I did another prediction, which worked on a 20 year projection. And I could have gone out to 30 and 40, but I thought, I'll stop at 20 because it would get more and more ridiculous the further I went out. But at 20 years, so if we take the initial cost of the 1 million, then the maintenance over 20 years now, not just 10 years, and then the recarp it in 10 years. And then in year 20, that we have to put another carpet in, let's say, then you're looking at, you know, an average of, you know, $2.6 million, which then obviously, I've just put an inflationary charge of 7% on that. That might not be correct, but just to give you a comparison and an idea, sorry. So you can see the kind of investment that's got to be thought about. And the real thing is just to focus yourselves on here. It's not so much the cost of the carpets or the replacements of those, but it's the maintenance because this is where it gets tricky. This is where carpets that are synthetic fields that aren't maintained correctly will often degrade much quicker than the 10 years or eight years. You don't notice it because you don't see a mud spot or an area of bareness so much. So everybody thinks, oh, everything's still okay. But if I was to come on with my team and we were to test that synthetic field, if it hadn't been maintained, we would be able to tell you through the testing approach that that field is now becoming very hard. We call that surface impact. And that the infill, whether it's got a shock absorbency pad underneath or not, the infill is becoming thinner. The carpet is laying down. And if you look at any synthetic field out here at the minute, you will see a lot of shininess to those synthetic fields. That's always a sign that the carpet fibers have lay down. So in much the same way in your house, if you have a carpet and you use the same areas where you walk through, you'll start to see that pile sort of degrade and sit down and then you find it difficult to lift it back up. Same principle here with synthetic fields. So that's sort of synthetic turf. Now let's look at natural turf. So again, the initial cost of a natural turf field is somewhere around 400 to maybe 450,000 to build. That would be from the beginning. So that would be what we call a new construction. So similar to the synthetic field I just mentioned. Then the maintenance cost is added into that, as you can see. Now that's considerably more than the maintenance cost for synthetic fields. So again, if we look at it over a 10-year period, we're spending $300,000 potentially on maintenance. I've then added in what I've called a resod, which is basically if we stripped off the whole turf of that field and then replaced it with new sod. So trying to keep a similarity to the previous slide, then that would be, again, another approximate $150,000. It's usually, we work on an average of about $1.50 per square foot for sod to be installed on a field. So again, in most cases, it's not necessary to do the whole field, but it may be necessary to do partial areas of the field. So we end up with a cost that's, again, circa somewhere in the region of $850,000 over the 10-year, up to sort of, you know, would add an inflation maybe just over the 900,000. And then I threw that out over the 20 years to keep similarities to the synthetic. And you see the initial cost of the field, again, is 400. The cost now of maintenance has gone up because we're doing it over 20 years rather than 10. So I've just doubled that for the minute. And then the cost of the resod is that we do one in 10 years and then one at year 20. And as you can see there, I've added a little bit more inflationary cost into the 20-year resod. So again, I know that these numbers aren't exact, but I'm just trying to give you a comparison in a sense that they are within a parameter that we are aware of from industry right at this moment. So you end up with a grand total of approximately 1.4, you know, one and a half million, let's say. So if you look at it at both systems, you might say, well, one is cheaper than the other. And I would agree with that. The math tells you that. But then we have to factor in, well, usage. How much more usage can you get from a synthetic field than you can in natural turf field? So if we work on that you can get almost a third to a half more usage from a synthetic field than you would natural turf, given the same parameters that I've laid out, then that starts to bring it closer. It starts to bring the overall cost of the synthetic, and I'll just go back so you can see that. That was 2.8. Then we're looking at 1.4 for the natural. So let's say that we add a half of that on, we're just over 2 million in reality for the natural turf to be able to get the same level of usage that we would do from the synthetic field. So it's not as extreme, but it's still quite a difference. So again, this is pretty much how I tried to work it out so that I'm sure people will still argue with these figures a little bit, but it is pretty comparable to what the industry is telling me as of just late November, early December. So we think things have settled down a lot now for the natural turf pricing-wise because COVID has now, I think, settled down as well. So as you can see there, I just thought that would be of interest to everybody, and it often raises more questions than it does answers sometimes, but I thought that by doing this, and I can back all of this up with the facts and figures behind this if you so wish, but just wanted to throw those two views at you. Then I looked at, well, what would happen if we had a synthetic field? And for some reason, the client, the town, the city said, we don't want a synthetic field anymore. We wanna turn it back to natural fields. So I did an analysis on that also, and you can see here that there's a lot of components to removing and changing back to a natural turf field. But if you think about, ironically, the FIFA World Cup in 2026, this is exactly what Gillette Stadium will be doing. It's exactly what all of the stadiums that are currently synthetic turf fields will be doing for the 2026 World Cup here and in Mexico and in Canada. So this is not that outrageous now when you see this. And so what I did was I thought it might be good just to show everybody how this would look also. And the types of things that would have to be included. Now, this isn't a full-on specification as you may understand or know, but it's just really just a sort of a reasonably simple step-by-step process of how we would take a synthetic field and move it to natural. We already know how we get a natural field and move it to synthetic in a sense. So I didn't put that slide together, but maybe I should have done. But I thought this was interesting because I've had quite a few clients from around New England that have started to ask me about this and say, well, how much does it costy and what do you think that cost would be? So I've looked into it and I've done some analysis. And this is basically what I've come up with. Now, is it to the exact dollar, to the exact sense? No, obviously it's not, but it's not far off. And I would say that this would be plus or minus, maybe at worst, 10% into the reality of the cost if you had to do that or wanted to do this. So I thought that was a good comparison, a good analysis just to show you. And as you can see there, the usual conversion time is three to four weeks. And then it's approximately a six month growing, usually. So, and six months is usually what we call the growing seasons. So that would be somewhere between March and November. We would classify the six months somewhere in that period, just so that we could get playing on it as soon as possible. Because that will be the essence of the pressure will be how quickly can we plan it? So I just thought that was interesting as well and worth sort of finding out. So now this is what I alluded to a little bit earlier in my presentation when I talked about the maintenance. Now, when I first showed one of our clients this and they have a synthetic field, they were horrified. They almost threw me out their office. And I said, well, the interesting aspect of this is that I spent two years working with FIFA just on this, on what does it cost and what should the maintenance look like on a synthetic field? And you may or may not have ever had the chance to go to FIFA's head office in Zurich but right outside their head office is a synthetic field full size. And often you will see them press interviews or press releases will be carried out actually on that field. So when I was a consultant there, I suggested, well, everybody's come into me and saying, this is too much maintenance, this isn't enough. What is right? So I suggested to the higher upset FIFA, why don't we do an analysis? So we spent a whole year, well, actually we ended up spending two years but initially we spent a whole year and we generally invited a soccer association in Zurich to play on this field at every single given moment they could so that we could then maintain it and understand how that maintenance would work. And this is what we basically come up with all those days ago. And I'm talking probably about eight or 10 or 12 years ago now. So while you may not know some of these operations you know, implicitly, they're all required at some point and you can see that the way we put it together was we built what we call a frequency chart. And so the numbers relate to how often in a month the operation should take place. So obviously for those that have one, it would be usually once a month. For those that have 12, it would be four times a week roughly on average. I know not every month has the same amount of days in it but within reason, most months have four weeks in the month. So that's how we sort of laid it out and identified it. And this is based on 10 hours of use per day on a synthetic field. So when you see me say infill redistribution, so when we play any sport on a synthetic field, we have an infill, whether it's crumb rubber, whether it's coconut shell, no matter what infill it is, it will get kicked around and move around. So we then have to put that back in place. And that is seldom done in any of the synthetic fields in New England. But it's something that is extremely important because once that infill is removed from the place where it was sitting, then the carpet fibers are more exposed and they become weakened. And often it's a symbiotic relationship between the carpet fibers and the infill. One is holding the other up in a sense. So for those fibers to stand upright, we need the infill correctly spaced and quantified around that, those fibers, to hold it together to keep the stability. When we lose the infill, the fibers will droop or drop and that's what happens. And that's where we start to see the fibers laying down on the older fields now. And then you can't sit it back up and you can't even get the infill back in into the right area without doing some pretty energetic, what we call renovation or in the sense here, you'll see down the left side revitalization. That's a huge operation where all the infill is literally sucked out of the field completely. Sand, rubber, you name it, whatever's in there gets completely sucked out and stored. And then the infill, then the field is groomed to try and stand the fibers back up and then the infill is redistributed in to try and hold that together. And that's extremely expensive to do because it takes at least a week to do it properly. So again, you can see that if we can carry out this ongoing day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month type maintenance, then the chances of our field going above 10 years increases at this point. So obviously it's in everybody's best interests when the investment has been made to then try and sustain the investment. And I often use the simple car analogy, you may want to buy a Ferrari and you may buy a Ferrari and you may be able to afford that. But then you've got to afford to maintain it. And that's often equally as expensive as the actual purchase in a lot of respects, certainly over a period of time. So the same thing applies here in a sense. But not forgetting about natural turf, because as you can see here, there are different operations that we need to carry out to natural turf. And some of those are also required and must be carried out for the natural turf to be able to sustain the amount of use that we want it to sustain. So again, a similarity here in the sense that the different operations and the slightly different frequencies, but again, the whole idea is, let's make sure that we have these types of maintenance plans in place, whether it's a synthetic or a natural field. If it's a synthetic field, if we start with the maintenance that I previously showed you here, then the likelihood is that we will get longer lifetime out of our carpet before it needs replacement. Now, can I quantify that? What I can tell you is what we did at FIFA is that we accelerated obviously the tests, the analysis that we did. And we got it that we could probably gain an extra two years on the carpet life. Now, that could be considerable to a community, to a city, to a town, especially as we go through coming out the other side of COVID and still lots of uncertainty with our economy and everything else. So that two years could be vital. And I've had a lot of clients that we've been to that we've tested fields and we've suggested that they replace them immediately. And they've said, Ian, I need you to help us get two more years out of this carpet because we don't have the money yet. So we've been able to put in some mitigate and maintenance and renovation approaches that would help that. But that in itself becomes costly. So it becomes almost a vicious circle. What we would like is what we call a virtuous circle where if we do the maintenance from day one, whether it's natural or synthetic, the chances are we will get far more use out of our fields that it will be in a much safer condition for use and therefore more enjoyable for everybody to use. So I'm trying not to get on my little soapbox here but I do from time to time. So I apologize. So in conclusion, and again, all of these you can say that there could be different factors too. As I mentioned to James when we had our conversation a couple of weeks ago, at Tom Irwin, we always start at the end but we bring that to beginning, which is the maintenance. So often those maintenance charts that you saw from me, I will start with this with a client and I will say, okay, before we build your shiny new field or design it or do any of that, how are you gonna maintain it? So we want them to dream to a point but then we say, but as with any dream there then comes a reality. This is the reality and by mapping this out for people we're able to immediately show the kind of investment and the kind of input that's gonna be required to maintain their field. Now, okay, this is an average approach to what I would call a varsity level field, let's say. That's the kind of maintenance that should be carried out. You could do a couple of extra things more often but within reason that would suffice. So that's where normally we would start, same with the synthetic, the previous slide, this slide, we would sit down and talk to a client and say, before you go off and spend a million, million and a half dollars on your facility this is what we want you to focus on first because ironically, without sounding sort of arrogant about this, building a field, designing a field is much the easy part, maintaining it is much more the difficult part. And so that's why we start here. Even though most people bring this in at the end and often you may well have been in a situation yourselves where somebody's created this beautiful building and then never thought about the maintenance of that building. So I remember once there was a building back in England that was just made purely out of glass. Nobody thought about who was gonna wash the glass and maintain the glass but it looked beautiful for about a month. And then in England, as you well know, just like in New England, we get rain, we get weather and there was streaks down this glass and suddenly all of the maintenance budget was gone in a week trying to maintain this. So it was a good lesson to learn, sadly, but so we try and stop that by doing this first. And we will say, if you're in a varsity level field or in this case a synthetic surface that comes up to that similar standard, here's what we want you to think about first. Is this something that you can achieve now? And usually the answer is no. And then we say, okay, so let us work through this with you and explain to you, excuse me, the type of costs associated with this. At least at that point, we're all still in the project meeting room. We're not put in shovels in ground, we're not excavating fields or green spaces to replace with synthetic fields or vice versa. We're at the point where we're still in the office and we're all able to then look at it more conceptually. And that's what we want to try and do. Now, if everybody's then says, hey, we can do this, this is where we want to go with this, great, then we can design something and help have it built for you, find the right resources, contractors, materials, things like that. But that basically is sort of, sorry, I'm just going the wrong way. That's basically is where we sort of get to. So maintenance, start with the maintenance and then work back to the design as you'll hear architects often say that form follows function. So let's make it functional first, then let's make it pretty in a sense because that's the more important thing because if something very pretty can be destroyed very quickly, if nobody thought about where people were going to walk, for instance, and so often studies are carried out now to where people will cross green spaces and then say, well, that seems to be the simplistic point. So let's put a pathway in there because we run the risk of we run it around the outside that they're still just going to go straight across it. So that type of thing, as I say, prevention is better than cure in almost every situation. So if we can prevent things by understanding what the maintenance requirements are, before we build something, then we have a much better opportunity of maintaining it or preventing any of the situations from becoming bigger issues further down the line. The average lifespan, as I say, of a synthetic field is eight to 10 years. It can degrade much more quickly, but that doesn't mean it's unsafe. It doesn't mean that it can't be used. And that's where our testing regime comes in to help support that. At this moment in time, there's nothing much more on synthetic fields than what we call surface impact testing or hardness testing. We test for 13 different criteria because we find that they're all interrelated. So if the field is hard, what does that tell us? Well, it tells us the field is hard, but it doesn't really help you guys when we say, well, the field is hard, there's your result. It's like the doctor saying, when you've got a cold or you've got the flu. Well, you really want the doctor to say, here's some medicine to make you better. So if you like, we class ourselves in a similar way as sort of like doctors will come in, we'll analyze, we'll look at the patient and then we'll say, right, here's how to treat the patient type thing. So again, I'm trying not to make a comparison of either of the systems. They're very, very different. They're very different in their design, in their implications, their implementations and so on. We also have to consider other things and as you can now appreciate, this is the first time I've even talked about some of the conditions that may affect natural and synthetic turf from a safety perspective, such as heat retention on synthetic fields, such as, for instance, we all know the forever chemicals at the moment, the PFOS, PFAS fluoride chemicals that have now come to light a few years ago with the Boston Globe breaking a piece on that. And that is going to be a constant challenge for our industry going forward. In natural turf, can pesticides be used? Are they safe? So whether it's a PFOS, PFAS or a pesticide, again, those challenges are there. And what we've got to try and do is find, you know, the safest way to get through those situations. And I'll give you one example about a pesticide and it's not because I favor natural turf over synthetic turf at all, but I remember reading when I was back in England, I remember reading a situation where there's a town in Holland where there is a caterpillar and it gives off a very fine hair when it sheds and it's tantamount to asbestos. It's very similar in its makeup. And it irritates the lungs and it causes lots of breathing difficulties. And the Dutch government decided to ban the pesticides that used to control this. There was no actual complaints about it being unsafe or making people feel ill or anything. It was just, let's just ban this because it's a pesticide. They banned it. Within six months, the ER was full of people with basically the conditions similar to asbestosis. Now, fortunately, it wasn't as bad as asbestosis in the sense that it was long-term. It could be treated. But amazingly, the Dutch government about a month later decided that that was a bad idea to ban that chemical and then they reinstated that chemical for use. And guess what? The ERs were empty again, apart from the usual things that people go to ER for. So I like to try and deal in the facts rather than the hysteria and the supposition of things. And I, as a practicing grounds manager, golf course superintendent, for many, many years used chemicals. Some of them, which were now, we would not be able to use in any of the countries. And I never had any ailments. I never had any health issues. I never knew of anybody else on my teams that had those issues or anything. And that was at a time when I would probably say that the restrictions were very loose compared to the very, and correct restrictions that are in place now. So yeah, that sort of, I wanted to try and keep that as brief as possible. Hopefully I haven't gone on too long. You know, they don't say I can talk under water for nothing. So please, you know, hopefully now you've got time for some questions. And as I said to Jim, I'll sit here as long as you want me to, but you're probably gonna get sick of my voice at some point. I need to actually have the meeting. But I'm also available offline at any point. I'm more than happy to talk to anybody individually in this group that might want to ask me questions that they don't get time to ask tonight, for instance. And I'll share this presentation and you can use it as you need, you know, and review it in a little bit more detail if you so wish. So I suppose I'll move to any questions. Well, Ian, this was extremely informative. I can't thank you enough. It's just, I think, very ratifying for us to hear from a practitioner, which is not to degrade the other people we've heard from, but we have not heard a sort of a practitioner's perspective on this and it's a unique perspective that we need to hear. And I'm glad we heard it tonight. I think there are gonna be a lot of questions. I may have a few, but I really want to turn it over to the other members and I know we have other business tonight, but we have Ian now and I'm sure we have some questions. Ian, I don't know if you also wanna go back to the main screen now. Yes, I will. I'll just share myself. And I think I saw Mike, was your hand up first? Well, it was up, yes. Go ahead. I wanna thank Mr. Lacey for his presentation. I thought it was very informative and helpful. One issue that we've dealt with in the past is that of disposal. After eight or 10 years or 12 years, there's a lot of, there are tons of carpet and infill and all of that. What's your experience in disposing of that? We've heard the word recycle here, but I don't know if that applies. What happens to that turf field after its life is over? You know, that's a great question, Mike. And I would say that it will differ between installation companies. They may all say that they're recycling it, but it's always an interesting question that we ask of those companies when they're in a bid situation. We always say to them, well, how is it recycled? And often the carpet, when it's lifted, if it's a recapit. So I'm talking about now. So there's already an existing field down. When it's lifted, usually all of the infill is shaken out and then collected into bags and then that's stored. And then so you're just dealing at that point, just with what we call the naked carpet. There's nothing else to it, apart from the fiber and the backing. And often, sadly, that still ends up just in landfill. It can be recycled and they are starting to recycle. So there's special recycling centers now that are starting to come up and not looked into them very, very closely, but I know some of them are just another type of landfill, but that's the only material going into it rather than everything can anything. So is the carpeting itself recyclable? And is that just a chemical recycling or how is that accomplished? It's a mixture of both actually. It's a physical recycling. So it's usually grounded or ground or ripped. And then it's often heated up, melted and then disposed of or recycled into use again back into a different industry, for instance. I think that the big point of it for me is that I've seen some very unique things in the last year, 18 months where ironically the synthetic carpet that's lifted from a field that has been replaced is now used as the top surface of a landfill site. So rather than just leaving it all soil and then weed, they're now using it for landfill capping in a sense. It's not the physical cap. It's just the very top. But obviously that may be an innovative use. I mean, back in the UK, I can tell you that a lot of carpets as they were lifted up and were then used as pathways on golf courses because it was very durable. It looked neat enough apart from when you had the lines on there. And in fact, my old golf course where I was a workout did that over the years. But I think it's still a little bit of a gray area about exactly where this stuff ends up. Yeah, because I think that some of the melting you mentioned on the incineration causes all kinds of pollution as well. So it's not really a beneficial response, but thank you for that response. Yeah, no problem, great question though. Anyone else? Leslie? I was just gonna ask on a follow up to that. Are you familiar at all with what 10 Kate is doing? They're one of the ones that I've heard have been at the forefront of recent innovations in trying to really make recycling a part of this industry. So are you familiar at all with their works? Yeah, yeah, I am actually. 10 Kate are a big, big, big global organization that have a number of different arms to them. And one of them is a recycling because obviously there are thousands and thousands upon thousands of synthetic fields just in America alone, just in New England alone, ironically. So if you then multiply that by the whole of the world, yes, there's a responsibility for the manufacturers to try and deal with either recycling the used carpets and materials that come out of them rather than just, as I say, throwing them into a landfill site. So yeah, I mean, there are some that as I say there's a grinding process that takes place, excuse me, in much the same way as the very old crumb rubber came from the ground tires that you have on your car type thing or your truck. It's the same principle now that grinding that down and trying to reuse it for other, it might not be coming back to the same industry or used as another carpet, but the idea is that they're trying to use it for other industries that may well find a need for it. So yeah, I am aware and that's good. I think there's a responsibility from all of these manufacturers to take more responsibility to that. So yes, yeah. Marvin, I start your hand up. First of all, Ian, thank you. This was a really interesting presentation provided a lot of information that I personally didn't have and find valuable. I have a couple of questions there. I guess they're sort of related. You mentioned that in your experience, a lot of the fields in New England are currently not maintained the way they should be. Do you have any sense of what a ballpark life expectancy would be for one of those fields? Yeah, and I suppose that's a great question. I suppose it comes, I'll answer it this way is that I would say just to start with that there are probably 95% of the fields that we've walked on that aren't maintained anywhere near to the standard that they should be. And even if you look at the slide that I put up, I'm not even talking about even at that level. They're not even getting a 5% of that sometimes. So I think that's a big challenge. I think where it's masked really well is that because the synthetic turf outside of high wear areas such as lacrosse areas, you know, goal mouth areas, penalty kick areas in soccer, things like that, outside of those areas, you don't often notice it. We notice it by when we see the fibers lying down. That's the start point for us. That's where we would classify a field as starting to degrade and starting to lose its ability to retain its shape, its durability and all of those things. But I mean, really, I've seen that as little as three or four years into the life of a carpet. Now, it may not be to the point where I would say this is dangerous, you can't use this field. You know, that often is around about that seven to eight year period. Cause that's usually at that point, it's fallen sort of off the cliff at that point. There's no way back. And then I guess kind of related to that. In terms of initial replacement, do you have any sense of what it requires in terms of percentage of original or weight or volume or whatever to kind of maintain it properly? Yeah, so when you, if you buy a brand new synthetic field, usually it's one of the specifications is the weight of the field. And we weigh that in the infield material, in the infill material and the weight of the carpet, the backing and everything else. So normally it's done in a square foot rating just for ease. So we tend to like, you know, the carpets to be eight, nine pounds in weight. That includes the infill somewhere around there. That's what you'll see in a lot of specifications. Sometimes it's a touch lower, sometimes it's a touch higher. But a roundabout that is a sort of a given. And usually with most of the infill requirements, the sand is what we call the weight. So that is the thing that holds the carpet down to the surface. Many, many years ago when I first got in this industry, we used to have what we call dynamic base synthetic fields and engineered base synthetic fields. The dynamic base is what you will play on nowadays. That's just a stone base where you lay a carpet on top and play on it. We used to have engineered and at that point, that's where you would glue the carpet to a concrete pad basically or see use the concrete pads. So that went because that became very expensive and post-tension concrete is hugely expensive. So everything's now dynamic base as we call it with a dynamic stone, you know, composite. So the sand is the only thing weighing the carpet down. There's no real weight in the rubber or the infill material or the top part of the infill material which is the rubber usually. So the weight of the carpet itself and the sand is the only thing that holds it to the surface in most cases. And that's why you see when the water, when I was talking earlier about flooding, there's nothing to hold it down. It's not pinned down apart from maybe a couple of curbs but that can't hold that kind of pressure once it flows. So we tend to see the carpet, at the very least it will wrinkle and then it can be restretched fortunately just like your carpet at home. But if it moves, then usually, if it moves quite a bit, it needs to be completely put back in place. So normally you'll find, again, this will differ in specifications but just to give you a sort of a ballpark, you'll find probably 30 to 40% of the infill material is sand by volume, by weight because it's got that density to it. And then it's topped up usually with an infill material such as crumb rubber or synthesized rubber nowadays is used more often. And then obviously that's usually brought up to what we call a reveal height which is where it sits just below the surface of the tips of the fibers. So that's usually about an eighth of an inch. So yeah, so you're probably looking at about 30% sand, 70% rubber infill on any synthetic field in it at most times. So, but I mean, in terms of how much you need to add to make up for whatever gets dislodged or kicked off the side or compacted or... Oh, yeah, sorry. Sorry, good, yeah, I forgot about that bit. Yeah, so obviously if you're plowing the field, you'll lose a lot of material to the plowing and you've probably seen it yourself when you see the snow hills, you'll see all of this black material that's all the rubber sat in the snow and eventually that obviously as the snow melts, it does leave a pile of rubber that can then be redistributed into the field for sure. But I'd say on average, if you look at it this way, depending on the whole use of that field or fields, usually fields are predominantly north to south or south to north, which you have a way orientation. So usually, the central area is where we would focus when we test more because that's where we would normally see the most activity and usage. So that would be something that we would say should be topped up. Now, depending on what the infill depth measurement is, we would say anywhere between 10 to 20 tons of rubber should be distributed across that central and central area being around about 150 feet wide running the total length of the field. So somewhere between that amount of material is usually needed to top up, not every year, but often. Again, if you're using the field more and plowing it more, we would say do it more often. If it's less, then you can sometimes only have to apply less. Okay, thank you. No problem. Ian, I had a couple of questions. I should have said this at the very, I should have asked you this at the very beginning. So your company, and I know you're sort of speaking for your company, but sort of also giving us your own experiences tonight as a practitioner, but your company installs both natural and synthetic, I guess that's my question. Okay, so let me give you some background into Tom Irwin. So we are a sales and distribution company in the sports and golf industry and therefore green space industry. So our core business is we would sell and distribute grass seed, fertilizer, you name it, that can be used on natural turf. 10 years ago, the owner of the company realized that all of the sales client reps, as we call them, were being asked questions that were outside of their purview often and would require more effort and resource than the guys had at their disposal. They're on the road selling, so they don't want to be on the road giving advice necessarily. So I happened to meet the owner of the company while I was over here working for the Institute of Groundsmanship that you mentioned earlier. And I was explaining how we developed our consultancy and advisory business in the UK. And he really liked that and he said, look, everywhere the client reps go, they're being asked questions that they can't answer easily or quickly. So this is what I'm looking for. And he told me his vision and I said, well, ironically, that's sort of how we started in the UK in this aspect of the advisory. And so long story short, I ended up making the trip across. So when I came across, we had, we built what we call Tom Irwin advisors, which is a, if you like a company within Tom Irwin itself, we don't install anything. We don't sell synthetic turf. We don't sell natural turf. We sell grass seed, but we don't sell sod or anything like that at my job. And my team's job is purely to go out into the industry and help in some cases groups such as yourself, committees such as yourself understand the differentiation between two surfaces, for instance. You might say, and that's not why I'm here and Jim knows this, I'm very passionate about this. You might say, hey Ian, we might wanna hire you to help us with this project somewhere down the line. I might say, absolutely, no problem. For me, it's more about sharing accurate information out into the industry so that everybody's more aware of what is going on and what it actually means. So we don't install anything. What we would do as the advisors team is we would help you identify the right contractors to do the job, help you identify the right materials to do the job, and then help you one to one with the maintenance of that said project. But we don't actually do anything apart from the testing. And when I say testing, I'll expand that to natural turf as well, because we will investigate obviously and test natural turf fields that aren't draining very well, or don't look very healthy, or a number of different reasons. The soils don't seem to function well. So we will do that investigative work and that's the limit to us getting our sort of hands dirty in a sense. The rest of it is then how we can advise, how we can coordinate, how we can put you in touch with all the right people and we have a vast array of people that we work with and trust, they trust us. So hopefully when, if you hired us, you wouldn't just get me or the fabulous team that I have, you would get a group of partners that also would be able to provide you with excellent advice and support and an actual, they will build things. They will demolish things. You name it, they will do that, but not ourselves. And in most cases, it's... And you did, if I'm not mistaken, you did assist the town with one of our projects, right? With the farm? Yeah, quite often, we're not architects and we're the first people to say that. We're not engineers, we're the first people to say that. But what we do have is a really good insight into how a design can work, especially from grading, drainage, things like that. So we often work with architects and engineers because they don't have some of the skills and the knowledge that we have. In the same way, we don't have some of the skills and knowledge they have. So we find it a very good symbiotic relationship that they need us for certain things. We come in, we'll do those certain things. So for Arlington in that sense, I've forgotten the name of the field now. Robins Farm. That's it, Robins, yes. So we worked under Western and Samson and we helped them with the soil investigation aspect of that field. So what we were asked to do is come in and look at the existing soil that was there, the existing field that was there. We took the soils, we had them tested by our laboratories. I say our laboratories, they're not ours, but they feel like ours because we use them all the time. And then they came back with their analysis. We were able then to say to Western and Samson, based on this analysis, this is how this soil will perform, will act, and we believe it will need some kind of amending to be more like the soil that would give you the sustainability on the field longer term. So that's all we did for Robins Farm. What happened after that? Unfortunately, we're not in charge of. So while I'll happily defend the soil aspect of it because I know we did that and how we did that, I don't know what happened after. I do know this that I did make Western and Samson aware that the soils that we were suggesting and recommending be used, they would require a good level of maintenance. And I believe that that might not have happened all of the time. And therefore that may well have been, I think there was challenges somewhere down the line a few years later because of that. No, it's a field that has a lot of wear and tear and it's sadly being overused. I just want to ask one more question and then I see a few more hands and I don't want to, unfortunately, I think we probably could talk to you all night but we have some other business to get to but frankly, this has been so interesting. And I don't know how comfortable you feel talking about this because it's about a different client but you came to my attention because of your experience with Sharon and the article that said that Sharon had rejected artificial turf. I don't know if they did an official moratorium or a ban or just it was a general preference not to do artificial turf or synthetic turf fields. And instead decided they were going to have natural grass fields and they were going to put in their budget that they were going to maintain them to the max or whatever and that was the goal. We're going to have very highly maintained, well-maintained natural turf fields. Tell me what happened to the set you can because that's where the article left it. You were beginning to work with Sharon but last time we talked you said there was more to the story. Yeah, there is a little bit more to the story but I'm quite happy to share what we did through that process. So yeah, we were contacted by concerned citizens of Sharon that had heard about us and what we were doing generally in the industry at that time. And they were, for one bit of words fighting with the town let's say because there was going to be a synthetic turf field installed at one of the schools and they didn't want that. So they fought and fought and put a big series of demonstrations one way or the other you name it and eventually they ended up getting a moratorium in place for the synthetic field could not be built for a minimum of three years and even then it would have to come back to the docket and be discussed again. And the thing you got to know about Sharon is it sits all of its water pretty much as well water. So there was a lot of concerns about the groundwater you know, quality and various things. It's basically the only drinking water in the town comes from the wells and so on and so forth. And that's fairly, that's common across New England actually, especially in Connecticut ironically. So anyway, long story short, we got involved. We did some assessments of two fields at two different schools. And the idea was plain and simple from the very beginning that they wanted us to help them maintain the fields naturally and see if the fields could basically take the usage that was put on them. And they'd had problems with them year on year the drainage was poor and a lot of other challenges that we found when we tested the fields. So we immediately set about putting a good program together and fortunately it was in the confines of what the town could afford because they hadn't, we would miss the budget and cycle. So we had to wait a year almost before we could access more budget. But we knew that so we built a program that we felt was substantial enough at that time. Unfortunately, pretty much the same time or just after we started they then were in the middle of the high school rebuild got the green light. And of course the fields at the high school were taken offline. And through whatever reason the decision was to move a lot of the usage to the two fields that we were maintaining or we were helping the town maintain in a more natural approach. Unfortunately at that point the two fields sort of not only had the usual usage that they were getting anyway but they then had another four or five times that use from everything that came from the high school. And so unfortunately the fields really did struggle but the upside of this is that I was there a few weeks ago before any of the snow and the fields don't look too bad at the minute. One thing that we were able to do which was significant in the if you like the partial success of this program is that because the drainage was a big challenge we were able to instigate and get through funding something that we call linear sand injection. And that's where sand is injected in grooves that are sort of eight to 10 inches apart right across the field six inches deep about three quarters of an inch wide and we pack them full of sand right to the surface. And they act as that initial transport of moisture down six, seven inches into the what we call the soil profile. Now if you can get water six, seven inches down you're never gonna have a problem with it on your surface at that point. And the biggest enemy to surface damage is water in the top inch of any natural turf field. Doesn't matter how good it is if that field is water that has water sitting in that top inch the damage is exponentially worse than if that field was dry at that top inch. So obviously we were able to get both of the fields have that operation carried out and I know it made a huge difference and even the town staff would say after some of the rainfall that they'd had like you wouldn't get on this field for five or six days to mow it and they were on it the same day. So again, while it might not be in great physical shape to you and I we know that infrastructure wise and structurally now it is way, way better than when we took it over. I say took it over. We worked in a partnership with the town. So yeah, just a little bit disappointed not disappointing in the sense of the decision was made to move all the usage but disappointing that I think had we not had that extra usage we'd have been able to prove quite categorically that the approach that we wanted to take was gonna have significant benefits to those fields. But willing to try it again if somebody wants to. It comes down to the maintenance issue and it's really hammers at home. We probably have a time for only two or three more questions and I see two or three hands but Marvin, Leslie, Mike, each of you I'll do one more time. How about start with Leslie and then Marvin and then Mike? Well, just again a follow up on what you just spoke. Are you putting aside FIFA and professional level have you ever encountered a municipality that has the budget and wherewithal to do the type of maintenance on either on the level that's needed both from an artificial standpoint and a natural grass standpoint. And are you familiar with some of the newer infills like Brockville and some of those things? Yep, yep. Let me start with that part of the answer very quickly Leslie. I'm very familiar with all the infills, the newer infills that are out there, the Brockville, the Envirofills, those types of things. One infill that I've seen that I think is fantastic but you must have a shock pad with it and I'm gonna go out on a little bit of a limb here and say this is there's an Envirofill green sand. So it's a very rounded sand so it's not very abrasive to the body or to the fiber. And I've seen that that is without question for me the safest infill that I've seen but you must have a shock pad. Let me do the safest from a, what definition of safe? So safe from... Environmental... Yep, yep. Because it's a sand so it's inert it's not gonna cause any damage to the environment if it washes out for some reason it's just sand that's washed out so it doesn't cause a problem somewhere else off the field. It's very stable, it's very difficult to move it so it tends to stay in place so there's less maintenance than required. So it becomes very much a sort of a leader for me in infill material but you must have a shock pad underneath the carpet because there's no shock absorbency from the sand. So the shock absorbency comes from the carpet from the shock pad underneath but that said it's still a great infill. And that's just my, I've seen it, I've tested it and that's what I would say. Regarding to, that's a great question your first part but it's all a great question but the first part of great because sadly you are correct. I have very rarely seen in my nine and a half years here any municipal that can afford the kind of maintenance that you've seen on my maintenance charts. So what we tend to do always is we start with the maintenance as always but we'll obviously look at that with the budget in mind with that particular client. Excuse me, so we like to assess the field because then we can say, well, this is the condition of the field, this is what needs to happen to improve it and then we give the client, let's say it's Arlington, we would give you an analysis that says, right, so you can improve this field more quickly by spending more money initially or you can improve this field slowly over time by spending less money. And we sort of find that we land in the middle even being honest Leslie, we'll get some towns that are cities that really wanna just throw the money initially and try and get something improving quickly. That's great, we can help that but other towns just say, look, we're never gonna have more than $2,000 or $3,000 to spend on a field a year. How do we do that the best? And that's the lovely puzzle that I have because that's what really gets me out of bed is how can I help a town that doesn't have money or a lot of money, still produce the best surfaces that they can. So they don't call me the British Bulldog for nothing. When I bite on, I don't let go. Thank you. Thank you. Marvin and then Mike. Yeah, you mentioned the sand injection as a strategy for getting rid of surface water and making fields more playable. How expensive is that ballpark for say? Ballpark, yeah. You're looking to do what I would call a full size, let's just call it a soccer field. It could be lacrosse, it could be field hockey but let's say a full size soccer field. So around about 85, 90,000 square feet, something like that. You're looking at somewhere between $15,000 to $20,000, including the sand to do that. And if I tell you that I recently estimated a drainage project and when I say drainage, I'm talking about pipe drainage. So that's where we put a pipe in the ground, surrounded by gravel. For one linear foot, so that's basically just a straight line foot, it was $100 per linear foot for that pipe to go in the ground. So one run of this pipe, 300 feet, as you can see, is $3,000, just like that. So when you think about $15,000 and $20,000 and think that might be expensive, and I'm not saying that that's cheap, it is expensive, but the value that you get for that investment is unbelievable. I mean, when I was a grounds manager, I often used that process because, and forgive me respectfully to everybody on this call, I called it the poor man's drainage. You know, in England, if you couldn't afford the pipe drainage, you went with the, what we call the linear sand injection drainage. That's actually what we call in the industry as a secondary drainage system. The primary drainage system is always your pipes. So the secondary system is the linear sand injection. And everywhere we've done that in New England, everywhere I've done that around the world actually, it's been almost a total success. Great, thank you. Mike, you get the last question. Last quickie, in addition to the environment of Green Sand that you mentioned, we've heard things about coconut shells and walnuts and all kinds of, and cork and all kinds of other things. I do have experience and recommendations or thoughts on some of those other ones. Yeah, absolutely. We did a lot of testing for FIFA, as I said, not just on the maintenance, but also on infill types. And we tested all of these infill types. We had corks that you put in a bottle of wine. We had everything shredded. You name it, we put it on a field. And the very best thing was sand because it never moved. It was so heavy compared to everything else, especially when it's wet. The very worst thing or equally worst I'll say was coconut shells and cork. The cork just expanded. It just absorbed all the moisture and suddenly these little tiny pieces ended up really big pieces. It was funny in a sense to see. Now obviously the crumb rubber, when that was initially the tires being shredded, we all know that that wasn't very healthy and isn't very healthy. Now they use the synthesized rubber process, which is much more healthy. So I would say, but again, sadly, I don't mean to do this and I'm sure that some of the guys out there in the industry will tell me off for this, but usually safety equals more money when it comes to infill, in most cases. Not always, but certainly environmental safety does. It equals more money, so, but yeah, I think the sand is fantastic. The newer rubbers are very, very good, you know, much more safer than the old crumb rubber car tire shreds. And following on Mike's point, I mean also do you notice that these alternative infills keep the temperature down, the surface temperature, because that's what we've sort of seen a little bit of studies telling us that, but it's a lot of these alternative infills are so new, there's not a lot of research, but some early indication is that the alternative, the crumb rubber, do keep the surface temperature down. Yes, absolutely, and I think that obviously when anything that you have black, it will attract the most amount of heat and we get heat in our spring, summer, and fall in New England for sure. One of the big things for me is that now that they're coating the materials with lighter colors, then they're reflecting that much better. So therefore you're right, that heat is not absorbed as it would have been, it is deflected before it has chance to really build and then cause what we call a heat bloom or, you know, and I've heard people say, hey, maybe we should water the field. Absolutely the worst thing you can do. Don't waste a single gallon of water on a synthetic field. It'll last you about a minute and a half, especially in the heat of the day, no chance. So yes, heat, now I'll say this being fair on both sides of this argument, heat is a problem when the sun is out and this may sound a little bit, and I'm Irish, some of my ancestry's Irish, so I can get away with it by saying, this sounds a bit Irish. Some, when the sun shines out, the crumb rubber at this moment, let's say, and the fibers heat up very quickly, but also when the sun goes in and the cloud cover comes, they cool down very quickly. So, you know, it's not as bad as people will often say, you know, you see people with infrared heat guns going out in fields and saying, hey, it's 170, it's 80 on turf. Yep, that's gonna happen. You've got a synthetic material that's gonna heat up in most cases, unless it was white and we're not gonna have white fields as not in the near future. So obviously you're gonna have a heat differentiation. But that heat can drop to 130 from 170 as soon as cloud cover comes over. So I don't think it's, I like to look at it and say it's not as extreme as people might say, but yes, I think when we go back to natural turf, it is much more consistent as for everything. You know, and again, there's lots of, as there are improvements in synthetic turf and infill, there are improvement in natural turf in the grass seeds now, they're becoming more drought resistant than ever. So we don't need to apply as much water as people think. And often whenever I go around this industry and see our clients and new clients potentially, most of them at some point are over watering. Because they mistake the damage that they think they're seeing on the turf as it's dry, it's dying. It's actually not, it's gone dormant. That's its natural defense mechanism. It's just retaining moisture like we do when we're hot. We retain moisture. We sweat it out a little bit because we need to cool down, but we also retain a lot more moisture because we can't afford to lose it at that point. So as I say, you know, we start getting a little bit into the biology and mechanics of soils and plants, but just to keep it relatively simple for everybody, that, you know, most plants will go dormant every summer in this part of the world. And yet you can see by the time that the moisture comes back and the heat reduces and the humidity slows down, you can see that they're green again. They're not dead at all. But people perceive that as my plant is dying, I must water it. And yes, there is a point when we say that as long as there's moisture in the soil, we would say that plant is able to extract that moisture and use it. It just might not show it because it's keeping its central organs, its central system alive rather than its leaf. Because the leaves are the wasters for that plant. They will waste moisture, so they reduce that. They close it down in a sense. Yeah. It certainly explains I've killed every plant, I think I've ever owned one. And I don't understand why because I keep watering it over and over and over again. My mother is the absolute, like you don't want to be a house plant going into my mother's house for sure. It's a certain death, you know? And every time she says to me, she says to me, Ian, what am I doing wrong? And I said, Mum, every time you ask me that question, I give you the same answer. Just you're overwatering. Put your finger in the compost or the soil. And if it's wet, don't water, there's no need. So and of course, you know, why should she listen to a little upstart son, you know, who happens to work in the industry? You know, it's, you just have to accept that. Well, Ian, I'll say, I'll use, I'll go with the analogy. You have watered us tonight, but you have not overwatered us. We know more and are more vibrant, I think, because of this hour and a half you've spent with us. And frankly, I could probably talk to you for another two hours and find a lot more questions to ask. But we will share your, send me your presentation. We'll put it with our minutes and share it. And then I'll make your email address available if anyone has follow-up. But this has been very enlightening. You've been very generous with your time. And I think one of the best calls I made was to you a few weeks ago, and you returned my call, unlike some other people. So I hope you don't regret returning the call. We certainly are very grateful for it. Don't talk to my team. Sometimes I don't return their calls. So, you know, I'm on my best behavior for you guys, but no, no, thank you very much for the opportunity, Jim. I mean, first of all, as you know, I've got a huge passion for this. And yes, I, you know, I will talk under water if you try and let me, but I try and try and keep it fair to what I'm trying to do for everybody. And as I say, any other questions, phone calls, don't be afraid. If I can answer them, I will. And I will answer them with a generous amount of time as I can. So, but I just wish you all the best with your whatever decision you finally get to. Don't call me anymore about the decision. That's all on you guys. You can have that headache. No, no. We're on our own, walking our own plank on that one. Yeah, no, no. If you ever wanted, hey, look, we're stuck between this and this, what's your thought? I'll give you my opinion as you know, it's down the middle. So, but... And that's what we appreciate. And it's been... Well, thank you, Ian. You can stay if you want, but please, you're under no obligation to do so. And frankly, you're probably better off if you sign off now, because we have some little more dry talk to get to. So, thank you, Ian. Well, if you don't mind, I'll sign off because I do need to go to the bathroom, sorry. But thanks everybody so much. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks for listening to me and good luck with everything that's ahead of you. We appreciate it. Thank you, Ian. All right, take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. What I would say to the rest of the group is, obviously that took a little longer than I thought, but it was also even more enlightening than I thought it would be when I talked to them initially. So I'm really glad we did this. I would say, maybe we tackle one group's bullet points before we break for the night. Does that sound like a plan? And then we're supposed to take up bullet points again next week. Maybe the other two groups discuss their bullet points next week. Because I think in the remaining, I mean, we don't have to have a hard stop at seven, but I'm guessing people probably need just to hop at seven, and I probably need to. So which group would like to tell us about their bullets this week? Any takers for tonight? I'll jump on it if you want if nobody else wants to. I don't have an objection, Mike. If you and Joe want to jump in, you get first dibs. Yeah, I mean, Joe, you haven't talked about it, but I don't know, Joe, you want to talk about it a little bit, or do you want me to? Well, and Mike, do you want to, Natasha, do you want maybe to have Mike's ability to put their bullets up on the screen? We can all look at them while we're talking about them. They were sent out with old minutes last time. People should have them, and I don't have them handy, so I can't put them up. I can pull them up in one second. While she's doing it, I just want to say, I can tell people put a lot of work into this, which was the goal, but until you actually see the first deal of rule, you never know how it's going to work out, and I was really impressed with each group, and I'm really looking forward to talking about them, but I think it was an initially, a really strong initial step for each of the working groups, and it really, for me, was gratifying to see that these working groups, the idea of doing the working groups worked. Really so far, so good. I'll jump off, and Joe or Claire, if you want to jump in and interrupt me or correct me, whatever, but I think, I hope everybody's had a chance to breeze through these notes, and we had four main topics, that were actually five main topics that we were focused on. Can folks see this? Yes, there you go. So the main idea here was to look at the environmental possible impacts from artificial turf versus natural turf, as we know, and we've looked at several key issues, the weld and functions and values as we looked at them based on the town bylaws and maintenance regulations, as well as the state environmental standards about impacts to water resources and associated other, what they call, resource area values and interests of the bylaw. So that's what we will probably be spending a lot of time on, primarily from runoff issues, and we know that some of the fields have a link to wetlands and other buffer zones, in the town. But in addition to that, we were also interested in just the general results in terms of microplastic and chemical impacts that come even if they're not in the wetland areas. So we know that microplastics degrade or plastics degrade into microplastics in many environments. So we'll consider the extent to which things like stormwater runoff can be mitigated through stormwater management. And we want to look more at the wildlife and wetland impacts from infill runoff. As Ian was mentioning, there is the, we know that infill comes out of the artificial turf and can pose some problems for wildlife and water quality, which are obviously two things linked. We also want to look at, you know, as other groups here are going to look at the heat issue, there is some information about that out there. We want to include that. And the other issue is, as I mentioned to Ian, is the climate change and resilience issue where the Arlington bylaw and implementing wetland regulations require climate change and adaptation planning. So the question there is, what happens to that, to those resource areas? And the issue of recycling the turf and its components, not only infill, but the grass itself and the pads and so forth. And as I understood what Ian was saying, that there's not a lot happening there that's helpful. You know, you can take some of the actual grass area and put it on to a landfill, but that doesn't really stop the issue of microplastics and chemical issues. So those are the main issues. I don't know if Joe, you want to add anything more to the moment or Claire, but there are a lot of those issues that we've discussed at other meetings of this committee. And so you will see that in our piece of the report. And I'd be glad to take any questions people may have about it. Well, I just say to the heat point, my thank you for that. On the heat point, I think it's good that you're looking at it from the heat island perspective, because I know safety groups looked at heat as it relates to safety and player usage of the fields. And I know this health group is looking at heat as well, but we're looking at it from a, more of an individual perspective. We are not looking at it and we were hoping the environmental group would in it. So it's good to know you are about the larger heat effects from artificial or synthetic turf field on the natural environment in Arlington or any community. There is some information on comparing heat on natural turf and artificial turf as we've heard already. And so we'll be looking at that in terms of its environmental effects. I wondered if, I'm sorry, I wondered if you guys have identified any sort of mitigation measures for any of these things. So for example, like when I think of a parking lot or something like that, what would be some heat mitigation measures there and would those be applicable to say something that is an artificial turf type of situation? I just, and Claire, I know had to jump off. So she may have more information from the planning perspective, just in how we do those things, but I just didn't know if you guys have identified anything. There are, we can look at some of those mitigation measures, but the problem of course is that you don't want, if you're talking about artificial turf fields, you're not going to put shade trees there too close to the field and other mitigation that you might have, let's say in a parking lot or other area where you can put in grassy soils or you can plant some shade trees and that kind of stuff. So there's a limit to what you can do on those fields, but we'll certainly look at it. I mean, I think there was, I mean, the last speaker kind of alluded to this, there's there are mitigations for heat in terms of the color of the infill and the materials, that kind of thing. So I think we can look at, but it's not gonna, it doesn't need to be anything that fully addresses all the concerns on that, from the environmental front. And even one thing that someone mentioned to me into one of the conversations I had was even with, PFAS, and you could, there are filters for, that I know people are starting to use and water treatment plants for PFAS, but then there was, that raises questions about what activated charcoal, that kind of thing, what happens to that filtering material, if it's now got PFAS in it. So it keeps it out of the drinking water initially, but it may sort of create another downstream problem, which is common when these kinds of things. I'll just add that regarding what he was talking about in Sharon, PFAS was a key issue there because they were, they draw their water, induced infiltration into their wells from the lake and they were concerned about that, but it turns out there's PFAS around anywhere. So there now, as I understand it, they have a PFAS, reduction plant in place or will be because they're concerned about it in their drinking water. Can I see Marvin's hand up? Hi, yeah, I just had another question. I know you just mentioned filtration with regard to PFAS, is there, are you aware of anything that can be done from the standpoint of maybe filtration for microplastics or other runoff coming off the field that might be able to preclude it getting into adjacent wetlands or other areas? I haven't heard of it, but there may be something out there about it we can look into. Yeah, I know that when I talked with the guy from MIT, he said that the runoff from their fields goes into tanks and gets treated before it's, because they just, you know, where they are, they just charge into the clouds of river. So obviously they're under a lot of scrutiny. I don't know, I don't know specifically what that filter or what they're treating or filtering for, but we could probably find that out. Yeah, I was just curious as if there's some kind of potential for that at all. Yeah, and Mike, I guess the other thing I would just say about the bullets in general is that A, you did most of the work in assembling them. So thank you for doing that. And B, that, you know, I think it's, I think you would say that in there, but just to make a point, there's probably a whole bunch of other, or maybe not a whole bunch, but some other environmental issues that, you know, we just don't have information about, they're just having to study enough. And so there's probably, there's almost certainly questions out there that people will have, you know, from town meeting or from this group that we just, you know, particularly with some of the newer technologies or newer approaches that we just don't know enough about or the studies haven't been done, et cetera, et cetera, to really be able to make a, you know, sort of good conclusion as opposed to just more of something earlier, more speculative. Right, right. Correct, thanks. No, yeah, this is great. Mike, my question, I know that there's a large focus here with respect to the wetlands. Have you looked at how many of the properties that we would consider playing fields to be wetlands adjacent? And are they, would they be looked at? Would we look at this differently, this issue of artificial versus natural, dependent on location of the playing field? Because not every, not every playing field is wetland adjacent. Some of them are, you know, in areas that were, that were wetland, you know, that are wetland adjacent, some are former landfills. So, you know, I'm not sure that dimension gets covered here. That's an important point, thank you, Leslie. And I think as part of our report, that's something we need to include. Because while a lot of these points are regarding wetlands, waterways, flood zones and so forth, not all of them are, but there's still some environmental issues related to the which turf you wanna use. And so we can look at that more. Thank you, that's great. Yeah, because like, yeah, that would be important. Anything else at this, at this time? Well, actually, Mike, I did have one question. So I remember this issue came up during the forums and during the debate last spring about artificial turf, about the effect of artificial turf on wildlife. And I remember, you know, obviously understanding the issues with, you know, runoff issues and aquatic life, but I never quite understood the issues related to artificial turf. And as you mentioned, soil and wildlife in general, I just didn't ever think of that as an issue. You've mentioned this as your sixth bullet point. What are you finding in that regard? Is there, are there issues? I mean... Well, that's one of the topics we have to look more into. But I think the issue is that a plastic field is clearly a desert as far as any wildlife birds or, you know, critters that depend on soil or grass. This is certainly a barren area for them. And then there's the heat issue, which may affect certain small critters that usually are found on fields. But we haven't looked into that in any depth yet. And the reason why it's sort of tentatively included here is that we don't know if we're going to get to it, but it's certainly something we don't know. Yeah, no, no, that's fair. I mean, I will say I did come across one thing that was interesting. I don't want to go off in a tangent here, but I think I read one study that talked, it was a lot of time about back, well, it was from the safety group, it was about bacteria, the potential for bacteria infection, you know, from skin abrasion and that sort of thing on artificial turf. And there was one study that showed actually there was less bacteria in a synthetic turf field than in a natural turf field. And I made my own assumption that it might be, I mean, this isn't necessarily a selling point for a synthetic turf, but probably because wildlife don't go on it, they don't defecate on it, you know, whereas in an artificial turf field, on an unnatural turf field, you know, it's a field. So at night when no one's playing, all sorts of animals come and go and things happen, you know, and so it was sort of an interesting take on bacteria with you would think the synthetic turf field might be dirtier in that regard, but it actually might work counterintuitively. Yeah, the issue then is the question of, is that, you know, does that make a difference? Yeah, and it, you know, I mean, it's all, it could all be de minimis too at the end of the day, right? Like, you know, I mean, the ocean has lots of things doing things in it and it's still perfectly fine to go to the beach most days and swim in the ocean. So, Joe, I see your hand up. Yeah, I guess there's two thoughts on your question, Jim. One is, I know we heard last week from our speaker about, yeah, certainly there are byproducts from artificial turf fields that are, you know, the armful of fish and what, you know, whether it's a wetland or whether it's during water or not, if it's draining to, you know, a body of water, you know, like the millbrook that eventually winds up, you know, further down into various, you know, other bodies of water that, you know, that potentially is a negative. So, I do think that there are, you know, definitely, you know, wildlife impacts may be hard to fully characterize them, but we should certainly talk to what, what we, at the very least what we heard last week. I guess the other thing is just to say though, to your point a minute ago, and I think our speaker today mentioned this with this caterpillar or whatever in the Netherlands that, you know, sort of just because something is natural doesn't mean it's good for you, right? And I think we need to be careful about the assumption that just because we have something comes from nature that it can't, it will automatically be less harmful. Now obviously, you know, PFAS is a, you know, and many chemicals we've created are uniquely bad compared to things in nature, but I do think we need to make sure we, as we, for our group release, as we go through the writing that we not get sort of caught in this like, oh, you know, if it's a, you know, coconut husk that obviously can't have negative impacts on people because there are lots of things out in nature that can, you know, do bad things to us. That's an excellent point. Yeah. Anything else? One last little question that's been rolling around after it, after reading this, the big, you know, the wetlands, Arlington's wetland protection by law and the state's wetland protection by law that you're looking at, I guess my question has been, how, how, one of the, one of the triggers for this conversation was that the conservation commission was looking at amending the wetland protection by law. So I guess I'm not clear how the wetland protection by law as it currently exists is not, is not robust enough to handle situations that involve artificial turf. You know, since we have artificial turf fields in town, my sense was that our artificial turf was that our wetland protection by law was robust enough to ensure that we are putting the right protections in place. But there was conversation to suggest that maybe that's not the case. Do you understand where I'm coming from? I understand your question. I'm not sure I can really answer it because I'm not aware of what updates or amendments to the town by law we might be looking at but I know that the state wetland protection act is undergoing some review for certain aspects that might affect the issue of turf fields. And for instance, one of the proposed language changes has to do with considering artificial turf as impermeable surface, which I don't quite understand myself, but I'm not aware of that. And I think we can look into that to see if the town by law is being considered for updates or changes. Yeah, I know that that was, I don't know that it was ever really formally presented, but there were conversations. And I guess understanding how our current by law is limited. Leslie, is it a bylaw or is it, does the conservation commission, are they able to make a regulation? The conservation commission has promulgated bylaws that protect wetlands in conjunction with the state weather protection act. In some cases they're a little bit more strict than the state. So that's a good question, Leslie. And I can look into that. Understanding how stringent our regulations are currently and how they protect environmental concerns around this issue and don't protect environmental concerns would be, I think something that I'd want to know. I think that's a great question and I'll look into it. Thank you. Good point Leslie. Well, if there's nothing else, and by the way, we can, there can be other things we'll just, you know, we'll maybe start with health and safety or safety and health next week. And then we can, you know, people have some question that they didn't get to ask environment. We can ask environmental then, but I think that was Mike. Thank you for stepping up and going first. And so I just would remind everyone, I know we're, you know, we have, you know, project time, a new business adjourned. I'll do this all in two minutes. Just a reminder, you know, we're going to meet next week, next Tuesday at five o'clock, we'll continue where we left off on the discussion of the deliverables, but very quickly following on its heels a week from this Friday, March 1st, we're going to start with the narrative portions are due. So I don't want anyone to say, oh, I don't want to start the narrative section until I find out where the rest of the group is on my bullet points, although in a perfect world, that would be nice. If you haven't started on the narrative part yet, please do, because time is running short. You have about 10 days to get that deliverable. The good news for us is you can actually get it to Natasha on Friday morning, because it's not a long weekend. So, you know, by Friday, by 11 a.m. or something would be the preference. So you get an extra day in that scenario, but sooner is better there. So keep working with your, your working groups on that. And then, you know, we'll sort of reevaluate the calendar. I think after the March 1st, but at least, you know, through March 1st, I think we're pretty set on meeting schedule and what, what the next deliverable is. Is there any new business? No, there's a lot going on in this committee right now. And it's a lot of good stuff. And I feel like we're really starting to hit our stride here. You know, right at the right moment, but it's a lot and I know people are under a lot of deadlines and time pressures and I appreciate that and just keep powering through. But anything else, anything new? Well, that's the case. Okay. So Mike, you moved it. Yes. And then it was seconded by. Marvin. Okay. Sorry. Okay. So we'll go right down the list here. Mike. Yes. Okay. Leslie. Yes. Okay. Marvin. Yes. Joe. Bar. Yep. Yes. Okay. Natasha. Yes. Jim. Yes. Jill is absent. And then one, two, three, four, five, six. That's it. All right. So that passes six. Approve and one absent. Thanks for great meeting everyone. We've got another meeting. Coming up next week, but we're really, this is things are really coming together. So thanks. Thanks for finding them. Yeah. Yep. Bye.