 Welcome to Arlington Town Hall Auditorium, or as I like to call it this time of year, my home away from home. For those of you with town meeting members, you know what I mean. I'm very excited to be here tonight to conduct and participate in this forum on artificial turf fields. This is an important issue for the town, one in which there are a broad array of opinions. There's a lot to be learned, I think, about artificial turf fields from how they're made to whether they emit things or whether they're healthy or whether they're fun to play on or all those things, whether we need more playing fields and so forth, a lot of key issues. My perspective on this is that we are in a learning phase. So tonight in the session that is co-sponsored by the Conservation Commission and the Parks and Rec Commission, we are here to hear from some experts. They are here to share their knowledge with us and also to take your questions. And as I've said in a previous forum on a different issue, a question is something that ends in a question mark. So when you have the chance for a question-and-answer period, I encourage you to ask questions and would ask you for the good of the forum and for the good of everybody here to save your speeches for other times and other places. We have cards on your chairs that you can write out questions and that is sometimes a good way to prep a question to ask it ahead of time. I've seen that at other events. Or if you don't get the chance to ask your question or if something else comes up after you've asked a question, that then put those questions here. As town manager, I've got to make some decisions, but the next town manager will certainly have to make decisions about artificial turf fields. I expect we're going to learn a lot tonight. I expect that after tonight there will still be questions that need to be answered. And so I see this as an ongoing process. One of the great things about Arlington is that we have citizens who take interests, who like to get to the facts, and then who like to talk about it. So without further ado, I would like to introduce Amy, our moderator, to kick things off. Thank you very much. Hi, everyone. My name is Abby Fulham. I'm with the Consensus Building Institute. We're a nonprofit that's based in Cambridge, and we try to help communities have discussions and make decisions about challenging public policy and environmental topics. I'm here today with my colleague, Brandon Chambers. As all of you are incredibly aware, artificial turf is a tense point for the town of Arlington right now. And the most pressing question at the moment is whether or not to adopt a moratorium on the construction of new artificial turf fields or to leave them as an option in the case-by-case review and permitting process that's used now. And we'll hear a lot more about that shortly. This forum is a very small piece of that larger discussion. It's simply an opportunity to learn about the health, safety, and environmental considerations of artificial turf. And this information, this science, is one part of how we make decisions. A much larger part is our values and our perception of risk. And those will be talked about as Arlington makes this decision. But they will be talked about at the town meeting and in the commissions. This is not what this forum is for. We will be sticking to the science, to hearing from a panel of experts, and for having an opportunity to ask questions of them. Okay. Thanks, Jim. So the structure of the evening as follows. We're going to start with a state of the discussion of artificial turf in Arlington where you'll hear from the town bodies that are considering this topic. The goal here is really to put everything into a larger context of decision-making and also to learn which bodies are considering this and how to engage more in them. We'll then have a presentation on artificial turf health, safety, and environmental considerations from multiple panelists that are selected by both commissions. And we have a panel of presenters here because there's not one expert that could talk to you about artificial turf, about all of the components. And there's not one expert that could say something that everyone would agree with. And so part of the objective is to surface where there's agreement and where there's disagreement among these panelists. We're going to go straight through the presentation without taking questions because we have a Q&A session right after that. And so for the Q&A session, we're doing a rather analog approach here. Basically anyone interested in asking a question will be given the chance to ask one question via a lottery. And so then we'll have two lotteries, one if you want to share a question orally and one if you'd prefer to share it written in which then someone would read it out loud. And I'll explain it a bit more in detail later, but the card's on your seat. Basically if you want to share a question orally, you'll write your name on the card and place it in one of the bins during a break. And if you want to share a written question, you'll write the question on the bin and place it in the appropriate bin at the break. We will then draw questions randomly and then we'll go back and forth between oral and written questions. We are prioritizing Arlington residents and so we ask non-residents to not submit questions. All right, and then we'll end with some closing thoughts from town manager Sandy Pooler and then some final logistics from me. Throughout the entire forum, we're going to be pretty strict on timing and time limits. We have a lot to get through. We have a lot of people that want to ask questions and so I will be enforcing those. And then we'll end by 9.30. Lastly, a few logistics. One is that my colleague Brandon here is taking notes and will be developing a forum summary that captures the key points of the presentations and the question and answers. And any of the written questions that are shared in the bin will be listed, that we don't get to, will be listed in the summary and sent out. And then we'll also have a feedback form at the end of this for you to share any lingering questions that we didn't answer, any feedback that you would like the commissions to hear and any other information or engagement on artificial turf that you would like. Okay. And so with that, we're ready to start the state of the discussion on artificial turf in Arlington. We're going to hear from representatives of the town bodies so they can clarify their mandates, their missions, the status of the discussion on artificial turf and how residents can engage more. We're going to start with the Conservation Commission and the chair, Susan Chapnick. Every representative will get three minutes to share and I'll give you visual cues as your time progresses. All right. Susan. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? Great. All right. Good evening. I'm Susan Chapnick. I'm the chair of the Arlington Conservation Commission. The commission is composed of seven full members and one associate member, all of whom are unpaid volunteers. We are supported by David Morgan, who is to my right here. He is the environmental planner and the conservation agent for Arlington. The Conservation Commission protects and manages Arlington's wetlands and conservation lands. The commission issues permits for projects under state and local wetland laws and regulations, specifically the State Wetland Protection Act and the Towns Wetland Protection Bylaw. The State Wetlands Protection Act serves to protect eight interests or functions of wetlands, rivers, streams, ponds, and floodplains. These eight interests include public and private water supply, groundwater supply, flood control, storm damage prevention, prevention of pollution, land containing shellfish, which we probably don't have here, fisheries and wildlife habitat. In Arlington, we also have our wetlands protection bylaw and our implementing regulations, which protect additional interests of functions. And I quote, by controlling activities deemed by the Conservation Commission, likely to have a significant or cumulative effect upon resource area values. These regulations set forth stricter requirements than the State Wetlands Protection Act. Additionally, the Arlington regulations require compliance with climate change resilience standards to protect resource areas that may be directly impacted due to extreme weather events, due to surface runoff of pollution, and in wildlife habitat due to changes in temperature. The commission reviews all proposed activity within regulated areas. These areas include any work within 100 feet of a wetland, lake, or pond, within 200 feet of a river or stream, or within the 100-year floodplain. Anyone proposing to remove, fill, dredge, discharge, build upon, including artificial turf fields, degrade, or otherwise alter any resource area, must file an application with the commission. The commission then reviews the proposed project during a public hearing process and votes to either approve the project, approve the project with conditions, or deny the project. The commission has granted two permits for projects that include artificial turf playing fields, most recently in 2020 for the Arlington High School field that has not yet been constructed, and previously 12 years ago for the Arlington Catholic Artificial Turf Field. As a member of the commission, I proposed a prohibition on artificial turf fields as an update to our wetland regulations in January 5th, 2023 public meeting. I understood that the moratorium that the town manager put in place on any new artificial turf projects would be in effect, and therefore I removed this request from the Arlington Wetland Regulations. The January 5th meeting can be heard. It's a recording on the Arlington Conservation Commission website, and the commission went on to approve amendments to its wetland regulations, but those changes do not specifically prohibit artificial turf fields currently. Thank you. Okay, next up we have the Parks and Rec Commission with Chair Phil Lasker. Hello. Whoa, that's loud. Sorry about that. Phil Lasker, Chair of the Park and Recreation Commission. Thank you everybody for attending. The Park and Recreation Commission is tasked with creating both passive and active recreational opportunities for the community that are inclusive, diverse, and multi-generational. The commission is made up of dedicated volunteers that are comprised of architects, landscape architects, childcare professionals, and educators. We offer safe, affordable, quality programs for all ages and abilities. We have a successful track record of major capital improvement projects. Some recent ones include the REZ, Herd Field Renovation to Open Soon, and numerous playgrounds. The Park and Recreation Commission supports the use of synthetic turf and is opposed to Article 12 or any substitute motion for a moratorium on turf. Why do we want turf fields? Our fields are massively overused in poor condition despite the best efforts of our DPW and can't be rested. We are a small urban community and land is at a premium. We have close to 7,000 participants year-round in youth sports and there's simply not enough field space. I coach my son's fifth grade soccer team. We share a field for practice at McLennan. At the start of this season, a third team without any field space asked us if they could use the small area of grass between the parking lot and the field, which we of course agreed. Just last week, a fourth team asked if we had any available space for them due to conflicts at Florence with the baseball team practicing at the same time. When we have to make up a home game, there's so limited field space in town that we often have to travel to the opposing team's field just to make it happen, which by the way is usually turf. If you haven't been on Florence, Thorndike, Hills, or Ottison lately, please do. They can barely be considered fields, let alone safe, and this is the start of the season. I imagine there's a good turnout this evening because once again our fields are closed due to the weather. What are the benefits of turf? They're all weather systems. Paired with lights, they can be played on virtually 24-7. Seasons can start and end as scheduled. One turf field is the equivalent of three natural grass fields in terms of play. There's enhanced player safety. There's no reports of heat-related injuries or otherwise on our existing turf fields, and that's over a decade of experience. There's reduced maintenance costs. Adding a turf field takes the pressure off our natural grass fields, allowing them to rest and recover, thereby improving the conditions of them. All turf fields are tested by independent labs based on current standards for heavy metals, PAHs, and PFAS to ensure the safety of the users and the environment. This is written into the specifications for the high school project, reviewed and approved by the Conservation Commission, and would be part of any future project in town. All turf fields are tested by independent labs for performance-surface interactions. Our natural turf fields are not, and would never meet these standards. I want to talk a little bit about the Poets Corner project, if you want to go to that. We have an amazing opportunity to transform the town-owned parcel known as Poets Corner, an adjacent parcel owned by the Archdiocese of Boston St. Camilla's Church into an expanded community park with lighted turf fields as part of a public-private partnership with Belmont Hill School. This would drastically improve our field space needs. In order for Belmont Hill to move forward and fully fund the project, the fields must be synthetic turf. There are many other site improvements as part of this project for the community, and all that information can be found on the Tarnum Arlington Recreation website, including newly posted 3D renderings, project background, and FAQ about turf. There's an image up there on the screen and around the room showing the location of Poets Corner in case anybody doesn't know where that is. Thank you very much. Thanks, Phil. Okay. Let's hold the applause, please. Okay. We're going to move now to the town manager, Sandy Pooler. Thank you. I love it when you applaud when I come up to speak. That is great. So I'm here to talk a little bit about other process in town. This upcoming town meeting and the town meeting will be scheduled for the fall. At this upcoming town meeting there is an article to put a, it was originally, I think, a three-year moratorium on any building of turf fields going forward. It is my understanding that there's an amendment to that to limit that to a two-year period. Without getting into all of the details about the pluses and minuses of that, I will just say at this time that at town meeting I will oppose that article. I have, on the other hand, put a moratorium or a study period in place for any further development of turf fields between now and October 28th at noon, which is when I retire. So this will be somebody else's challenge. I thought it was very important to put this study period in place because I think that there are a lot of serious issues that need to be looked at around turf fields. There are environmental issues, there are recreation issues, there are cost issues and so forth. We will touch on some of those today. I also think the issue of whether to build a turf field or not on a particular site can and may depend on that site. I think Poets Corner is an interesting case for us to continue to look at. It is a site that used to be a landfill. It was capped before modern standards of capping of landfills were put in place. And so it has a number of problems with it. I believe, without making any judgments tonight, that is something that is worth looking at and considering. That would come before town meeting next fall. In order to undertake the Poets Corner project, there would have to be an article passed at town meeting essentially to authorize a land swap between the town and the archdiocese and so forth. So at that point, town meeting would have the chance to vote on that project. So those going forward are the next things that are going to happen at town meeting and the next things that a town manager is going to have to decide. My successor Jim Feeney will have to decide about whether, in fact, to go forward at fall town meeting with this proposal for Poets Corner. And I think the things that we learned tonight and the questions that you asked and the things we'll continue to look at over the spring and through the summer will affect his judgment on that. But that procedurally is where we are. Thank you, Abby. I'll just give Sandy a quick shout out for being right on the three minute mark. So admirable and we can all learn from it. Okay. We're going to go next to Natasha Whedon, who's the Public Health Director, who's speaking on behalf of the Board of Health. Yeah, you don't have a microphone down there. Good evening. My name is Natasha Whedon. I am the Public Health Director here for the town of Arlington. And I've been asked on behalf of the Board of Health to provide a statement to the group here tonight. First, I'd just like to explain what the mission of the Arlington Board of Health is. So I'm going to read off of my notes. Speak up. Okay. Got it? All right. So the mission of the Arlington Board of Health is to protect the public health of the town of Arlington through enforcement of health codes and regulations while promoting a healthy community. We do this through the work of two sort of entities. It's the Board of Health and the Health Department. The Board of Health and the Health Department are two distinct but connected entities that are charged with protecting and safeguarding the public and environmental health of the town of Arlington. The Board of Health is a statutory board comprised of three community members. Our chair of the board tonight is here, Dr. Marie Walsh Condon. One of our board members, Laura White, professor at BU, is here. And I'm not sure if Dr. Peter Rice is in the room, but I would like to just acknowledge those three are the members of our Board of Health. The Health Department is a professionally staffed office within the town of Arlington's Department of Health and Human Services. And this consists of a director, administrative staff, health inspectors, public health nurses, sealer of weights and measures, and a prevention services coordinator. Generally speaking, the board adopts regulations that provide protections beyond the minimum standards outlined in the Massachusetts general laws and state sanitary code. They also set townwide policy related to important health issues while the Health Department handles the day-to-day procedural operations, administrative duties, and executes the various health laws and regulations. We're also tasked with enforcing some of the local bylaws that are passed through town meeting. The Health Department, through the board, has been asked to review the current, I'm sorry, the Board of Health has been asked to review the current information as it relates to the installation of artificial turf in town. So I'm going to read this statement from the board. The Board of Health met on April 5th, 2023, at their regularly scheduled meeting and had the opportunity to discuss with the public health concerns associated with artificial turf fields in Arlington. Members of the board reviewed material presented by the Public Health Director, conducted independent research on the subject, and heard from members of the public. A townwide moratorium or prohibition on artificial turf, as is proposed in Article 12, is not supported by the board. The board supports a case-by-case site assessment conducted prior to the installation rather than an overall prohibition of artificial turf. The board supports a risk reduction approach. Concerns related to artificial turf and human health include PFAS, which can be found in turf fibers, as well as other contaminants such as PAHs, VOCs, often found in the crumb rummer infill. The board also acknowledges concerns about increased risks of abrasions, injuries, and high surface temperature of artificial turf. Because the science continues to evolve and alternative materials have been made available, an individual assessment of each proposed site should be conducted. The board accepts the evidence that the risks associated with the contaminants may be minimized or reduced through the use of alternative materials. The board does not support the proposal of a study committee, but feels, I'm sorry, the board does support the proposal of a study committee, but feels strongly that all named members should be a voting member of the committee. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Natasha. So I hope that you all heard that there are many town bodies considering this question and that you've heard a bit about their mission and their mandates and how they're approaching it. Yeah. So we're going to move now into the portion, which is really the bulk and the purpose of this forum, which is to talk about the science and information around artificial turf. We invite you to engage with these commissions and with the town meeting on this topic to share your values, your interests, your opinions. This forum, again, is not the place to do that. It's about learning about artificial turf from a panel of experts and asking clarifying questions. And so, again, we have a panel here. I'm just going to say this again for those coming who came in a bit late because there's not one expert who could speak about all components of artificial turf, nor is there one agreed upon expert on this topic. Our goal here is to feature perspectives from multiple experts to surface the issues where they disagree and where they agree. We will have the flow of this. We're going to start with a kind of informational what is artificial or synthetic turf presentation, which has been agreed to by both commissions, so we'll only have one presenter for that. And then we'll hear presentations on these topics, on three topics selected by the commissions. Health and safety considerations, environmental considerations, and sustainability. And then for each panel, or sorry, for each topic, we'll hear from panelists from each commission. And then finally, we'll have a chance for each commission to respond to the entire presentation or make a closing statement. And because we are trying to maximize the amount of questions we can get to during the Q&A, I will be timing these pieces closely as a heads up. Okay, so we're going to start with introductions so you can get a sense of who the panelists are and their perspectives. And so, panelists, we're asking you to share your name, your affiliation, clients or funding sources your organization typically takes on, and recent projects that you've worked on relating to artificial turf. And we're asking you to do this in one minute. We're going to go alphabetically and we're going to start with Susan Chapnick. Hi, I'm Susan Chapnick. I am on this panel in my capacity, not as a member of the Conservation Commission, but as an environmental chemist and co-owner of a small women-owned business, New Environmental Horizons. My company assists in the assessment, planning and evaluation of environmental data to help clean up hazardous chemicals at sites in New England and beyond. Our clients include engineering firms and ultimately regulatory agencies. For example, we provided technical assistance to the federal government and its natural resource damage assessment of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oils Bill. Additionally, I'm an appointed member of the Bureau of Waste and Cleanup Advisory Committee under the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, where I advise on regulations, policy and guidelines. Most recently, I helped develop climate change vulnerability assessment tools with MAS DEP and the Licensed Site Professional Association and provided training on the use of these tools. I have no conflicts to declare and I am not receiving compensation as a panelist. Okay, thank you. Time perfect. Thank you, Susan. All right, we're going to go to Jeff. There he is. Hello. Hi, my name is Jeffrey Gentilly. I'm one of the co-founders of Firefly Sports Testing. We test all kinds of sports surfaces, including artificial and natural grass, as well as anything else you could fall on. We work all over the country, all over the world. Some of our clients are designers, manufacturers, towns, municipalities, whatever the end user is. Some of my recent projects, Patriots last week, you know, Mercedes-Benz, University of Oregon, all of the above. We test more fields than anybody in the country and we test the highest profile fields of the country. We hold FIFA certifications both natural and artificial. We hold World Athletics, World Rugby, a whole lot of other acronyms, foot saw, so on and so on. I have no conflict of interest here and I'm not being paid to be here today. Thank you. We're going to hold on. We have two, okay, here we go, we're ready. All right, we have two panelists who will be joining virtually and so first we're going to go to Dr. Laura Green. Oh, hello. I'm very sorry I'm not there in person. I'm a bit under the weather. I very much wanted to see you all in person. My name is Laura Green. I'm a chemist and a toxicologist. I trained in chemistry and toxicology in the 1970s. I've been board certified in general toxicology since the 1980s to the present. I was a part-time lecturer at MIT where I lectured in environmental health and toxicology for 25 years. And I have founded two companies. One entitled Cambridge Environmental which was a 14-person multi-office company that worked both for the United States Environmental Protection Agency on a major pesticide contract which we won several years in a row and for private clients. I then founded a very small company that I currently am the 51% partner in called Green Toxicology LLC. On the present project, I am working on behalf of the Arlington Recreation Department, Arlington Youth Soccer, Arlington Youth Lacrosse, and Arlington Youth Softball and Baseball. And my major clients have nothing to do with synthetic turf. I spend most of my time working... Or I'm going to ask you to wrap it up. Thank you. Oh, okay. Well, then I'm done. Thank you. Okay, now we're going to move to Dr. Wendy Hyger-Bernese who's in the room. Hello. I'm Wendy Hyger-Bernese. I'm a clinical professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health. For 25 years, my research, my teaching, and my practice have focused on understanding the toxicology and health risks associated with inadequately regulated toxic chemicals that are in our homes and schools, in our air, water, and food. I work extensively with communities who have been hurt by many of these chemicals. As chair of the Lexington Board of Health, I seek to use the best available information and science to improve the health of children and adults alike, including navigating the issue of turf fields. I serve on the EPA, Toxic Substances Control Act Science Advisory Committee on chemicals, and the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act Science Advisory Board. My research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and Boston University. I have not been paid to participate, and I have no conflicts of interest to declare. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we're going to go now to Dr. Rachel Massey who is joining us virtually. Hi, thank you. My name is Rachel Massey. I'm joining you today in my role as Senior Research Associate at the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production at UMass Lowell. My work is focused on occupational and environmental health policy and toxic use reduction. I don't have any conflicts of interest to declare. I have done several research projects on chemicals and other hazards related to artificial turf, and unsustainably managed natural grass fields as a safer alternative. I completed most of this work while I was on staff at the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute, which is a state entity and receives state funds. We also receive funding for this work from the Heinz Endowments. The Lowell Center has also received an honorarium from the town of Arlington for my participation in this forum and the discussions leading up to it. And I also work currently for the Collaborative for Health and Environment. Thank you, Rachel. All right. Back into the room, we're going to David Nardone. My name is David Nardone. I'm a landscape architect by training and an environmental consulting firm. I've been focused on athletic facility design for over 25 years. I've worked with municipalities. My former job, I worked for the town of Arlington Park and Rec on a few projects. I have worked with the Belmont Hill School for 25 years on all of their athletic facilities. I've worked with Harvard and Penn and a lot of Ivy League institutions that have studied turf internally. I also have coached LaCrosse in my community for five years, a program with over 200 girls. The program would not exist without a mix of synthetic turf, both privately owned and publicly owned as well. So thank you for having me here tonight. I'm not being paid or compensated for tonight. Thank you. And then last but not least, Jay Peters. Can you hear me? Okay. Jay Peters, I'm a principal risk assessor with Haley and Aldrich. My role primarily involves evaluating how people can be exposed to chemicals at hazardous waste sites and what the nature of the health risk is that it would be associated with that exposure. My role, I work for real estate developers, energy companies, manufacturing companies primarily. I recently worked on the town of Lexington, Lincoln Park synthetic project. I have no conflicts and I am being compensated to be here. Thank you. All right. So that was our introductions. So now we're going to move into the first presentation, the what is artificial or synthetic turf? Again, this has been agreed to by both commissions, so we have one presenter on this topic. And so I'm going to turn it over to David Nardone. You have five minutes. All right. So we just wanted to kind of do an overview on what the synthetic turf system is to try to get everybody on the same page. And then we've heard about, you know, infill and fibers and so on. So, you know, as several people have said tonight, it's really important to consider the site that you're, you know, proposing for synthetic turf. So the base, the drainage base listed at the bottom here and in the stone and the water, the arrows, the pipes and so on. That should all be site specific, you know, designed with a geotechnical engineer in consultation. The drainage system can really be an asset to the site. It can handle stormwater besides the field. It can slow down and contain in the stormwater during the storm event to help any, maybe offsite flooding, things like that. So it can really be an asset. Water can be collected for irrigation. There's a myriad of things that can happen with that drainage system. Above the drainage stone, there's a shock pad, a carpet, a turf infill carpet, and the infill itself. And we'll talk a little bit more about those details in the next few slides. So this is sort of zooming into that system that's on top of that drainage stone. The carpet is made out of, it's like a old shag carpet, anywhere from an inch and a half to two and a half inches long, depending on the type of system. And it has space to fill that with the infill. There's what we call a backing to that. So those fibers, just like a carpet in your house, that the fibers are sewn into, are tufted as they call it in the industry, into that backing. The backing is made out of a polypropylene, another plastic. And then there is what we call a secondary backing. It's basically an adhesive to keep those fibers into the backing. So those are the three major components that make up the carpet, the fiber backing and the secondary cut backing. In the infill, so you've heard about crumb rubber, you can hear about some other things. Maybe you've been on some fields that have other infills. All those fields have sand in them. There are some systems out there that are like all rubber, they don't perform well, they don't test well, they don't play well underfoot, not what we're looking for. Jeff will talk a little bit more about that. So we're looking for sand in the system. It weights the carpet down, it provides stability, and generally the rubber or other materials are on top of that sand layer. So the crumb rubber that you've heard about, it's been the most widely used infill, again with sand. It's recycled car tires. It's very durable. People like it. You've seen it does move around under play and as to act like soil and grass plates moving around. There are other what we call, they're either plastic base or rubber base, but they act a lot like the crumb rubber, so they're made out of either thermoplastics or EPDM is the two major types of what we call virgin rubber, not from a recycled source, made into a polymer ground up and used as infill, very similar size to the crumb rubber and again over sand and they provide the same characteristics as the crumb rubber from a place standpoint. So all of the rubber products generally require less maintenance than natural infill products. So it seems like over the last 10 to 15 years these products have come onto the market, natural products. They range from coconut husk, cork, sometimes those two are mixed together, sometimes they're not. Wood chips, coconut, sorry, walnut shells and there are a few other products out there that aren't as widely used, those are the most widely used ones and below that carpet and infill is a shock pad. So this is a shock pad made out of expanded polypropylene, it's not a recycled product, it's 100% recyclable and it has a certification on it to be recycled. Just like the infill there are other products, you can buy those foams and rubbers that you can buy for a shock pad, it's a product of all of these components as a system working together. So depending on what shock pad you have maybe the dependent might affect how much sand and how much rubber you have in the system or natural materials. Okay, perfect timing. Thanks, David. Okay, so that's the, what are we talking about? We have a lot of other content to get to. We're going to move now to the health and safety considerations about artificial turf. We're going to kind of bifurcate our presentations and we'll hear this instance first from the Conservation Commission and then panelists and then from Parks and Recreation panelists. We will start with Dr. Wendy Heiger Bernice, no, Dr. Rachel Massey and then we'll also hear from Dr. Wendy Heiger Bernice. Okay, so we're just going to pull up Rachel and we'll have six minutes total for this presentation. Okay, I've been asked to cover three slides in three minutes so I will do my best. So I can't see the slides but I think the first slide that you have there. Wait a second Rachel, we're just pulling them up actually. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, sorry about that. There's multiple computers that are making this happen simultaneously, it's quite impressive. And many thanks to Jim. Okay, all right, we're going to have you start while Jim gets the slides up. Okay, all right, well, I believe the first slide you'll be looking at is a slide that just presents some key concepts. So the first one is just to note the particular vulnerability of children. So children, as you probably all know, are more vulnerable than adults to certain hazards, including toxic chemicals. They breathe more air, drink more water, and eat more food per unit of body weight than adults. Their organ systems are developing rapidly and their behaviors can increase likelihood of exposure to chemicals in their surroundings. And a toxic exposure that occurs during a key window of susceptibility can have lifelong consequences. This slide also shows you some key vocabulary words, hazard, exposure, and risk. So when we talk about chemicals, hazard is an inherent property of a chemical. For example, carcinogenicity is an inherent hazard of certain chemicals. Exposure is a measure of how much you're exposed to, whether it's through skin inhalation or ingestion. And then risk is a concept that brings together both hazard and exposure. So risk is a concept that basically is an estimate of the excess disease burden that will result from exposure to certain hazards. And in risk assessments build in a variety of assumptions about how a chemical is absorbed, the number of hours or years that you're exposed to, the life stage at which that exposure occurs, and so forth. So these are just some helpful things to have in mind, and I'll just go to the next slide since we need to be quick. Okay, so this next slide gives you some information on chemicals in infills. As you've already heard, tire crumb or waste tire material is often used as infill. Okay, now I can't see the slides anymore. Okay. So an EPA literature review that was done on tire crumb a number of years ago found more than 350 chemicals in the material. Examples include heavy metals such as lead and zinc, polyaromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs, volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds, including chemicals such as polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. An emerging issue is 6-PPD, which is an anti-osinant used in tires. And the transformation product, 6-PPD quinone, is very toxic to certain fish. And there are also emerging data from biomonitoring finding that chemical in human tissues. I think I don't have time to go into the other infill materials, but just briefly from the research that my colleagues and I have done, we're able to find any alternative infill that was entirely free of concerns, although many of them do contain either lower concentrations or smaller numbers of the toxic chemicals found in tire crumb. And happy to go into that more in the Q&A. All of this is complicated by the lack of disclosure, so we generally are not provided with information from the manufacturers and vendors about exactly what's in these products. Next slide. So this just is a visual showing you a little bit more about tires, so you see waste tires at the top and then a facility that converts waste tires into tire shreds or tire crumb, and at the bottom, a photo from the Conservation Commission of tire crumb on snow. I think that's my three minutes, and I'm happy to talk about all of this more later. Okay. We'll move on to the next slide. So much has been made about this question of PFAS. Recent analysis by public interest researchers have demonstrated the use and or presence of PFAS chemicals in parts, certainly parts of the blades, the pads, and the backing that you heard about. A little bit about PFAS. It's a large class of chemicals and there is broad scientific consensus that PFAS are mobile in the environment, they don't break down or go away, they accumulate in our bodies, and they are toxic. There is robust scientific evidence that the ones that have been studied are linked to cancer's immune dysfunction, including poor response to vaccines. Cardiovascular thyroid effects, and the list goes on, but the one that my group is studying is liver damage and changes in lipid levels, including elevation of cholesterol. There are many PFAS. Only six of the 12,000 or so are regulated in Massachusetts. Some of the seemingly less toxic forms that you may hear about later, also called precursors, can rearrange in the environment to reform the really toxic forms, including a couple of the six that are already regulated. Testing only for these six will result in turf that contains little or no PFAS. Using laboratory methods that are more sensitive allows us to see that PFAS are present in turf samples, and they show that some of the PFAS chemicals migrate off the field, and my colleague Ms. Chapnick will share some of those data. There are no PFAS-free fields right now. If a supplier tells you that they are sourcing PFAS-free manufacturing systems, please ask them for their definition of PFAS. Next slide, please. In addition, heat, there is evidence, in addition to heat, there is evidence for frequent and more severe abrasions from artificial turf than from natural turf. See your children's knees, and for those adults who play, you know this better than I. For any of you who have played or walked on artificial turf, you know that there's no question that artificial turf gets hotter than natural turf. On the slide, you see two panels. The top shows artificial turf on the right and the natural grass on the left of the grate. Using a technique that measures the heat coming off the fields, the natural grass radiates very little heat that's shown in blue, and the artificial turf radiates large amounts of heat as shown in red. In fact, at 85 degrees ambient temperature, the turf measured 155 degrees. So why is heat a concern? Because of heat-related illnesses, namely hydration, dehydration, heat stress, and heat stroke. And over 240 million Americans are prescribed medications which increase their susceptibility to heat. These medications can alter the body's thermoregulatory response. Next slide, please. Many communities are recognizing and addressing the impacts of artificial turf. Burlington has placed policies for limiting playing in heat. You will hear that wet bulb determination of temperature at chest height is a more reliable metric than taking the ambient surface temperature. However, the surface temperature better reflects the actual temperatures to which children and others are exposed. I'll note that several boards of health have also made recommendations to avoid installation of artificial turf. Some boards of health, as you've heard tonight, have stated the importance of playing fields. Playing fields are important, and the importance of decreasing health risks associated with those fields. Thank you. Okay. All right. So now we're going to move to the Parks and Recreation Commission panelists. And we have Jeff and Laura speaking to this. I'm not sure in which order. Oh, all right. Never mind. We have Jay. We have a slide on the crumb rubber. Right there. Yeah, right there. So this is a great slide. I mean, it does identify what's in crumb rubber, right? There are many chemicals in crumb rubber. Closer to your mouth. What? Closer to your mouth. Okay. I think you're off. It's off. Sorry about that. It's off. It's off. All right. So this slide illustrates the chemicals that are in crumb rubber. And the fact of the matter is there's chemicals in everything that's made out of plastic and rubber in our homes and our cars and our schools and so forth. The question is, you know, how do people get exposed to those chemicals in crumb rubber on a turf field? So if we think about, you know, how do we get exposed to something on a turf field? You know, it's really contacting the infill material, getting it stuck on our skin, or accidentally ingesting it, right? And that goes for whether the infill is crumb rubber, a natural material, or soil on a natural turf field. And so studies performed by US EPA, as well as a number of researchers, have shown that the chemical, the amount of chemical that can come out of crumb rubber is not enough to actually harm people through those exposure pathways that I mentioned. Next slide. And then one more. Yep. So one of the reasons PFAS came into the news and on the internet and stuff with its association with synthetic turf fields is because community groups and others have sampled turf that's actually in place and they've analyzed it for PFAS, right? Well, the reality is that PFAS exists as a background condition everywhere. It's in the air, it's in the rainwater, and it's in the soil. So if turf is sitting there collecting rainwater, it will eventually get PFAS in it and you'll be able to detect it, right? And we know it's a background condition because the states of Vermont and Maine have done extensive soil studies across their entire state and it showed that PFAS is in every single soil sample, including in very remote background areas. And the same can be said of groundwater and surface water. Now I'm going to turn it over to our next presenter. Synthetic turf testing. Really, there's hundreds of tests to evaluate a synthetic turf system. But today we're going to focus on player interactions and ball interactions of the surface, okay? What parameters are we looking at? How do we evaluate in the surface? We're looking how the head interacts with the surface. We're looking at the stability of the surface, the way the athlete walks and plays on it. And we're looking at the way the ball interacts with the surface. We have a few test methods that we'll speak about still back in the last slide real quick where we can leave it on here is fine. We have a lot of test methods that we'll talk about briefly to help evaluating these surfaces. But the reality is we have to think about where these tolerances come from. And the tolerances are chosen by sport. So when we test in artificial fields for force reduction or head injury or one of these things that we're going to talk about, the tolerances are defined by the sport not the surface. The equipment doesn't care what surface we're testing on. It cares about the result we're getting out of it. Head surface interaction, you know, why do we care about this? This is a way to predict head injuries. There's a number of different ways to evaluate head injury on these sport surfaces either by fixed ball heights or establishing critical fall heights. We have considered safety product commission to tell us when we've breached that point or we've introduced the chance of fatality in a fall. So we look at head injury as a pretty important factor as we all can imagine. So there's a lot of ways to evaluate it. Like I said, we won't get into the details of it, but we're looking at it at a number of different angles and number of different weights and different heights. Can you go to the next slide, please? Underfoot interaction. You know, when we talk about head injury before it makes a pretty simple sense. We can have a real big soft surface. We have a playground. We can fall from a high fall height. But the reality is we want to have stability in our surface too. We want to be able to mimic a natural field is the idea here. We want the same hardness of the surface as we do with the natural field. We want the same deformation of the surface. You know, how much of the surface is going to press underneath the athlete's foot. We want the same energy restitution of the surface. How much energy is put back into the athlete? You know, all these parameters again are decided by the ideal surface for whatever sport we're representing at that time. Rotational resistance is another example here. We're measuring the rotational forces on the surface. Cutting. Change of direction. All these things help us evaluate the field. Speed of the field. You know, how fast the athlete's going to go. How fast is the ball going to, you know, ride on this field? How long is it going to go? Go to one more here. Try to go quick. You know, that ball interaction tells us a lot about the surface as well. You know, we talked about accurate injuries, the stability. We also want that ball to play the same way as a natural surface. Again, that's what we're mimicking here. You know, so we look at both surfaces the same. Both are subject to the same tolerances. Both surfaces should have the same safety requirements that we play on. Really the one key difference here is, you know, how often we have to test for these parameters. You know, and we talked to her a little bit earlier about my FIFA certification. We do a FIFA certified field or a rugby certified field or a hockey certified field. There's a given timeline of certification, one to four years depending on what it is all the way in between. On a natural field, when we test the natural field for, you know, same situation, a FIFA natural certification, that lasts for one day. And it's about the variability of the surface. You know, the environmental conditions that can affect how that surface plays. And on an artificial surface, we can have a little bit more predictability. We know that moisture is less of effects, temperature is less of effects of how that surface plays. So that timing is important. I think we'll probably stop there to get Laura in for the end. I'm afraid we have about 15 seconds before Laura at this point. Oh, okay. Well, next slide then. Is the slide for protecting players' health during summertime conditions up? Nope, that's not it. Nope, go back. 15 seconds, Laura. All right, let's read together real fast. Protecting players' health during summertime, by which I mean July and August. First, follow guidelines set by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. I gave you the website here. The MIAA has a medical committee made up of doctors, nurses, and trainers. And their recommendations should be followed to the letter. What they recommend, not what I recommend, what they recommend, is to measure and make decisions based on the wet bulb-globe temperature. This measurement, the wet bulb-globe temperature, accounts not only for temperature, but also for humidity, for solar radiation, and for wind speed. Laura, I'm sorry I'm going to have to stop you there. Well, I'm sorry, but I really just need to finish this slide. I don't think it's too much to ask. I think people can read it, but I don't think it's too much to ask. Okay. So now we're moving on to the environmental considerations around artificial turf. We can leave it up for 15 seconds. I think it's an important point, so I hope everyone reads it, please. As a reminder, there will be a two-minute opportunity for each commission to respond to the presentation, to share a final thought, or perhaps to read this bullet. We're going to move on to environmental considerations, and on this one, we're going to start with the Parks and Rec Commission. You have three minutes total for all people that speak. All right. Thank you. I'll be quick on this to make sure the public has enough opportunity to ask questions later. So this is really about sustainability with synthetic turf systems. First of all, there's been some misinformation out there that synthetic turf systems are impermeable. That is not correct. They drain vertically, therefore they improve groundwater recharge and provide stormwater benefits. Jeff does a lot of testing on this, and the stone bases, most specifications are written, so they have to drain at least 10 inches per hour. You will never get that on natural grass field, our natural grass fields. There's no fertilizer required. No herbicides or pesticides required on a synthetic turf field. There's no irrigation required on a synthetic turf field. It drastically reduces the maintenance requirements, which is a huge benefit to the town in our limited budget. From rubber infill, a lot of people like to make negative comments about, but this is a recycled material which diverts millions of car tires from landfills. Without crumb rubber, those are going back into a landfill. It is a repurposed material. All the natural infills are sustainably harvested and a lot of different communities and institutions are using both infills. It is a sustainable solution to fields. We're making up the time. All right, we're going to go to the Conservation Commission, Susan Chapnick. Three minutes. Thank you. Can you hear me? In Arlington, we have wetland resource areas on parts of artificial turf fields. We're directly adjacent to them, including the Arlington Catholic High School field on Summer Street and the permitted Arlington High School field, which is not yet built. We also have natural grass fields near or in resource areas, including Herdfield, Thorndike Field and MacLennan Park. Chemical hazards escape from artificial turf surfaces to the environment. We've talked about a number of chemicals that can come off these fields. These chemicals can leach to contaminate surface waters, ground waters and soil. Other chemicals actually migrate with the particles themselves. The same chemicals discussed by Dr. Massey, including chemicals, PAHs and PFAS are also harmful to the environment. PFAS has been documented to leach from artificial turf fields. There's a recent 2021 study of Amity High School turf field in Woodbridge, Connecticut. The samples were analyzed by York Analytical Lab, which is a certified lab using EPA PFAS methods and all the QAQC to show the methods and result validity and showed PFAS leaching from these fields during a rain event. I have to take exception to the prior panelist mention of using herbicides and pesticides as a problem on natural fields that can be mitigated by using organic turf management that has been done in Marblehead and Springfield. A typical 80,000 square foot athletic field places 80,000 square feet of plastic in the environment. Plastic is not habitat. Loss of habitat, loss of wildlife corridor connectivity. Extreme surface heat negatively impacts resource area values and there are hazards from migration of artificial turf components off the field including plastic pollution next slide please. Management of infill migration was not performed routinely for the Arlington Catholic High School field which was installed 12 years ago. You can see in these pictures migration of the infill off the field into a resource area near Millbrook and also into the perimeter drains. The conservation commission issued an enforcement letter to Arlington Catholic and Arlington Catholic has cleaned up this infill. We did a site visit last week to confirm that. And they are working with the conservation commission to develop a monitoring plan to make sure that this doesn't happen again. Next slide please. Why am I showing you pictures of Millbrook on the left and Fish on the right? Because Millbrook is an important aquatic resource in our town and we have a lot of information about it. We have a lot of information about the waterfowl which that is a picture of. Swim upstream and spawn at the base of the waterfall in Cook's Hollow within 100 feet of an artificial turf field. Scientific studies have documented toxicity from zinc to aquatic organisms. I agree with a statement made by Dr. Laura Green at the end of last year's it contains zinc. Zinc is toxic to fish. We have recently published scientific information from 2022 that also shows that six PPD quinone as previously shared by Dr. Massey is acutely toxic to fish including rainbow trout and brook trout. That means it causes fish kills. Susan I'm going to have to ask a question. We're now moving on to sustainability and we're going to start this time with again conservation commission panelist Susan Chapnick. Three minutes. I used to talk really fast because I'm from New York but I've been displaced so long that I don't talk that fast anymore. Sustainability and climate impacts current evidence shows that the carbon footprint of a particular recycling end of life option such as trucking long distances may be integrated into the decision making process and lead responsible parties in the region. In the region it is important to investigate all recycling and reuse options in the region before choosing to landfill. There are currently no recycling plants in the northeast for artificial turf fields. Residents of Arlington and the town have been very focused on climate and energy. Artificial turf contributes to providing fossil fuels during production and emitting greenhouse gases during use and disposal. Additionally, the town has adopted initiatives to reduce plastic consumption. I'm sure you're all aware of the single use bottle bands, single use plastic bands and most recently for an eco-fest campaign with a slogan no plastic please. According to the synthetic turf council 180,000 square foot athletic field uses 200 tons, that's 400,000 pounds of infill and has 20 tons of turf carpet. Additionally, turf fields are not consistent with sustainability principles in that they have a limited lifespan of approximately 10 years at which time they need to be disposed of and replaced. Next slide please. Artificial turf fields exacerbate stress in already stressed areas of town. This picture on the right is from the Arlington hazard mitigation plan. The hot pink areas are the hottest 5% of our town's areas. Most of them, as you may expect, are clustered around Massachusetts Avenue, which bisects the town and in the heavily populated East Arlington. However, you might notice there's a small cluster on the lower left-hand corner of our town. That actually is the area of St. Camillus land. It also has a pump station there and poets corner. So this area is already a hotspot in Arlington. Many of these hotspots are in EJ environmental justice communities, including poets corner. Current data from the National Weather Service show that we will lose 21 days of playing time if we close artificial turf fields when the air temperature is 90 degrees, which is what Burlington does for health and safety. This should be considered in weighing the increase in additional playing time on wet fields. Artificial turf also results in the loss of green space and the loss of the opportunity of using vegetated surfaces as a carbon sink for climate mitigation. Thank you. Great. Thanks, Susan. Now we're going to Parks and Recreation Commission panelists. I believe Laura and Dr. Er... So just on recycling turf, this is one example many of the manufacturers have developed programs over the last several years. This is from Shaw Sports Turf. They're touting their program here. They've recycled to date over five a million pounds of turf. They've manufactured over three and a half million square feet of what they call their next pad, so they make a shock pad now and half of that shock pad is made up of recycled synthetic turf that's saved over 15,000 cubic yards of landfill space and saved over 14 million kilowatt hours. That's what the diagram on the right refers to. There are several other companies that have also implemented programs. Tenkata, which is one of the largest fiber manufacturers, is working with ExxonMobil. I will actually recycle several fields for a client with APW Enterprises. The industry is clearly moving in this direction. If I could just add, as part of David's time, there's also several companies that recycle turf into plastic lumber materials as well. It is being recycled. With that, we are going to hear some closing statements or opportunities to respond to something that was in the other presentation or perhaps expand upon something that the panelists were unable to get to in their time. We're going to have two minutes for each commission and we're going to start with Parks and Rec. Thank you. The Park and Recreation Commission would like to thank you for your participation at this forum. We hope that you have found it informative. In closing, all sports fields have their pros and cons. Based on independent peer review studies provided by our experts along with their guidance, we believe synthetic turf fields are safe and provide the best option for our athletes and our community. Site-specific considerations should always predominate. All projects should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This is why the Select Board took no action on the Article 12 moratorium. Stakeholders should always be involved in decision-making. We as a commission are constantly asking ourselves, how can we better meet the needs for the users? Letters of support for the use of turf and redevelopment of poets have been jointly submitted by Arlington Soccer Club, Arlington Youth La Crosse and Arlington Youth Baseball and Softball Association. We hope that town meeting members will take this into consideration. Stakeholders are student athletes, coaches, town administrators, school administrators, parents. We are not the first community to explore the use of synthetic turf fields. Many others have and have come to the same conclusion. They are safe. Belmont, Waltham, Lexington, Lester, Medford and Somerville all have them and continue to build them. Major institutions like Harvard, BC, MIT, Northeastern and UMass all have them and continue to build them. Do you think they would do that if they were an environmental or human health risk? So I ask you, why not us? The time is now. Thank you. Moving along we will now hear from the Conservation Commission, Dr. Wendy Hyger-Bernice. Can you put up our first slide, please? All the way. All the way to the beginning. Yeah. If you can't, that's okay. We don't want to lose time. Thank you. We're here this evening not to sell you a product but to share our understanding of the health, safety and environmental impacts using the most up-to-date scientific data. We believe that Arlington residents and town meeting members are smart and can see right through the folksy assurances that have been made about artificial turf. You've not been provided the full picture of the issues. The issues that we raised are concerning to us, which is why we bring them to you. We're not telling you what to do. We're asking you to consider the fact that you will be making decisions for your families, for your children, and for your neighbor's children. As smart consumers, we suggest that you consider all of the information that you hear. To consider that science has come quite far in allowing us to answer some previously unanswered questions. We suggest that a comparison with well-maintained sustainably managed or organic natural turf grass may decrease some of your concerns. I would like to point out that the current risk assessments that have been cited and discussed only look at the hours or days spent exposed to the materials in the fields. But this does not account for the full daily exposures to get the full and true health risk. So we thank you for your time and we look forward to answering your questions and thank you for this opportunity. Thank you, panelists. As you hopefully heard that there are some points where these panelists agree and also many where they disagree. Also, you probably can imagine that this information they presented is a subset of all that they know and all that could be discussed on artificial turf. And I'm sure you've noticed that we've given them a very short time to only cover key points, which brings us into our question and answer session. We want to give you the opportunity to ask these panelists questions that they did not speak to or something that they spoke to that you want clarified. We really encourage you to ask curious and clarifying questions and not statements that are masquerading as questions. You will have time for statements at the town meeting and you will have time for statements when you talk with the commissions and attend their meetings. This is to clarify questions for the panelists. I'm going to explain the Q&A process one more time. It's a little odd, perhaps. So basically you have the chance to enter a lottery to share your question. We can't get to everyone's questions tonight. You can either choose to share a question orally and if you would like to do that on the note card that was on your seat you can write your name and then we'll have a few minutes break so don't do it now, but you can then place the note card with your name and either have been up here labeled or been in the back labeled standing at each of those tables to help out. You will have one minute to ask a question if you ask it orally. One minute. If you would like to enter the running or a lottery to share a written question on your note card that was on your seat please write your written just write out the question and then we'll read it aloud. In both of these cases we'll then randomly pull from the bins and ask the question and oral questions. All unwritten questions will be listed in the forum summary that will be shared so you can see what everyone was going to ask. Again, we are inviting only Arlington residents to ask questions. In terms of responses each commission will get one minute to respond to the question. If you want multiple responders to be aware that you only have one minute total. Okay so we're going to take about three minutes right now to write your questions and to place them in the bins. We'll have Joe and David in the back monitoring and if you need a note card please let one of us know. Alright, three minutes. Okay, we have one minute final call for questions. Okay, if everyone could take their seat we would stop this question. Can we get David to bring up the questions from the rear? David we're going to ask you to bring up the questions from the rear of the room. Started here if we could have everyone take their seats on the Q&A portion of this forum. If you can't hear me say your name you won't know if you're called on to share your question. I have a lot of sports whistlers right? Group effort here, thank you. Okay, so we now have combined our bins from the rear and the side of the room. Before we get started just some quick, quick ground rules please be concise and stick to the time limits if you're sharing a question orally it's one minute per question and one minute for each commission to answer. We're trying to get to as many questions as possible that's been a key goal of the planning team and the two commissions tonight so we're really going to be tight on our timing. And then lastly just please be respectful towards each other and do not speak to others in ways you yourself wouldn't want to be spoken to. You are all our neighbors, this is a community. Okay so what we're going to do is we're going to start with a written question so I'm going to just pull one now but I'll also pull the first oral question just so you know that it's coming for you raise your hand Joe is going to come and run the mic to you but first again we'll do the written question and then we'll go to the oral. Okay so the first oral question which will happen after the first written question is for Tyler Short Tyler, okay so we see Tyler Joe will bring it over and we'll come to you after the written question. So the first written question will be to what extent has or will the existence of wetlands on the Archdiocese parcel on the decision design that makes a lot more sense on the design so to what extent has or will the existence of wetlands on the Archdiocese parcel my guess is affect the design and we will start with Parks and Rec and then we'll go to Conservation Commission. Okay I can start with that so Belmont Hill School submitted an RDA David? Ann Radd for delineation of the wetlands that currently exist on site so the plans as they stand right now are just preliminary, they're schematic plans so we're having the wetlands have been delineated and they're being reviewed by the Conservation Commission and that's all part of the permitting and engineering and design process as things move forward so anything to add, Dave? Go to Conservation Commission to answer this. Okay so the Conservation Commission has this Ann Radd which is an abbreviated notice of resource area delineation for the poets corner area preliminarily there were two isolated wetlands shown by the applicant which is Belmont Hill. The Conservation Commission is reviewing the information and is planning on getting a peer review of this delineation as the delineation was performed last year if everybody remembers we were in a drought at that time and we are going to be looking for any resource areas on the parcel so once that is established then the Conservation Commission will make a determination of the resource areas on that parcel and then after that if there is a notice of intent for a specific project in this area from Belmont Hill that includes artificial turf fields or anything else it will come to the Commission for a hearing and a vote. Okay, thank you. Okay so next we're going to go to Tyler Short for your question. Artificial turf field compared to the toxicity of the soil that exists today in Arlington or towns like Arlington. Okay I'm going to go to Dr. We're going to start with Conservation Commission and then I think that the just sorry so you may have heard a statement that artificial turf is cleaner than dirt there are contaminants there are materials in soil they can be well characterized they are there regardless of whether the turf is there or not when one adds the turf one adds the contaminants right and so we have a suite of contaminants there currently and a suite there that will be added without and the question is do you really want to add more toxic materials Thank you. You have 15 more seconds sorry that was a single. So the including the plastic and so the absolute toxicity the hazard with some of these chemicals such as the PAH's increases over time with the weathering as does the PFAS other chemicals don't change in their toxicity with the weathering. Time's up. Okay so now we'll go to Parks and Rec Commission. I'll pass it over to Dr. Green. Oh great thank you very much great question and with all respect to Dr. Wendy who I do have great respect for she's incorrect. When you install an artificial turf field you remove the grass in fact you dig down David Nardone correctly if I'm wrong you dig down about 18 inches you just remove all of the all of the grass because as David showed it's a multi-layer system you have to dig down about a foot and a half to lay the gravel base all the other materials so that's the first thing it's not additive it's subtractive number one number two we did exactly this analysis at Martha's Vineyard a project I worked on about two years ago we extensively analyzed the existing topsoil at the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School we analyzed it for heavy metals and of course it contained lead and arsenic in cadmium we analyzed it for the PFAS 6 regulated in Massachusetts and it contained 900 parts per trillion of PFOS 300 parts per trillion of PFOA and lower but detectable levels of the other four regulated PFAS in Massachusetts. All right and Laura that's time, thank you. I didn't get to answer the full question Matt please have a little more time especially since I had basically 20 seconds beforehand. I'm sorry Dr. Green we really do need to be brief on that. I was not able to answer the gentleman's question yet. Your rules it's okay with me. Okay we'll give you 15 more seconds if you can please keep it brief. Then we get 15 more seconds for rebuttal. Okay and then that's it okay this is what happens when you extend time limits okay all right 15 seconds for each. Never mind. Okay great we're moving on then. So we have two more questions so we're going to do the written first one though will be Jordan Weinstein. We have a hand here so we know where. All right but we're going to start with the written question. Can you clarify the slide with poets land parcel? Are we talking about converting all land into artificial turf? Is there a proposed field layout for us to consider? So this one we'll start with Parks and Rec. Sure this forum is not about the poets corner project I want to make that clear the intent of this forum was to discuss the pros and cons of turf. All information related to the poets corner project is available on our website on the recreation department website. There are 3D renderings of what the proposal is and potentially could be there's plan views from multiple different angles of the fields of the walking trails of the playground of the basketball courts so you can see three public meetings about the project where we've showed the plans and the renderings so that's all available. It is not the entire church parcel and in fact much of the open space is being preserved as woodland. Thank you Phil. Conservation Commission? Hi. I can't speak to what Parks and Rec is planning on doing except for the fact that I was offered public meeting for the proposed fields and the proposal included two artificial turf fields one field covering the existing poets corner field which is a smaller field closer to route two and a much larger field that extends back towards the woodland and wetland areas and over on the St. Camilla's parking lot so there is an extensive amount of artificial turf proposed. In the proposal there is also some restoration of the woodland and park area and again we don't know exactly where the wetland resource areas are on this site. Thank you. Going now to Jordan. Excuse me. Thank you. This question has to do with a big elephant that's in the room that people are not paying attention to right now. The chairman of the Park and Recreation Commission who is sitting among you right now is a senior project manager at David White and Sons which specializes in design, sale, installation, sports. We're going to let. Excuse me. I have a right to ask this question. You have 30 seconds. Which specializes in installation of sports fields. My question is shouldn't he be asked to recuse himself from any decision making or policy making when it comes to artificial turf in Arlington in order to reduce the appearance of a conflict of interest. You can refer that question. You can refer that question to Doug Heim who I have consulted with about this. We're going to do our panel questions. Phil if you want to respond to this you can or we can have someone from the team. I would love to respond to this. I like any other volunteer in any other boarder commission is acting as a professional to provide professional guidance and advice to the community. So there are architects on the historic commission. There are psychologists on the conservation commission. So if you want to question me about my professional ethics why don't you question them as well. And I have consulted with Doug Heim town council about this and there is no conflict. And let me tell you too Jordan why I volunteer. I volunteer from my kids. My parents were volunteers. They're in their 80s that this is a responsibility to my community. Okay. One minute comment from our townman. I'll make it 30 seconds. Thank you. I just want to say that I want to affirm that we have reviewed with town council town council has announced that there is not a conflict. So it's great for you to say it but I think you should hear somebody from the town about this. We're affirming that. Thank you very much. All right. Two more questions. Can I respond? Yes. Okay. Obviously I have no comment on your conflict of interest. However, I will say that we have it's not a conflict of interest. The town managers have said that. I just said I have no comment. But we have a very strong commitment to the conservation commission with any perception of conflict of interest. So I will divulge that we have been asked to bring article 12 substitute motion to the conservation commission for a vote. We have decided not to do that because of the perception of a conflict of interest given the fact that we have this anrad hearing before the commission right now will also correct the record while I have 10 seconds to say that Belmont High School proposal for artificial turf field was voted down by the town. So it is a misstatement that that is going in. It's going to be a grass field and the Belmont High School. Thank you. All right. Moving right along. So we have two questions. Written one first but the oral one will be from our neighbors. Okay. But first we'll do the written. What will our study of turf discover that our neighboring towns didn't know when they installed turf? Why do we think we will learn anything new? Okay. And so now we're starting with conservation commission and then we'll go to Parks and Rec. Rachel, are you available? Sure. Yeah. I can just be quick. I'm not sure I can answer that question. But I'm a little bit more familiar with the community of the park. There are so many communities that have been researching these issues and I guess as the years have gone along the concerns have increased rather than decreased. So yeah, I guess from my standpoint I see lots of concerns from many communities enough, Wendy, you want to say more? 30 seconds, if you want to add? I think it comes down to, it often comes down to having incomplete information as to what one compares the artificial turf with. I think that the right comparison is a well-maintained natural turf field, and so I think it does come down to the way the data, the information, the cost estimates are provided, thank you. All right, and so we're going to, when now, when now, apologies I've been pronouncing it wrong. So. Oh, I'm sorry. Really, jumping the gun over here, okay. So the question is, what will we find different now that we haven't? What will our study of turf discover that our neighboring towns didn't know when they installed turf? Why do we think we will learn anything new? Well, I can tell you that Lexington just did a study. Which the doctor over there was part of, and they approved the use of the fields. That was just approved at town meeting within a month or so ago. Belmont High School did a study and approved the use of a synthetic turf field as part of their high school project. They already had one at the track and field, and they just put another one in with a natural infill. So these fields are being studied continuously. We're not going to find anything different than our neighboring communities have. They're safe. That's why they're installing them. Okay. Thank you. What I'll do is I'm going to add, why don't we do two minutes at the end of Q and A for people to respond, like at the end of the total. Back to where we were, one minute. Thank you. Winnell Evans. I'm not really sure who to direct this question to. Maybe either to Park and Recreation or possibly to Mr. Poehler. My question is about liability. 3M has recently said that they are going to start phasing out production with PFAS chemicals. A citizen group in North Carolina has petitioned the UN to sue Kimors for human rights violations. Lawsuits are cropping up all around the country. Insurers are now declining to insure for PFAS. So my question is, how is the town going to handle a lawsuit if we have already gone ahead and installed another artificial turf field and it either becomes through regulation no longer allowed or there is either a personal liability or a class action lawsuit? How will that be handled? Thank you. Okay. Town question. Thank you. So I won't have to make a decision about whether we put in turf fields or not, but if I did, I would want to make a recommendation that any kind of field we put into Arlington would meet safety standards. That's what we're doing with the high school, for example. When the conservation commission recommended that we go, that approved installation of a field at the high school, there were certain standards that field has to meet. It still has to pass those tests. I can't speak to what would happen 20 years from now if things, we find out something is more dangerous than we know today. That obviously is a possibility. On the other hand, I think what we try to do is make our best guess now based on scientific evidence and then approve what we think would be a safe field. Matt, please add something. So we can go to the commissions. So last time we heard, I think we go to Conservation Commission first this time. Thank you. I can't speak to the legal aspects, but I can speak to the permitted field at the Arlington High School that has not yet been installed. There are indeed strict testing requirements that were put in the permit back in 2020. However, there's new science. I presented new science and so did Dr. Massey about six PPD quinone which was discovered in 2022 to be directly toxic to fish. That information was not known when we permitted the field. So science does change and the testing that is being done for the artificial turf field at the high school does not include this chemical. This chemical is not in any standard ASTM tests or EPA tests or Massachusetts require tests for soil. And that's time perfect, thanks. Okay, I'll pass my time off to Dr. Green. Thanks very much. That was an excellent question from the audience. I think it's based on the misunderstanding however. So let me try to be clear in the time I'm allowed it. Synthetic turf, as David Nardone mentioned, is essentially plastic shag carpet. It is essentially 99% polyethylene. The remaining 1% does contain a few other things. It contains a dye, usually green, although you may ask Lowell, it happens to be blue for some odd reason. So there's an artificial dye that represents maybe a half a percent or maybe a little less. There is a stabilizer to try to prevent the dye from fading under sunlight over the years. And there is finally at a level of less than half a percent, one and only one kind of perfluorinated alkyl substance. It is a fluoro copolymer. This is well known. This has been written up in patents for decades. Five seconds, Laura. And it is PVDF-HFP. It is not water-soluble. It is not volatile. It is not toxic. It is- And that's your time. May I please get to my sentence? Thanks, Jeff, for timing us. I'd also just like to add that any synthetic turf field that you do comes with a manufacturer's warranty and a third-party insured warranty. Okay, we need to move on. Okay, two new questions. The oral one will be from Dean Rejant. Rejant? Rejant. Okay, but first we'll do the written question. Which are, what are the comparative dollar costs over the life cycle of each option? Purchase, installation, maintenance, et cetera. And we'll start with Parks and Rec. Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty detailed question to get into at this time to do a cost analysis of synthetic turf, first natural grass. There's many different synthetic turf systems, as David Nardone pointed out, different types of infill, different types of fiber, whether it has a pad or not, what the use and play is on that field. Same with natural grass fields. There's so many different types of soil types. The sand content, is there drainage underneath or not? How much use does it get? What are the maintenance requirements? For example, Robyn's field that we did back in 2016-17 is what's considered a high performance sand-based natural grass field. It does not have any underdrains in it. But that was a field where because of how it was engineered, all the existing topsoil was exported offsite, and all new material with at least an 85% sand content was imported on site. That cost analysis, it requires much more thought and consideration. Thank you. Conservation Commission? Thank you. I actually did- Do you want me to jump in on that? Sure, Rachel, just leave me at one minute. Half a minute, sorry, half a minute, sorry. So really quickly, so we've looked at costs in the work that we did at the Toxic Seas Reduction Institute, not to get into numbers, but just if you think about the comparison with an artificial turf field, you've got your installation cost, and then it is not maintenance-free. You have to do a variety of maintenance activities over time, and then at the end of its useful life, about a decade, you have to deal with the replacement costs, the disposal and replacement costs. Whereas with natural grass, if you invest a modest amount over time and maintain it regularly, you can keep it going for, again, a modest cost. Springfield spends about $1,500 per acre on their organic field. So, Susan. Yes, thank you, Dr. Massey. I did a back of the envelope calculation, which I don't have here, about the comparison of artificial turf maintenance and lifecycle costs to natural fields based on the synthetic turf industry's own information. Or time, Susan. Okay, and taking all the lifecycle costs, the turf field are more expensive over the lifecycle of about 20 to 25 years because the field has to be replaced. Okay, thank you. Thank you. All right, we're gonna go to Dean. Hi, thanks for coming out tonight and sharing your information. I'm curious about the, if you could just talk a little bit about the demand for fields and where Arlington, like how many fields do we have relative to how much usage is demanded from different activities. How does that compare to neighboring towns? And what I think I'm hearing is that there's probably more demand than there is supply currently. So if we were to go to an all-grass field solution, what are the options for where those fields would be located? Okay, so this one will start with Conservation Commission. I don't really have an answer to that. That's a park and rec question in terms of use of fields and where are they located? I can only tell you that currently, the fields that we have, the grass fields, as well as some artificial turf fields, are currently located in or near wetland resource areas in our town. The larger Arlington High School field, the football field that has a track around it, is not in a jurisdictional area and was not permitted by the commission, but all the other fields pretty much are in jurisdictional areas or near jurisdictional areas. And I guess I can add just based on the other communities that we have, where we've done case studies, that the communities that do make that investment in sustainable or organic management of their natural grass fields do find that they're able to fully meet the needs of the community. So obviously each community is different, but if you do the soil aeration and the soil testing and build a healthy soil ecosystem and root system, which I know we haven't talked about today, but if you make that investment, then generally communities are quite satisfied with the amount of playable hours that they get. We're gonna go now to Parks and Rec. Yeah, I believe the question was more of a supply and demand question. Is that correct? Yeah. So basically the question of how many fields are we short based on enrollment? That's how I interpreted it. Joe Conley, our director of recreation is more informed on what our needs are, but I can just tell you in general, a synthetic turf field equals about three natural grass fields in terms of use. As I pointed out earlier, they can basically be played on 24-7. But if Joe wants to add anything. Yeah, sure. So I could ask Henry, I could ask Paul, I could ask Dan, I could ask John Bowler, I could ask Dan Shine. We don't have enough fields, period. Our old and youth lacrosse, quite frankly, wouldn't exist if they weren't allowed to use the fields over at Thumb on Hill. Every single spring, particularly every single fall, it is a huge juggling act. Phil mentioned it in his previous comment about soccer, having to leave Dalin, leave Florence, and go over to McLennan. That's just because it's just basic, not enough field space. Okay, thank you. Okay, two new questions. The oral one, which will follow the written, is for Robin Bergman. Henry's, okay. And we will start with the written question. How much water does a natural turf field need in a season? And we're going to start with Parks and Rec on this one. Can you repeat that again? Yeah, how much water does a natural turf field need in a season? Typically, a properly irrigated field would require, David, one to two inches? An inch a week. An inch a week of water. I don't know the exact amount that a natural turf field needs. I will say, though, that it's incorrect statement to say that artificial turf fields do not need irrigation. It's common to irrigate artificial turf fields in very hot weather to mitigate for the heat effects. So I'll just read it there. If there's a little bit of time, I'd like to refute that. Sorry, can I add? That isn't, that isn't. This is still, is it still Conservation Commission's time? I'll just add that, again, in the case studies that we've done at the Toxics Use Reduction Institute, we did look at communities that did smart irrigation. So there are a variety of techniques that you can use to keep water used to a minimum. Some communities actually use drone photography to identify patches of a field that need extra attention and then they can use smart irrigation systems where you're not putting the same amount of water on the field at all times. So anyway, there's just things you might wanna consider if you're thinking about upgrading your maintenance in Arlington. Yeah, I just wanna point out. I'm gonna ask you to put that in the two minutes at the end. I just don't want us to get into a background. Sure, I just wanna make sure. This is a forum about synthetic turf, not natural grass. Okay, and so. And irrigation systems aren't used on synthetic turf. You can add that in your two minutes. Okay. All right. We're gonna go to our oral question from Robin. You have one minute. Is this working? Yes. Hi, Robin Bergman. I'd like you to talk a little bit about the so-called organic infills and what chemicals and substances they are treated with in order to be used and maintained. I've heard that they get hard and they need certain things. I've heard that they need certain other kind of chemicals to keep them from decaying. I'd like to know more about those. Thank you. Thank you. This one, last time we started with Conservation Commission. This time we'll start with Parks and Rec. Sure, first of all, we don't call them organic infills. They're called natural infills. So there's walnut shells, there's cork, there's coconut husks, and there's pine. I'll probably have Dr. Green comment on those items, but there's really no chemicals that I'm aware of in the processing of them. Dr. Green, would you like to add anything? Yeah, thank you very much. I've done extensive analyses using an independent certified laboratory that I'm sure Ms. Chappnick's familiar with alpha analytical laboratories here in Massachusetts. The pine infill that was proposed for the Martha's Vineyard Project is a virgin pine from trees that are grown in North Florida and South Georgia. The pine is, as Wendy mentioned, literally cleaner than dirt. Five seconds. No detectable levels of lead, no detectable levels of arsenic, no detectable levels of PFAS-6. With one exception, and it was a pine infill, with one exception, it was not a PFAS-6, it was another PFAS found at trace levels because the roots of the plant translocated from soil. But the pine infill is not treated with anything. Thank you, Laura. All right, so now we're gonna go to Conservation Commission. Rachel, can you say a little about that? So yeah, when at the Toxic Seas Reduction Institute we did our comparison of infills that were on the market. We were trying to find an infill that we could be confident in, as I say, for alternative to tire crumb at the time. As I said before, we weren't able to identify anyone that was entirely free of concerns. Again, I think it's a matter of asking the questions and doing the testing. So you wanna find out whether a material has been treated with any chemicals prior to being put into the product that you're purchasing. And then also find out whether any chemicals are gonna be required for maintenance, any kind of fungal control or antibacterials. So these are just things that you need to find out if you're planning to purchase these materials. And then, I guess, Martha's Vineyard did some testing on the Brockville in particular and found presence of certain PFAS. Again, this is something that I would just recommend looking into yourselves. Sorry, but that's incorrect. It's completely incorrect. Laura, we're gonna have time in the last few minutes. I'm sorry, but it's factually incorrect. Laura, we're gonna have two minutes for each commission to respond to anything at the end. Okay, we have two more questions. Okay, so the oral one, which we'll follow the written, is from Larry Schotnik. Okay, we have a hand, and we'll do the written one first. What covered options are available for turf fields? Does coverage make a difference when it comes to environmental impacts to health impacts? What was the second word in that question? Covered options. Okay, so this question we're not quite sure of. So if this was your question, if you wanna come to the table over here and maybe clarify, that'd be great. I'm gonna pick one more written one. No, or this one is. I'm gonna pick one more written one. I think the commenter probably meant like a tarp, like on Fenway Park. Does that, okay. So we'll have that person clarify at the table. Joe, I'm gonna give it to you. All right, so this is a new one. What specific studies can you cite regarding the risk of breeding volatile organic compounds during athletic activities on artificial fields, especially at different ambient temperatures? So this one, we started last time with Parks and Recs, I think we'd go to Conservation Commission. Oh, did you say, oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. Rachel. No, no, no, it is the Conservation Commission. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay, I'll say a few words. Thank you. Wendy may wanna say something as well. Yeah, so there, among the studies that have been done on artificial turf fields, there are various studies that have looked for chemicals that are found in tire crumb and looked at them at various levels above the field and tried to figure out how much people are breathing in. There have also been studies that have looked at just the particulate matter that people may be breathing in. So small particles of the rubber and plastic, when temperatures are high, you're gonna have more of those chemicals coming off the field. So it's an exposure that you have to consider when you're using these products. And yeah, maybe, I don't know if there's really any more to say. 15 seconds. 10 seconds? 15. There are research studies ongoing where people are using wrist bands and ankle bands to where the chemicals that are vaporizing off the fields will be adsorbed to those wrist bands and those chemicals will be analyzed in the laboratory and published soon. Okay, so next up we're gonna go to Parks and Rick. Yeah, I'll have Jeff talk quickly. So specific to the question, I'm not aware of any studies that speak about from rubber breathing in. What I can attest to is the methods that we use to address all the concerns that we're talking about here. This isn't a situation where there's not a method to know what's in the infill. We know what's in everything. There isn't questions to this. We can reverse engineer anything here we're talking about. Okay, so there's not a question to what's in here and there's methods to establish the quantities and then we deal with tolerance to see whether it's too much or too little based on what the local requirements are. May I please add a tiny bit if there's a moment? Yes, Far. 15 seconds. So 12 years ago there was a very good study in the Netherlands looking at soccer players who played on synthetic pitch. That's synthetic turf in their language. For two and a half hours, urine samples were taken for 24 hours before the match, 24 hours during and after the match, and then waiting a day and 24 hours later. And that's time. Thank you. Well, do you want to know the answer or not? Fine, whatever, Abby. Okay. I'm sorry, people. I'm trying to keep us on schedule and so we don't get into back and forth. We're getting here from where? I'm trying to answer the question. May I please have 10 more seconds? Well, you can address it in the two minutes. Okay, Larry. I'm a soccer-centric parent in Arlington in a typical year with two 10-week soccer seasons, fall and spring. Do we have any information about how many heat-related illnesses occur amongst the youth that are playing during those two 10-week seasons? We'll start with Parks and Rec. Yeah, Arlington. Yeah, I'm not aware of anything. I think the athletic director at the high school or Joe Conley may be better to speak to that. I have not been made aware of any heat-related illnesses. We get Arlington's turf and Mr. Shine, the athletic director of Auditley Catholic, so he's shaking his head. He has not been aware of any on his field as well. It's an issue that's managed anybody that owns one of these fields and has kids out on them. They manage their time. They manage the water consumption on and off the field. It's summer camps that is the concern that's really not seasonal programs, and they provide shade and so on, and they manage it, and it's a combination of coaches and trainers and people being responsible. And I haven't heard of a single instance of one of my clients having an issue. If I can add just 10 seconds. I'm sorry, we're at time. And folks, I just wanna clarify what's happening here. There are different amounts of panelists for each commission, but we've agreed to be clear in having the same amount of time for each commission. So you're seeing multiple people weigh in, but we're keeping the same time, and that's what's happening. Okay, we're gonna go to the Conservation Commission. Sure, that kind of data should be reported. It should be gathered. Those data are not gathered. And so what we have done in, certainly in Lexington, where we did not actually approve the synthetic field, we allocated the money for a field. So that's not a done deal. With regard to heat-related illnesses, those are only now being tracked as they're being tracked in other communities as well, and local boards of health are starting to ask coaches and others to keep track of that information. And I'll add that there's recommendations from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to be extremely cautious about heat-related hazards on artificial turf fields. So heat-related illness is an incredibly serious health hazard when it occurs. And that's time, Rachel. Okay. So we probably have time for these two as our last questions, because we wanna leave time for people to share all of the thoughts that they haven't gotten to before we close out. Okay. So the oral questions for John Rice. Do we have John? Okay. And the written question, which we'll do first, is what habitat is at risk if a turf field is installed over the current field, the field only, please, at Poets Corner, which is a capped former landfill per sandy pool or question mark? Okay. And so we're gonna start this time with Conservation Commission. Well, thank you for that question. The current Poets Corner field is likely outside of a wetland resource area. Again, we don't have the delineation, but it looks like it is. It's a smaller field. It still will impact habitat in that you lose the opportunity for any kind of habitat for invertebrates in the soil, the foraging birds in vegetation, small mammals, and of course wildlife won't wanna walk across it, especially in the heat. Then you also have climate resilient considerations and the fact that it's not a sustainable solution and has to be replaced. The issue that we keep bringing up that this is over a capped landfill, please understand that we have other capped landfills in Arlington. McLennan Park is a capped landfill. It's capped with a soil and grass field. And that's time, Susan. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, a natural grass field is essentially a monoculture. I don't know that it provides much habitat and that's really all I have to say there. Yeah, do you wanna add something, Jay? So, I mean, with any development, synthetic turf field, building, parking lot, store, right? The impact on the environment is really proportional. It's the size of that development in relation to the size of the habitat surrounding it, right? So if you have a decent sized wooded area and you take a small piece of it and turn it into something developed, then it doesn't have much effect on the overall habitat. If you take the only piece of habitat within an area and you turn it into something developed, then it has a big effect on a habitat. Great, thanks. Now we're gonna go to John. Hi. Yeah, just real quickly, I'm part of the Arlington Ultimate Club. We have a huge amount of unmet demand where we have kids that would like to play Ultimate, but we just don't have field space and time. Today, with the rain, we had probably 60 or 70 athletes that were, instead of running around playing, were home, sedentary. We have partial use of the turf, so we get some days where we can be assured of playing, but a lot of days we can't, especially the spring. I'm just wondering if any of the medical or scientific professionals up there can comment on the deleterious effects of being sedentary when kids could otherwise be playing. Okay, so this one we're gonna start with Parks and Rec and then go to Hong Kong. I mean, I can tell you this. I'm sure there's a lot of parents here tonight whose kids didn't get to play sports today and are probably home on a screen instead. So I don't know, ask yourself, would you rather have them on a screen or would you rather have them out being physically active for their mental health as well? Anyone else from Parks and Rec? We can go to Concom. Okay, so I can just say, again, just working from the communities where we've done case studies, we looked in detail at the experience of Springfield. So the only weather-related cancellations that they did routinely in the period of time that we were looking at was for baseball, and that was because of the clay infield being affected by the rain, but they were basically not canceling games due to rain, except if there was heavy rain for a long period of time, like an entire day. Similarly, in case studies that we've done in other areas, we looked at a college field where they decided to make the investment in fully rebuilding the field with a sand cap. So it had been a field that had lots of pooling of water, and after they rebuilt it, it basically drained really fast so that they didn't have any cancellations. And Martha's been here. And next time, Rachel, the approach, okay. The past three days, we've been canceled in Arlington. So that's gonna conclude our Q&A portion of the evening. What we're now gonna do is we're gonna give each commission three minutes to say anything that you have not yet been able to say. How many minutes? Three minutes total. We're gonna start with Con-Com, and then we're gonna go to Parks and Rec. And I will just say again to the panelists, I know there are many of you and you have to share this time and that stinks, but that's how it is right now. Okay, so we're gonna start with Con-Com for three minutes whenever you're ready. Thank you. I just wanna say that I feel it's a false comparison in our town. We have very poorly maintained natural turf fields. I think we don't do a good job of maintenance, not just on the fields, on a lot of things in the town. And I think we don't put enough capital towards maintenance. I'm not blaming anyone. I think that's just a fact in our town. I would hope that that would get fixed in the future. So the comparison to our fields, which are very poorly maintained and do get wet and muddy is not a fair comparison compared to a well-managed organic field. I will just, I want to respond to Dr. Green's statement about PVDF, that statement about the chemical in the turf must be corrected in a study in 2021. It was shown that under UV light, which is sunlight, it has been shown that this chemical is released and it is not inert. Rachel? Let's see, I guess the thing that I would say as a wrap up is that it's really important to kind of just look at the safer alternatives. So if you're making a decision as a community about what you wanna invest in, you have some money available for a capital investment, take a look at what it would take to improve the management of your natural grass fields. Right now you could start doing it today and you could make it a better experience for players this summer, this spring, and then take a look at what it would look like to do that bigger investment to rebuild some of your fields. So again, just in my background in toxic use reduction work with large and small businesses, we've always, what we always come back to is you need to look at the safer alternative because only then can you really make an informed decision. Nothing? Just, yeah, I will just say in conclusion, thank you very much everybody who's attended tonight. We hope that you learned something and if not, we hope you raise some questions and you can talk to your neighbors about, because this is a very important decision in our town. And ultimately, when we do get a project that comes before the Conservation Commission, I might just add that if it's in a resource area, it is the Conservation Commission's decision whether or not the project will get approved. Thank you. All right, thank you. So we are now gonna go to three minutes for Parkland Rec Panelists. Great, I'm gonna pass most of my time off to Dr. Green so she can finish a lot of her questions just quickly, as I said before, irrigation is not used on infilled turf fields and it hasn't been for years. It was found to actually raise heat and humidity. Dr. Green, you have plenty to respond to since you were cut off so much. I actually wanna more fully answer one of the very good questions that a gentleman in the audience asked, which is what are we gonna learn if we study this more for months or years? I wanna say a couple of things that I think are important. While it is certainly true that science learns new things every day, every week and every year, and while it's certainly true that synthetic turf has more from its original days as astroturf in the 1960s to much better products today, the fact is that this stuff has been around since the 1960s, literally 1964 or 65 is when astroturf was first laid in a stadium. That was a long time ago, I was 10 years old. It's just so happens also that 1964 is the same year that in Torrance, California, as some of you soccer fans may know, the first and as far as I know, the largest nonprofit youth soccer organization in America was formed, the AYSO, the American Youth Soccer Organization. It was formed in Torrance, California. To my knowledge, there are now something like 900 communities where children are playing youth soccer under the AYSO banner and I can tell you because two of my grandchildren are in that program in inner city, Los Angeles, where it is hotter than Hades. They play on synthetic turf. There are no natural fields in Southern California. There's no water in Southern California. The vast majority of these 900 communities in Southern California, Middle California, all throughout Texas, the vast majority are synthetic turf and they've been synthetic turf since the 60s, 70s, 80s and through today. The idea that they're unsafe is simply incorrect. Yes, they are hot. Yes, they are hot. So is a tennis court. So is an outdoor basketball court. You don't play barefoot. And the idea that these fields would somehow be unplayable in Arlington, Massachusetts in July and August relative to the kind of communities that play on these things in Phoenix, Arizona, inner city, Los Angeles, et cetera, it's just absurd. Thank you. Anything else? I get a few more seconds. So I'd just like to comment on Dr. Massey's comment about natural grass fields as an alternative. Basically, if we did that, we'd have to cap enrollment. We just don't have the field space. We're a small urban community. Natural grass fields are not the answer here. We've been down this road before. Thank you. And I appreciate everybody's participation this evening. Okay. All right. Thanks, everyone. Thanks to the panelists. This has been a lot of your time tonight and the last few weeks. I just want to cover a few logistics and then we'll have a closing from town manager Sandy Pooler. Okay, two things. One is that CBI, Brandon and I will be working on a summary of this town forum where we'll cover the key points of the presentation and the questions and answers. If you signed up on the email list by the doors, we'll send it to you that way or I think we'll try to be, share it through the commission newsletters and through the town meeting listserv. We will try to get this out to you before May 8th. We will do our best. And then lastly, logistics-wise, there's a feedback form. There's a slide, Jim, if you don't mind. There's a QR code, which will be up in a minute and then we'll leave that up and then there's also paper forms in the back if you want. And that asks you if you'd like to share lingering questions that you have, feedback you'd like the commissions to hear and any additional engagement or information you would like on artificial turf. And with that, I'll leave it to Sandy to close us out. Thank you, Abby, and thank you all for your participation tonight. I would urge you or I would recommend to you to talk to your town meeting representatives about what you heard tonight or how you feel about it because we do have this article coming up and to continue to pay attention to this issue as we go forward. I certainly learned a few things tonight. I also have more questions than I started out with. So, you know, that's good. I would particularly like to thank all of the panelists. I know that everybody here has Arlington's best interest in mind and I want to tell you from talking to some of these people directly and meeting some of them tonight, I have nothing but respect for the people here at the front of the room and the people we've seen on Zoom. I know they care deeply about Arlington and about our environment and about our children. So, again, thank you all for your participation and have a nice evening.