WESTFORD — The Parks and Recreation Commission on Monday approved an increased ask for the Nutting Road turf replacement, with a capital request to replace the aging field nearing $2 million.
About the project
As only WestfordCAT reported, the commission recently submitted a request for $1.5 million in capital funding for the project. According to their request, the fields started to show signs of wear in 2020, conditions that they worried would eventually become unsafe.
The Parks and Recreation Commission met to discuss the project and held a Zoom meeting on Dec. 2. During the meeting, the commission was accompanied by those related to the potential project including A-Turf Inc. representative Russ Caci who explained potential materials for the turf. The turf could be made of recycled tires, other forms of rubber, foam, sand or soil and is expected to last 10 to 15 years.
“We pass all the safety testing in the industry and we’re far below that,” Caci said, “In the industry, the standard would be recycled car tires it’s a great reuse of recycled tires versus them going right to landfills so the materials are ground up, cleaned, processed and then added to the fields as a cushion layer and it’s also accompanied by sand infill.”
A-Turf Inc. plans to work with a removal company to tear up the existing turf. It will then be processed, cleaned and recycled for future projects.
The Town is looking at multiple different options for turf. Right now, the field is covered with styrene-butadiene rubber, used in recycled car tires. This would be the cheapest option, according to Russ. Other options include ethylene propylene diene monomer which is a man-made rubber. EDPM would add approximately $175,000 to the project. While an enviro-fill option would add $300,000 to the project.
Mixed opinions
At the meeting, there were discussions about the safety materials they planned on using and how those could impact drinking water.
“Nutting Road, where this turf is going, is close to our Nutting Road well in Westford which has shown each month to have higher concentrations of PFAS,” Parks and Recreation Commission member Jackie Murphy said, “So we would need to defer to experts to know if the water running through and off the turf has the potential to impact our water sources.”
Murphy’s concern was with the current PFAS levels in Town wells and whether certain turf materials would increase those PFAS levels and impact the town water sources.
Caci said that anything they plan to use has already been tested for PFAS, determining it safe to use.
“There isn’t PFAS in the chemical makeup of tires, there is PFAS in everything, but it’s not actually in the chemical makeup,” Caci said.
Mark Warren, the Water Superintendent for the Water Department, also spoke on the matter.
“We do have four wells that are closer up towards the Nutting field location,” Warren said, “Those wells all currently show PFAS concentrations below the current Massachusetts standard of 20 parts per trillion, Nutting Road ranges from 12.3 to 6.5 per trillion.”
Warren said that they could use other turf substitutes like grass turf, however, this would require herbicides, fertilizer and pesticides which could also pose a contamination risk.
It was suggested by Murphy that fields be created in another location in town where wells were further away.
“Shouldn’t they be a certain distance from a water supply or runoff to avoid the potential contamination,” Murphy said, “If we’re contaminating our water supply then there shouldn’t be a field at all.”
“There’s really no evidence that I can see the Nutting field is causing contamination, I can’t say that it’s not but based on these concentrations on this map I can’t say that it is either,” Warren said.
The budget increase
After over an hour of discussion, the commission moved to consider a vote for the project.
“Why don’t we make a recommendation to say that the Capital Planning Committee considers the project for X amount of money,” Parks and Recreation Chair Chris Barrett said, “It sounds like we will probably need more towards the $2 million level than the $1.5 million currently budgeted.”
Barrett clarified that the $2 million increase was a safety net, they may not use all of the money budgeted but it would be much harder to go back to the Capital Planning Committee and ask for more later.
“If we say we are going forward with a $1.5 million project and that does get funded it’ll be very hard for us to then modify and say we want to have something that’s going to cost $1.8 or $1.9 million,” Barrett said.
After extensive discussion, the Parks and Recreation Vice Chair Mike Furman moved to vote to approve moving forward with an artificial turf replacement and to increase the capital request to $2 million to cover possible options of different infills and different pads.
The motion passed 5-1. Murphy casting the dissenting vote.
