Worried about plastic turf and plastic playground fill? We would love your help doing research!

Nobody protested when it was time to do so…Its too late now, but let’s dig and prepare for future plastic onslaughts

We went to Bainbridge Park and Wiggly Giggly Campground to see how the soccer fields installation was going.

Wow!

Mendocinocoast.news. broke this story, like almost every story over the past  year that wasn’t a press release or scanner chatter. Here is what we wrote.  Others followed up on us and its become a big community talking point.

But what to do?  What is actually happening right now?

We were blown away by the scale of it and the ubiquitous plastic. Not just the newly controversial plastic turf in the fields and the plastic fill being used in the playground.  Plastic is everywhere.

There are huge plastic bags holding the mulch. Everything is wrapped in layers of plastic. There are plastic walkways, plastic sheeting and plastic containments for the other plastic.

Frank and LInda were amazed to see how virtually every inch of vegetation had been scraped off all over and leveled. The construction of the wooden stage and covered area is also a bit boggling. The pavilion being built looks like a super cool concert venue. But how will there be room for soccer with all that?

Go to the library and take a walk around the block to the south and put your own eyeballs on this project. But we don’t support trying to shut the project down. People should have participated in the legal process. They had many opportunities to oppose this or get the city to compromise and did not. Now there is really no way of going back. The city and its contractor can’t go back and don’t plan to. But we feel strongly also that plastic overuse is a huge problem and people are beginning to realize that across the nation, and indeed the world. 

But governments and grant projects are in motion and its too late in our view to stop this one. But some community group should become armed with the latest data about use of plastics and come out and ask questions at the right point in the process next time. Someone needs to investigate the claims of the turf manufacturer being used here. Others have fibbed about the safety of their products. If that turned out to be the case with this one, there might be legal recourse down the road for those concerned. 

But someone would have to take up this issue on an ongoing basis. 

We do have one word of advice for the city and its contractor- the way the site appears right now and the use of all that plastic wrapping isn’t a good look.  Not sure what can be done, but maybe on any future project the city could use compostable bags for the compost?

Back in 2019, the  city and many soccer moms and dads dreamed of remaking Bainbridge Park, including Wiggly Giggly Playground. They held many meetings, which had few interested participants and did a lot of community outreach. 

If you are a reader interested in this Bainbridge Park and Wiggly Giggly projects, please spend at least an hour reading information here. Probably more, but if you want to get involved in this issue and have only Twitter level info about it, that’s not really cool.

Bainbridge Park Enhancement Project | Fort Bragg, CA

Also read this to be informed and amazed:

Plastic Turf Fields Are Taking Over America – The New York Times

The big question is does the plastic being used here contribute to the PFAS crisis in runoff? The manufacturer shows that there are no PFAS in the materials, but other companies have made that claim but challenges by investigative journalists have found there were issues with PFAS and runoff. Does that apply to anything being used here? Somebody needs to dig. The idea that any astroturf can be PFAS free has been contested in numerous articles, including this one:

The Turf is Artificial, But the Harm is Very Real | Clean Water Action

More on PFAS.

PFAS | The Unseen Crisis

New Analysis Finds PFAS in 98% of Tested U.S. Waterways Across 19 States

The Netherlands is phasing out all artifical turf for sports. But not till 2030

Getting the word out is infinitely more difficult over the past  five years than at any previous time in America. The local newspaper eliminated 90 percent of its staff and sold its building off as part of financial scams as documented by the Wall Street Journal and others about the companies that have owned or own all  the newspapers in Northern California. 

The Internet has dozens of sites now that print only press releases and there are also social media groups and platforms, all of which are transitory and which are limited by the owners in the amount of communication that any determined member of the media can do. Everyone is busiier than ever and on the phone all the time. The pandemic and current politics have isolated people and greatly reduced all forms of face-to-face communication and intimacy. People reject any information that does not align with their worldview.  On this story, we are now and have been ferocious opponents of the overuse of plastic, which I think this is an example of. However, the city has executed this process according to all the rules. Just tonight I have gotten several emails from people with radically different viewpoints. The one thing they all have in common? They are overwhelmingly likely to reject any factual accounting of this issue. If the story doesn’t say the city acted illegally and participated in some sort of deception here, many on the left will reject.  Many of those on the right will refuse to give any consideration of the growing scientific consensus that plastics are bad for us, especially kids.  When the city started on this process, the available information was very limited. There were not articles in the NYT and Washington Post describing growing discomfort and resistance to the overuse of plastic turf across the USA> But its happening. And although I have found no evidence that the city did this for any nefarious purpose or as part of any conspiracy, there is strong evidence in seeral investigations that show the manufacturers of the plastic turf have been taking advantage of extremely lax reporting requirements and exaggerating the information on how safe some of these turf products are. Does that apply here?  We have not found anything that ties the sellers of the turf being used here to that, but to determine that would take many hours of reporting. And being that its pretty much impossible for the facts to influence most minds now, it seems like a big ask to do for free, knowing we will be trolled and the press releases or unresearched diabtribes will be brandished at us as facts, after we find the facts.  So we want to ask one of you to do it!!! LOL. No kidding though.  We can help, but someone needs to take the time to get 1. How much the city has spend on this. 2.  Research the turf and the fill rubber being used on this project. 3. Find out what went wrong and how much it costs that resulted in the big delay in this project a few years ago, and find out if the contractor had to eat that for a mistake they made or if the city did.

But what to do now?

All of the above will take too long to have any impact on the current project. If any more soccer fields are proposed with turf, we will be armed as a community with the knowledge of whether these are as safe as they say they are.  We will also have more information on using this rubber fill material. We already have studies showing the effects of being around plastic are more profound for children than adults.

But for now, I think its wrong for people who didnt show up for the meetings that took place to shut down the project that passed through the Democratic process here with no objections. I would also encourage everyone to go down and look at the project right now. I think the scale of what is happening will make some people have second thoughts about this being a great idea.