The Long Con(way)
By: Chris Dwan
Tags: Artificial Turf, Local Government, Somerville, Urban Forest

On September 24, Somerville’s city council received a request from the Mayor to approve $6M in bonds for the reconstruction of Conway Field. The proposed work includes not just removing contaminated soil at the site, but also installing an artificial turf field and an LED sports lighting system.

The Curtatone administration provided a memo laying this out as a crisp fait accompli. All the decisions, including depth of remediation, turf, lights, layout, and schedule are already made. The city council just needs to sign off, and that sign-off is required by your next meeting, if you please.

In a repeat of what we saw during this year’s budget process, the Mayor is using the power of his office to blunt the city council and to ram through an expensive and poorly documented plan.

It didn’t have to be a rush. The Mayor committed the city to this plan four months ago, on June 7, when he signed the EPA’s “Administrative Order of Consent.” For some reason, capital spending for Conway did not come up at -all- during the budget process that kicked off a week later. He has held off on submitting this bonding request to the city council for three and a half months, creating a tight timeline and artificially limiting the council’s options.

Conway has been a flashpoint ever since the idea of removing the natural grass field was first floated in 2016. In February of this year, the city council’s finance committee rejected a request for $250k to pay for the design services that led to this bonding request, based in large part on concerns that they might be authorizing artificial turf by authorizing funds for planning. The full council overrode its own committee’s recommendation in a fractious debate that lasted well into the evening. At the end of the night it was a divided vote, with seven in favor, three opposed, and nobody 100% sure whether they had just authorized a planning process or the full-on removal of three acres of grassy field.

I think that the city council should reject the bonding request, blow up the negotiation, and force the Mayor to work with them rather than signing secret obligations, handing down fore-ordained decisions, and setting arbitrary deadlines on his “requests.”

As I wrote in June: “When your counter-party is operating in bad faith, gaming the system, or just fucking with you — only a loser keeps trying to work from within that busted framework. You get up and walk away. If you come back, and you don’t have to come back, you return to a different negotiation entirely.”

What’s the Rush?

Conway field has been closed to the public for nearly three years.

In late 2017, while preparing to repair a retaining wall, the city discovered contaminants in the southeast corner of the park. It was fenced and locked, with temporary signs that are now weathered from years of exposure.

The word “temporary” has weathered off of the sign after more than two years

With all that time, despite the quarter million dollars the city council (narrowly) authorized back in February, and also despite $880k spent on testing, remediation, and planning since 2017, we still have very limited details about what, exactly, is to be built. No design sketches or plans have been made available in any of the four public meetings that the city has held about Conway.

Last Thursday’s request for capital funds lists $325k for “Environmental Remediation” and $7,544,000 for “Construction.” Under the agreement with the EPA, they will pay $3M and the city will pay the rest.

With city budgeting, it’s important to read the fine print and to understand exactly what is being asked for and authorized. We have been told, in a non-binding sort of way, that replacement trees will be planted, that the playground will be refreshed, and so on. The only things specified in the request for funds are (1) remediation (2) artificial turf (3) LED sports lights. That’s what the bond will be spent on. Anything else is at the Mayor’s discretion.

How about them trees

I mentioned trees. Trees are a big deal in Somerville. In 2017 and 2018 the city allowed the destruction of dozens of mature trees on Beacon Street, razed hundreds on Central Hill as part of the high school project, and watched thousands come down as part of the GLX construction. This created broad public outrage and was, incidentally, the motivation behind my early civic involvement.

Somerville,MA is the hottest, densest, and most-paved over city in New England. We have the least green and open space per resident and the least tree canopy per acre, of any city in the region. This translates into expensive problems managing storm runoff, urban heat island effects (it’s 10 degrees hotter in the summer in Union vs. Davis), and numerous other practical challenges that are only going to get worse as climate change progresses.

Map of land use in Somerville, MA showing that 80% of our surface is impervious and that we have tree canopy over only 14% of the city. Cambridge, immediately adjacent, has 30% tree canopy cover.

Conway field is either 2.8 acres (according to the 2019 report by our Licensed Site Professionals) or 3.7 acres (according to the city’s Inventory of Parks and Open Space). Either number makes it one of the larger parks in the city. We should really, really do right by this space rather than using the EPA to slam through a 2016 commitment to maximize playable hours for sports by putting in crumb rubber and plastic grass.

The proposed remediation is going to remove 60+ mature trees, dig out 18" of soil, and install a fabric barrier to encapsulate the toxins beneath. This has been pitched as the cheap way out — we can go shallow by installing artificial turf. Natural grass would require us to dig deeper. We will supposedly plant new trees in 18" of clean fill.”

I brought this up with Urban Forestry Committee where I serve as co-chair (I mentioned that I like trees). The committee passed this statement that very same evening. To summarize, “you can’t replant big trees in 18” of soil, turf is madness in the age of climate change, and you’re on the record as being sensible people. Please do not do this thing.”

Neither I nor the committee has seen any response from the Mayor’s office.

You can’t have super fun without …

Look, Conway is a superfund site (a term that the city’s PR organization has assiduously avoided, to date). We’ve got to clean it up. This gamesmanship over a 2016 commitment to install a turf field is crass and duplicitous at best.

Somerville is strapped for open space. During the COVID crisis, signs went up in our parks saying that if the park was crowded, you could walk in the street. You can call it “neighborways” or “shared streets” or whatever, but … you know … it’s insane to turf over 3 acres of grass at the same time that we’re telling people to go play in traffic.

This will play out in the finance committee and then in the full city council in the weeks to come. The reality distortion engine has already been deployed in the memo that accompanied the bonding request. We have zero clarity on the cost breakdown of the project — what we are spending on remediation vs. turf vs. lights. Despite that, the city had the nerve to present -not- installing artificial turf as the more expensive option and to cast this relentless drive to turf over a park as the conservative and fiscally prudent path.

From the memo that accompanied the bonding request. I mean, think of the artists!

I have immense respect for our city councilors and their reasoned, careful approach to these things. When I urged them to reject the entire city budget to bring the Mayor to the table, just a few months ago, that was a bridge too far. Despite near unanimous public opinion that the police budget needed a haircut, that proved to -also- too big a bite for a majority of the councilors.

Perhaps a park, a mere $6M in bond, would be a suitable place for the city council to make a stand, rather than being railroaded yet again. They could at least to force the administration to write down its plans in detail (the plans that we are already committed to) before pushing the city deeper into debt.

I urge the city council to stand up for itself, reject this “request,” save our park, and establish some transparency and accountability in this city.