By Kerri Williams
WESTPORT — As Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida on Wednesday night, the Board of Finance learned that town officials are looking into using the new Lots Lots Elementary School as an emergency shelter.
The town is asking the construction manager to tabulate the additional cost of using the new building as a shelter, according to Jay Keenan, the Long Lots Building Committee chairman, who gave the board an update on the project. He said that those additional costs should be known in the next week.
The shelter would incorporate a portion of the structure, including the multipurpose room and kitchen. The windows in that part of the school would need to withstand hurricane-force winds, he said, for the shelter to be viable. The addition of some showers would also be considered, he said, since those are not normally part of equipment provided for elementary schools.
Keenan also outlined changes in the timeline for the project, which is slated to cost an estimated $100 million. When he last came before the finance board, he said there would be “shovels in the ground” this December, but that now will not take place until late spring.
The planning process for the new school has taken longer than anticipated, Keenan said, attributing the delays to what he said are usual slowdowns during summer months.
The outlook currently is that by summer 2027 most of the construction would be done, with work focusing on the parking lots and fields, plus demolition of the existing school. Officials had initially estimated the new Long Lots would be completed a year earlier.
The building committee is scheduled to give another update on the Long Lots project at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.
Keenan said that he anticipates returning to board meetings frequently during the next few months for feedback on decisions that may affect the project’s cost.
At that time, the public will be able to comment on the emergency shelter proposal as well as other aspects of the project, board Chairman Lee Caney said. The committee will decide on the viability of the shelter idea before it is referred to the board for final approval, according to Keenan.
Another consideration for the project is whether to use artificial turf or natural grass on the athletic fields. In the upper field, the cost of artificial turf would be about $1.4 million, compared to $800,000 for natural grass, he said.
The new building will be built to be as “Net Zero” as possible, in keeping with the town’s commitment to green energy.
Finance board members also discussed the state reimbursement rate for the project, which is anticipated to be about 21 percent. They pointed out that a recent school project in Norwalk had a much higher reimbursement rate of 60 percent. One way to “bump up” that figure could be for board members to lobby at the state legislative level, Keenan said.
Kerri Williams is a freelance writer.
Artificial turf? And at a higher financial cost! No. Following is documented information from scientific sources explaining the nature of the serious negative health consequences of the PFAS – “forever chemicals” – contained in the “blades” and the turf backing on kids, on the public water supply, and on public health and welfare. (Note, these fields have been banned in a number of states and communities, and Mt. Sinai’s Children’s Health center and others strongly recommend against them, for excellent reasons.) A wealth of information is readily available from other sources.
From: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, and the Ecology Center “Now lab tests show that both the grass-like blades and the backing of artificial turf contain the highly toxic fluorinated chemicals known as PFAS….
PFAS are known as “forever chemicals,” since they accumulate in the body and do break not down. Nearly all Americans’ blood is polluted with PFAS chemicals, which have been linked to lower childhood immunity, endocrine disruption and cancer. Children are especially vulnerable to harm from PFAS because of their developing bodies and PFAS chemicals’ persistence in the body. PFAS chemicals are found in drinking water, firefighting foam, and many other consumer and industrial products. …
PEER and the Ecology Center tested eight different samples of turf. They all tested positive for total fluorine, which suggests the presence of PFAS. PFAS are used in the manufacturing process to make the turf blades pliable enough for extrusion. The organizations tested for 36 types of PFAS, but there may be many other PFAS in synthetic grass. ”
From: The Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI)
“PFAS Testing in Artificial Turf Carpet
Determining what chemicals are present in a product can be challenging because chemical contents are frequently not disclosed by the manufacturer. Two nonprofit organizations recently tested artificial turf carpet and found evidence of the presence of PFAS in the material. The nonprofit organizations tested backing of both new turf and older, discarded turf. They also tested a number of samples of artificial grass blades (carpet fibers)….
One possible reason for the use of PFAS in the artificial turf grass blades is to serve as an extrusion aid. That is, PFAS is added to the polymer mixture before it is passed through an extruder. An extruder is manufacturing equipment that melts and forms the polymer mixture into its desired shape. The PFAS helps to prevent the polymer from sticking to the extruder. According to a researcher, artificial turf grass blades were previously made from low-density polyethylene, but the material had poor durability. Newer polymer mixtures have greater durability, but were not compatible
with existing extrusion equipment. Therefore, PFAS were added in order to facilitate use of the new polymer mixture with existing equipment.”
Those are just a couple of semi-technical explanations of how and why PFAS exist in artificial turf. A substantial body of information documents and supports them, also concluding artificial turf fields are serious health hazards.Many of the sources are scientific but the topic has also been covered by such mainstream media as ABC News and the Washington Post. I hope protecting children’s and public health in this way will not generate an argument and that we will responsibly reject artificial turf now.
Thank you Ms Batteau for clearly stating these facts, which should already have been well understood by all of our town decision makers (elected or otherwise).
These guys are determined to get their artificial turf soccer field, come hell or high water, and they want to embed the cost in the school building cost, so the taxpayers can underwrite their sports field without it being its own line item.