The Nantucket Land & Water Council has been working with consultants, the Horsley Witten Group, to review the proposal for Synthetic Turf Fields as a component of the NPS Campus Wide Master Plan. We recognize that there are a variety of interests involved in this planning process including long-term management of the fields and play time for island students. The NLC’s review is focused on potential impacts to Nantucket’s water resources. The proposed location for the synthetic turf fields is within both the Wellhead Protection District (the zone of contribution for our public water supply) as well as within the Nantucket Harbor Watershed.
Relative to community dialogue around the possible impacts of PFAS contamination to our groundwater, the science is still too young for a full PFAS risk assessment, however the analyses performed on proposed materials indicates the presence of leachable PFAS, compounds which may break down in UV light into additional leachable PFAS, and the real potential for the presence of PFAS compounds that we simply don’t currently have the science available to detect. There are only 24 PFAS compounds that laboratories can currently test for, and only 6 of these have enough data to be regulated in MA. However, there are thousands of these chemicals that we are only just learning about.
The results of the analyses on the proposed turf materials represent a risk of potential PFAS contamination that is simply unquantifiable at this time. Given what we do know about PFAS, it is a risk that the NLC is not comfortable with in our wellhead protection district.
Click HERE: NPS Athletic Fields NLC Comment Ltr 02_07_22 to read our comment letter and our consultant’s review.
Click HERE to read more about the NPS Campus Wide Master Plan.