Environmental Orgs Demand Malden Stop Artificial Turf Installation At Roosevelt Park

MALDEN, MA – Eight environmental justice organizations along with concerned community members have urged Malden elected officials to cancel plans to install artificial turf at Roosevelt Park.

Alternatives for Community and Environment, Conservation Law Foundation, Beyond Plastics Greater Boston, Friends of the Malden River, Friends of Roosevelt Park Malden, Mystic River Watershed, Safe Healthy Playing Fields Massachusetts, and Wicked Cool Mystic sent a letter to Mayor Gary Christenson and city council members on Friday.

In the letter, they asked the city to reconsider plans to install artificial turf at Roosevelt Park, which the groups said was “hazardous to park users’ health, contributes to urban heat islands, and is not cost efficient in the long term.”

“Studies have shown that artificial turf contains PFAS, ‘forever’ chemicals that have been linked to reproductive issues, increased cancer risk, weakened immune systems, and higher risk of obesity,” the letter said. “The installation of artificial turf at Roosevelt Park would be especially concerning because of the park’s use by youth sports leagues and its close proximity to the Salemwood Elementary School. Studies have shown that PFAS can hinder child development and growth.”

Kari Percival is a member of Friends of Roosevelt Park and lives near the park with her two children. She said she worries about the heat island effect produced by the artificial turf, especially for young children from the neighborhood and nearby schools who use the park for outdoor activities.

“Children everywhere are worthy of spending time in green space and not having to be in a space where everywhere is either paved or has plastic on it,” Percival said.

“If you have a nice park that is a green space, it’s kind of a tragedy to take that away from a community,” Percival added.

Curious to see whether or not the artificial turf really created more heat, Percival headed to Mystic Valley Charter School’s artificial turf nearby – one of four other artificial turf fields in the area.

The day was a comfortable 70 degrees, Percival recalled, but when she checked the temperature of the turf field with a thermometer, it reached 102 degrees.

“My son’s feet were hot, he was uncomfortable,” she said. “He was like ‘can I go sit over there?’ He wanted to go in the shade, because you could feel the heat come up through the turf, it wasn’t just that the air was warm, it was like the sensation of heat going right up through the soles of our shoes.”

The heat island effect is one of many issues that impacts the park, which is in an environmental justice neighborhood that has a history of redlining and historic racism, Percival said.

“My question is, why is city leadership targeting this area for adding this artificial turf field, where there’s already four already there adding to the urban heat island, and next to one of the lowest income census tracts of the city?,” she said. “It just seems that the environmental burden is not being made equitable.”

Kathy Sullivan, a middle school science teacher at Salemwood School – which sits directly next to the park – and spokesperson for Friends of Roosevelt Park, has been fighting against the artificial turf industry since 2009, and took up the fight in 2019 when the plans to install the turf were first presented by the city.

Sullivan said Malden community members in the neighborhood were not included in the city’s process to plan and develop the park, despite being under HUD requirements to do so.

“It’s terrible that this is an environmental justice neighborhood where the majority of our kids and their families are second English language learners, that they were shut out of the process, and just given, here, this is what you’re getting,” Sullivan said.

A portion of Roosevelt Park in Malden has been fenced off to public use since 2019 due to lead contaminated soil, which children from the Salemwood School next door to the park had been using for years.

“We’re talking about kids that are K-8 being exposed for years,” Sullivan said.

Sullivan said she feels frustrated by the city’s response, and said she feels the need to protect her students from the harm the artificial turf could cause.

“My students are my kids, and to take advantage of underprivileged children who come from low socioeconomic families, where many of them are new to this country, to take advantage of that is not okay with me,” Sullivan said.