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Celebrate the Lower Woodland Park field renovations December 5th

What do you think? (9 Comments) November 21, 2009 at 12:12AM

The two Lower Woodland Park soccer fields are artificially enhanced and ready to party with you. Of course we’re hoping for fair weather, but hey, if it’s raining we’ll get to witness the minimal silt runoff firsthand.

Saturday, December 5, 2009
9:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Light refreshments, Lower Woodland Field #2
Green Lake Way N & N 50th St, Seattle, WA 98103

Please join Seattle Parks and Recreation, the athletic field community and your neighbors in the celebration for the renovation of Field #2 and Field #7 at Lower Woodland Park. The fields’ inauguration, co-sponsored by Seattle Youth Soccer Association and Woodland Soccer Club, will include a special soccer clinic and games hosted by current Major League Soccer players and professional trainers from Elite XVIII Training, and a ribbon cutting ceremony.

The fields now have new green synthetic turf with markings for lacrosse, Ultimate Frisbee and soccer. As one of Mayor Nickels Seattle Jobs Forward projects, these two ballfields were planned, designed and constructed in less than one year with funding from the Parks and Green Spaces Levy.

COME KICK A SOCCER BALL AND JUMP UP AND DOWN ON THE NEW PLUSH TURF.

[Seattle Parks and Recreation]
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What do you think? (9 Comments)
  • head slapper

    Celebrate the new plastic grass / toxic tire soccer fields at Lower Woodland?

    I celebrated by voting against Mayor Nickels.

    Non-press-release info on the plastic grass / toxic tire fields your kids will be inhaling particles from here:
    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationwor…

  • mygreenlake

    Thanks for the comment. We're definitely not plastic-lovers over here, or Parks and Rec spokespeople, but we actually feel OK about these new fields. At the last Friends of Green Lake (http://www.friendsofgreenlake.org/) meeting, we voiced our concerns to Kevin Stoops, Director of Planning and Development at Parks and Rec. Here's what he told us, which we published here http://www.mygreenlake.com/2009/10/woodland-par… :

    The Parks Department is committed to monitoring the effects of both types of synthetic turf. They have hired Herrera Environmental Consultants, an independent research firm, to analyze storm water from the new fields this winter. Samples of storm water will be taken at three locations at four different times and will be analyzed for the presence of suspended solids, phosphorus, fecal bacteria, inorganic compounds, metals (including lead), and phthalates. The samples will be measured against urban storm water from elsewhere in Seattle, state and federal water quality standards, and previous samples taken in other parks.

    ***

    You can bet that the Friends of Green Lake will be following up on those test results, and that we'll be publishing any interesting results here.

    Kevin assured us that the brands of synthetic turf used in Lower Woodland have very minimal levels of lead and other harmful chemicals (which raised our eyebrows, but he replied that everything has some level of lead). A member of the Friends of Green Lake then pointed out that huge clouds of dust used to billow over the fields all summer whenever the field was being used. Breathing in this dust, filled with pesticides, is probably not ideal either.

    Anyway, thanks for voicing your (very understandable) concerns, and keep those comments coming!

  • youth soccer coach

    The new turf soccer fields are GREAT! The old ones were a dust storm for the kids. Seriously, the dust was so thick we had to rotate the kids faster because they were coughing so much not to mention they couldn't see the ball. Breathing in that dust was a real problem and I'm sure the kids ingested much more toxins (from stuff that falls out of the city air) than from the turf. Ok, sure the kids should not eat those little black rubber bits in the dirt, but tseriously urf is so much cleaner/better than the dirt they were on. Grass fields would be nice, if they were could be maintained but all the city grass fields I've played on are in bad shape. It's just too expensive to keep them maintained. Also grass gets regularly applications on toxins — fertilizer and weed killer. How is that better than turf? On top of this, the turf has much less surface run-off than grass.

  • canary in a coal mine

    Crumb rubber is made from tires, which are regulated as hazardous waste by the EPA. Yet we are told by the experts that crumb rubber is not toxic when the same experts already told us that that toxins are in the tires. How can this be? Easy. The EPA only regulates tires, and crumb rubber is not a tire. As a result, crumb rubber is a completely unregulated product, unlike the chemicals used on grass fields, which are regulated by the EPA. In other words – Tires are toxic and crumb rubber is made from tires but crumb rubber is not toxic because crumb rubber is not a tire. Get it?

  • canary in a coal mine

    Crumb rubber is made from tires, which are regulated as hazardous waste by the EPA. Yet we are told by the experts that crumb rubber is not toxic when the same experts already told us that that toxins are in the tires. How can this be? Easy. The EPA only regulates tires, and crumb rubber is not a tire. As a result, crumb rubber is a completely unregulated product, unlike the chemicals used on grass fields, which are regulated by the EPA. In other words – Tires are toxic and crumb rubber is made from tires but crumb rubber is not toxic because crumb rubber is not a tire. Get it?