If the public meeting held at Beaver Lake Lodge last week was any indication, whether or not to put synthetic turf and lights on the playing fields at Beaver Lake Park will be one of the most intensely debated issues in the city since it was founded 10 years ago.

Already the battle lines have been drawn, largely with sporting groups and parents of sports playing children on one side, and those who will have to live near such a complex on the other.

Throw into this mix the opinions of those who feel the City of Sammamish should not be sacrificing forest and park land to the provision of sports amenities, and those who support synthetic turf for its benefits to water runoff, and you have plenty of voices.

In the meeting last Thursday, Sept. 3, those voices were raised, in an at times unruly and belligerent meeting between residents and park users, project consultants and city staff.

Following two public meetings earlier this year, a number of topics of contention arose, notably the playing fields, and how the shoreline should be used and maintained with respect to swimming and fishing. The purpose of last Thursday’s meeting was to gather more public input on those topics, and to provide interested parties with some facts about the options before them.

However, much of the discussion about the playing fields was influenced by the belief of some residents that synthetic turf and lights were already a done deal with the city. As a result, their comments sought largely to oppose and object, rather than engage and seek information.

Guy Michaelsen, of consultant The Berger Partnership, opened the meeting with a number of statistics on sports field usage in the city, most of which painted the picture that fields in Sammamish are close to capacity, and that at present the city could not accommodate all the requests from sporting groups for playing space.

One audience member asked whether or not it had been documented how many of those groups not accommodated in Sammamish were able to find fields elsewhere. Michaelsen said he did not have that information.

The audiences’ feelings toward the presenter, never far from the surface, boiled over immediately, with another resident yelling out “If you don’t have the answers, why are we having this meeting?”

Michaelsen went on to present to the meeting the various options for lighting at the sports fields, the different types of which deal in varying measure with the problems of light spilling beyond the targeted area, sky glow, and aesthetic concerns of having tall poles.

He said that while lower poles would be less obtrusive, “the reality is, the higher the poles the lower the amount of spill light.”

Michaelsen said pole heights typically ranged between 65 and 85 feet.

He said that Department of Ecology studies had failed to come up with a definitive answer on the effect of lights on wildlife, and that among lighting designers there was little consensus as to the best way to light a field so as to mitigate impacts on surrounding residents.

Michaelsen tried repeatedly to bring the meeting back to order, struggling at times to deal with an audience which felt the issue synthetic turf had already been decided behind their backs.

“Right now we’re saying, it could be turf, it could be lights,” he said. “No decision has been made. I am not aware of any agenda.”

As a number of audience members lost their composure, forgoing the etiquette of a public meeting, one man said “we have an election coming up. The best way to get this stopped is to get these people out of office.”

This message largely missed its intended target, as none of the incumbent councilors currently up for re-election was at the meeting. Councilors Kathy Huckabay and Nancy Whitten were, however, as was candidate Tom Odell.

Responding to claims from one resident that the city’s capital improvement plan already included $6 million, designated specifically for synthetic fields at Beaver Lake, Whitten said that this designation had been changed.

“Kathy (Huckabay) and I took out those words, but the dollar amount didn’t change,” she said. “We may still use the money for other improvements. It doesn’t have to be synthetic and lights. I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion.”

The audience member replied that the allocation in the capital improvement plan “gave the impression that this is being stuffed down our throats.”

Huckabay said that part of the $6 million could equally be used to improve the natural fields, adding that the fields at Pine Lake were upgraded with no lights and natural turf, and it was very expensive.”

In contrast to the discussion on the sporting fields, the presentation by Peter Hummel of environmental consultant Anchor QEA on the shoreline and beach was received calmly.

“What we are trying to do is find a balance,” he said.

Hummel’s plan recognized the value in funneling recreational use in areas where high use had already extinguished the vegetation, and preserving those areas of high ecological value.

He said the conflict between fishermen and swimmers could be resolved by having their mutually exclusive uses in separate but adjacent areas.