So if you want to visit the 2025 Time Machine for the Main Line, you will remember back towards the winter into the early spring there was a lot of chatter about the much lauded Agnes Irwin School in Radnor Township right? Nasty glare bomb lights? A dog and pony show at a Radnor Township meeting by the school and a former member of the police force now Agnes Irwin security living in a house the school owns that used to belong to someone’s parents I went to school with many moons ago? (Ahh yes I remember it well….or so the line from an old show tune goes….)
I don’t think very much happened with regard to the lights. And I don’t think Radnor Township backed up the neighbors much at all?
Anyway, around that time, it also came out that they were proposing turf fields. I should say proposing turf fields again, because Agnes Irwin has run into issues before having to do with turf fields haven’t they? All you have to do is go do an archive search of Main Line Media News…. or ask people who remember.
So if you are a neighbor of Agnes Irwin, are they treating you the neighbors with respect? I mean it’s been bad enough the past couple/few years as parking everywhere seems to have become normal rather than occasional, correct?
I do not recall that the lights seemed particularly better now? I mean you would hope by now they would’ve at least changed the kind of bulbs so it was less glare bomb right? All should be shaded down too, right?
So with the lights, etc. that’s one giant demerit for them in the environmentally, friendly aspect isn’t it? Isn’t it well documented what lights do to the flight paths of migrating birds and nature? And interrupting human sleep cycles?
So now everything is all torn up because they’re putting in turf fields. I also seemed to recall that the turf field they are creating on the playing fields that run alongside the one side of those residential streets off of Conestoga they abut goes to the creek, doesn’t it? We all know what it takes to “recycle” turf fields, correct? Isn’t it like places where they just dump the old rolls of turf they don’t like really recycle them per se do they?
Artificial turf can contain PFAS right? It also breaks down over time, releasing microplastic particles into the environment. Irwins has been saying that their turf is carbon neutral? OK so that might mean they’re using recycled plastic maybe? It still doesn’t negate all the other potential issues, does it? Sorry not sorry I don’t believe the carbon neutral turf actually helps the environment or mitigates climate change. My opinion is that this is the Emperor’s New Sporty Clothes. But you can bet that it’s really really expensive, right?
It’s ridiculously hard to recycle artificial turf. That is the reality. It ends up in landfills, doesn’t it? If you Google, you can see pictures of like fields or piles of it in landfills.
Something else is it contributes to something they call “heat island effects.” So it’s not real, it’s fake so as opposed to grass, it absorbs and retains more heat. Which means that Agnes Irwin is going to possibly heat up residential neighbors as well isn’t it?
Artificial turf also contributes to loss of habitat for nature and wildlife. Turf doesn’t need to be watered per se, but again what happens when water even rains runs off turf? Pollutants, right?
https://gba.org/blog/artificial-turf-fields-health-and-environmental-concerns/
So Agnes Irwin is trying to build its legacy to itself. In my humble opinion, they’re desperately trying to compete with the other private schools in the vicinity. Can they compete? I don’t know. My opinion remains that their obsession over the years with turf fields says to me they are concerned with the wrong things. Athletics are great, but is there a true balance with academics?
And if you notice in one of the pictures that were taken from a public road with no trespassing, you will notice there’s a split rail fence between the school and the public streets and neighbors, right?
I think that the school needs to put up a more permanent kind of fence which cuts down on cut throughs. You know like a 6 foot wrought iron looking fence and screening landscaping that is properly and consistently maintained? The reality is them putting in fields like this means they’re going to have to make them pay because they are that expensive.
Other schools with fields like this will often rent their fields, I think they should spare the neighbors by putting up a more permanent fence so the neighbors don’t have any more unintended consequences to deal with and they do already having a private school as a neighbor.
So a good fence might make for good neighbors right? (And it would cut down on those pesky cut through and parking all over neighborhood streets, wouldn’t it?)
Agnes Irwin has its turf fields being built, so now it’s time for them to stop being selfish jerks to the neighbors and do better, don’t you agree?
As for Radnor Township, people are complaining that they changed the route of the Garrett Hill 4th of July parade when hello perspective? This is kind of the stuff that matters in the bigger picture, isn’t it? I mean to me the whole thing with these turf fields / glare bomb lights and Radnor Township kind of reminds me of all they haven’t done in North /West Wayne about stormwater management over the years , doesn’t it?
And no matter what you think, these fields are not environmentally friendly, and shame on those involved. And at the end of the day, turf fields also aren’t particularly easy on human joints are they?
Just another rather predictable and to a contentious issue in Radnor. It makes you wonder when residents will actually matter again or should I say all residents?
