Barrington baseball field is new again; soccer fields flooded

Little League, BCA officials help pay for field repairs; across town Chianese floods force cancelations

Posted 10/30/18

The large baseball diamond at Haines Park looks different these days.

Earlier this month, the town completed an extensive renovation of the Senior League baseball infield, transforming what had …

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Barrington baseball field is new again; soccer fields flooded

Little League, BCA officials help pay for field repairs; across town Chianese floods force cancelations

Posted

The large baseball diamond at Haines Park looks different these days.

Earlier this month, the town completed an extensive renovation of the Senior League baseball infield, transforming what had been a weed-covered, lumpy baseball diamond into picture-perfect base-paths, pitching mound and home plate.

"Before this was done, it was basically like a fishbowl," said Barrington DPW Superintendent John Renquinha. "The infield, the diamond, had completely sunk in."

A crew from the department of public works ripped up and removed the old sod and built it back up, adding 120 cubic yards of loam, 28 tons of clay, and 12,000-square feet of new sod. Mr. Renquinha said the town creates its own special blend of infield clay and drainage sand.

"A lot of people thing it's dirt. It's clay. We use the same type of clay on all our fields," said Mr. Renquinha. "We were out here two weeks, between our guys and the contractor."

The town joined forces with the private landscaping contractor A.P. Leitao to complete the work. 

Officials chose to make repairs to the field during the fall season because of the weather. Mr. Renquinha said fall is the best time to get grass to grow, although the challenge is made a bit more difficult at Haines Park because there is no in-ground irrigation.

"Any field that does not have irrigation, you have to do this at the right time of year," he said. "If you want any chance of this doing well, this is the time to do it. Underneath that grass there's fertilizer. We limed and fertilized. We've already had three days of rain on it. 

"What we're going to do is come back in two weeks and lift a little bit and see those little white roots and you know it's taking… So for next season we'll have to seed it, stay on it, and hope that Mother Nature will help us. That's one of those things, we've warned everybody that Mother Nature has to be part of this too."

Mr. Renquinha said there are specific constraints when conducting work at Haines Park. For starters, there is no electricity at the park and there are no wells. In addition, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management is in charge of the property and must sign off on changes.

"DEM has full authority over Haines Park," he said.

Mr. Renquinha said the large baseball diamond has not had any substantial improvements made to it since 2007. Barrington Little League and Barrington Christian Academy both have baseball teams that use the field and had noticed the poor condition of the playing surface. They discussed the renovation project and paid about $8,500 — $6,500 from BLL and $2,000 from BCA — for the work.

"This (renovating fields) is something that we used to do years ago. Now, for the last three or four years, we kind of stopped because of funding," said Mr. Renquinha. "This year, together with Little League and Barrington Christian Academy, and the town, and with approval from the town manager, we managed to get this one done. Personally, from our department's standpoint, we'd like to see it more. It keeps things well-maintained. It's easier for us. It's easier for us in the spring, even if we do one (field) a year."

Problems at Chianese

The Barrington Youth Soccer Association sent an email to players' parents recently after officials were forced to cancel a slate of games that had been scheduled for play at Chianese Field on Saturday, Oct. 13.

"The fields at Chianese are on top of a previous landfill, this means that 5 inches below the surface there is a plastic membrane preventing water from permeating into the waste and creating contaminated run off water," wrote a league official. "This is legal protocol for any prior landfill space. The shallow soil level means that any rainfall we get sits in the ground and puddles on the surface much easier than at other fields in town. Soccer games cannot be played on fields where there are puddles and standing water as it is a a danger to players and stops the ball from rolling."

BYSA officials have had to cancel games and practices at Chianese Field a handful of times this fall. The league has not been able to move games because other fields — the one at St. Andrew's Farm Field and at the upper field at Chianese — have been taken "off-line" to rest and repair.

"We take the safety of our players very seriously and the continued use of the fields put all of our players at risk, continued use also put the long term viability of the fields into question. These fields have been rehab(bed) this fall and are starting to show signs of healing, they are however still unusable as too (sic) use them now while the growth is still in its infancy would demolish all of the positive growth," wrote the league official.

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