A year and a half after initial soil contamination reports, Durham city officials are still unsure when five parks will reopen.
The five parks — Walltown, Lyon, Northgate, East Durham and East End parks — began closing in fall 2023, following a June 2023 Duke University report that found lead contamination in the soil.
East End Park’s tennis and basketball courts and portions of Lyon Park are open, said Mary Unterreiner, culture and community manager for Durham Parks and Recreation. Otherwise, the parks remain closed as the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality continues assessing the soil, conducting groundwater and soil gas sampling. The parks are expected to remain closed at least through the end of the calendar year, and remediation will happen only after testing is complete, Unterreiner said..
“For now the vast majority of each park is closed,” Unterreiner said.
Meanwhile, the city is holding a series of workshops aimed at answering some of residents’ questions. Durham Parks and Recreation, in partnership with community organizations hosted a series of workshops at Walltown, Lyon, Northgate, and East Durham parks in November and December and has tentatively scheduled another “soil shop” for East End Park in spring 2026.
The sessions offered rapid soil testing with experts from N.C. State University. Using x-ray fluorescence, the N.C. State team tested residents’ bags of soil analyzing the levels of lead, arsenic, and cadmium in each sample.
Blood testing for lead poisoning was also available for children aged zero to six. State health officials provided handouts about sources of lead poisoning and potential health impacts on young children, the highest-risk group.
The goal of the workshops was not to study the parks themselves but instead to ease residents’ worries about the safety of their home properties, said Lacey Brown, a community engagement specialist at N.C. State’s Center for Human Health and the Environment.
“There was a lot of interest in the community of learning what’s in the neighborhoods… whether it’s safe for their kids, whether they can have gardens,” said Brown. “We can at least try to get people the best information that we have and equip them with the best decisions for them that we have available.”
When reports about lead contamination in the five parks first emerged in 2023, county officials initially investigated potential health impacts related to lead blood poisoning.
“The county pulled data from a certain radius around each park to see if there were elevated cases of blood lead poisoning in those areas in children and they didn’t find any correlation to the parks,” said Unterreiner.
Concerned resident Michael Konvicka, who has lived in the Northgate Park neighborhood since 1992, brought a soil sample from his lawn to a Nov. 19 workshop at Club Boulevard Elementary School. The soil analysis found that the levels of lead, arsenic, and cadmium were all within North Carolina’s safe level range, to the relief of Konvicka and his wife.
“We’re very reassured about the safety of our property,” he said.
Data from all the tests will be collected later by Durham Parks and Recreation.
Once remediation is underway, the city will use a variety of approaches including the NCDEQ’s “cap and cover” strategy, where a geotextile fabric is placed over waste, said Karl Galloway, a public engagement administrator at Durham Parks and Recreation.
Unterreiner emphasized that the city manages 61 other parks, and that residents can use them for recreation as soil testing continues.
Parks and Recreation’s site suggests that while the parks are closed, the city may invest in nearby parks to add amenities lost by closures. The site also suggests that the city may rebuild playgrounds in safe areas, or reopen areas that are found to be safe.
“In the meantime, we are trying to be creative,” Galloway said.
At top: Photo of a closed city park, as featured on a Durham Parks and Recreation Department website.
Halle Vazquez
