PROVIDENCE — The town of Burrillville has filed a lawsuit against its Planning Board after the body voted down a project involving an artificial turf field.

The complaint, filed in Providence Superior Court in May, claims the Planning Board relied on unsubstantiated evidence about the dangers of the chemicals in artificial turf to make its decision.

The lawsuit also argues the board “did not make any findings of fact in support of its written decision,” and didn’t state how the town had failed to meet planning standards at an April hearing about the field.

The battle over the artificial turf field at Burrillville High School has been brewing since last summer, when several residents took issue with the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or “forever chemicals,” in the artificial turf product and its potential to contaminate water sources.

PFAS are a class of chemicals that can be found in all sorts of items, from firefighting foam and waterproof clothing to the coatings of non-stick pans. Exposure to some PFAS has been linked to fertility issues and increased risk of some cancers, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Burrillville resident and local conservationist Roberta Lacey sued the town over the turf field last fall, citing those concerns and arguing that the town did not go through the proper planning process to get the field project approved.

The judge in that case didn’t find that the PFAS in the turf violated any regulations but did say that the town needed to bring the project before its Planning Board, which then denied the project after reviewing it.

The board, “under a barrage of mob mentality verbal attacks from the public that night made a legally incorrect decision [and] basically on a subjective basis voted ‘no’ without any finds of fact,” Burrillville Town Council President Donald Fox told ecoRI News. “That is not permissible.”

“Everything at that site is at a standstill,” Fox said, including the press box, snack stand, and features that would make the complex accessible to people with disabilities.

While he said he agreed with the judge’s findings in the case Lacey made regarding PFAS, he didn’t think the judge was correct that the project needed to go before the Planning Board.

He argued that other projects, including a natural grass field at the town’s middle school, did not go before the Planning Board and no one has voiced any opposition. Fox said he hopes the case will not have to have a hearing in court, and instead, the Planning Board, which has two new members, will take the project up again.

In the board’s response to the complaint, members denied that there wasn’t any evidence for their concerns about possible PFAS contamination from the turf. They also denied that they made their decision without stating a finding of fact.

Planning Board Chair Steven Foy said he wouldn’t comment on the active litigation.

In July, the Burrillville Grassroots Coalition, a new nonprofit group aimed at environmental education and advocacy in town, joined the case as an intervenor.

Pia Mueller, a Burrillville resident and treasurer of the group, said they joined the case because they felt it was their last chance to make people aware of the potential dangers of installing artificial turf.

“There’s two acres of plastic on Clear River” if the field goes forward, said Lacey, the group’s vice president. “It’s taken 80 years to clean that up.”

Although one of the first actions as a group has been joining this case, Mueller and Lacey said they want the future focus of their advocacy to be outside the courtroom, including running educational programs for local kids and providing people with information about the town’s environmental decisions and impact.

A status conference for the case has been scheduled for Aug. 19.