Over the past 12 years New York City has borrowed an estimated $300 million to put 204 artificial-turf fields at parks, schools and playgrounds. An additional 52 fields are on the drawing board.
The reasons behind this buying binge have been many, ranging from the battle against obesity to an alleged cost savings on field maintenance. Artificial turf is part of PlaNYC, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's blueprint for an environmentally friendly future. Yet a City Limits investigation has found that overuse and chronic neglect has run turf ragged years ahead of schedule; price comparisons generally favor natural grass, even in the long term; and the health risks of turf—largely dismissed by the city after the destruction of one artificial field for high lead levels in late 2008—are much broader and deeper than previously reported.
After years of rejecting health concerns, the city recently agreed to switch materials and to set up new protocols for testing artificial turf, but the backroom negotiations that brought these concessions actually kept more threatening information from seeing the light of day. It's not clear that the new testing regime will eliminate the health risks, and the issues of cost and durability have not been addressed. Relentlessly pitched as a financial boon, plastic grass has turned into a pricey time bomb. As more fields hit the end of their useful lives, the city faces the prospect—and increased expense—of reconstructing them.
In a random survey of 56 artificial fields this summer, City Limits discovered 25, or 46 percent, in serious state of disrepair, with gaps, tears and holes forming obvious trip hazards. At least 14 fields had minor damage, but without fixes, their defects are sure to grow worse.
A Parks Department spokesman says the city has no plans to replace any artificial turf, though the agency has solicited bids to swap out two fields in Manhattan for $3.65 million.
THE GROUND GAME
Signs of deterioration at turf fields
The city bought into turf because it didn't have the operating budget to maintain natural grass, so it borrowed the money instead, issuing bonds to finance turf fields as a capital investment. That's why, even in a time of falling tax revenues and dramatic budget cuts, the Bloomberg administration is purchasing more artificial turf, repeating—and expanding— an expensive and possibly harmful mistake.
The financial risks grow more obvious as time goes on. Last year the Parks Department floated a proposal for $40 million in federal stimulus funds to replace deteriorated turf. First Deputy Commissioner Liam Kavanagh looked a little embarrassed when he tried to explain away the request at a later City Council hearing, excusing it as "part of a planning exercise" that was dropped from the city's official stimulus application.
The trouble of rapidly decaying turf may not have been initially anticipated by the Bloomberg administration, yet the city has been aware of the problem since at least 2006—and it kept on buying. According to a 2006 internal Parks Department memo, former head of capital projects Amy Freitag dispatched a team to survey a sampling of fields in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens; all of the inspected turf had been installed only three to five years before. "Most fields are displaying problems," the memo reported back to Freitag, listing nine common defects ranging from disintegrating fibers and "carpet wrinkling" to shredded seams and "playing lines ripped out completely."
