RHS Football Field

This is from my pals over at the Ridgewood Patch:

"Neighbor of the high school Tom Kossoff says he's concerned about health implications of dust related to the cleaning of the high school fields. Kossoff maintains the district should receive a citation for having the dust affect neighbors. Additionally, he expressed concern that the school didn't lock gates that allowed students to be exposed to the dust."

Photo Credit Tom Kossoff

I would say "concerned" is putting it mildly. I bet he is furious and wishes the school still played on a grass football field!

The grass field flooded out on more than one occasion while I was growing up but "astroturf" was relatively new and wasn't ever considered an option in those days. My guess is that if people had seen the health hazard created by the method used to clean the field this month, plans for the turf would been shelved. Admittedly, hindsight is always 100% correct so I hope a less noxious solution is proposed the next time we have a flood.

My rather conventional thinking about turf versus grass always supposed the replacement of grass field was supposed to reduce costs and offer a better guarantee that the field would be available after a heavy rain. I can't produce statistics to show how much we used to spend to restore the football field after a heavy rain or even how much this month's affair will cost in the end after litigation is complete. Though I did find on the Internet the minutes from a Village Special Meeting in 2007 to discuss the Parks and Recreation Master Plan. The following statistics were presented by Bard Fresenberg, an Extension Turf Grass specialist at the University of Missouri. He "completed a cost analysis over 16 years stating that a natural soil based field would cost $33, 5000 to maintain; a sand cap grass field would cost $49,000; a basic synthetic field would cost $65,800 and a premium synthetic field would cost $109,000. Mr. Fresenberg concluded that a public agency could take the same money it would cost to install a synthetic field and instead put in a sand-capped field and put the remaining money into a maintenance fund with recurring bond value resulting in a premium natural grass field with most of the maintenance costs covered."

I will now say, half-jokingly, that the argument against turf will always be the same: Grass doesn't ever have to be "cleaned" and it will withstand a flood just as well as the turf does, which is to say, not very well.

One other note:
"the National Football League (NFL) Report of 2004 states that 100% of football players prefer natural grass fields rather than artificial turf."

In the end I say we might listen more carefully to what the Professionals think about turf.