In Sag Harbor, Growing Opposition to Artificial Turf

Members of the Sag Harbor Elementary School PTA and Pierson Middle and High School Parent Teacher Student Association voted last Thursday to take a formal stance against the school district's artificial turf field project.

The groups' decision to publicly oppose the project comes about two weeks before the school administration is to hold a district-wide vote asking residents to approve using $365,000 from its capital reserve fund to supplement money that has already been set aside for the turf field. Bids for the project, which was approved by a fairly narrow margin in 2013, came in higher than expected; additional money cannot be used without voter approval. The public vote on the artificial turf field will be held on Dec. 14 from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The PTA and P.T.S.A. held a forum last Thursday on the turf field. It featured presentations by Katy Graves and Jennifer Buscemi, Sag Harbor's superintendent and business administrator, respectively, and by Patti Wood, the founder of the Port Washington organization Grassroots Environmental Education, who has spoken out against artificial turf fields.

• RELATED EDITORIAL: Two School Districts Go to Voters Next Week

The Dec. 14 vote "has a lot of people talking, a lot of people asking questions and wanting answers," Aura Winarick, the Pierson P.T.S.A. president, said at last week's forum. "We quickly learned that the PTA has actually a much larger role in this than we thought. . . . The PTA is the nation's oldest and largest child advocacy organization. There are seven million of us. What that means is we can and we should be much more than bake sales and black-light volleyball. All that is really fun and important and we should continue to do that by all means. However, at the heart of that is advocacy, and that means doing whatever we can as one voice and one body to make every child's experience a happy, healthy, and safe one."

The two groups "realized it is our duty to provide this forum and take a position," Ms. Winarick said. The forum was open to everyone in the community, but only members could vote on the groups' positions. The finally tally of 32 to 3 against the artificial turf included ballots cast by 13 new members who signed up at that night's meeting.

The presentation by Ms. Graves and Ms. Buscemi was straightforward, focusing on the facts of the project. The money in the capital reserve fund already exists for district use, and a simple majority vote is needed to give the district permission to use it. No additional taxes will be levied for the immediate project at hand. The turf field project has been scaled back from its initial scope, with pieces such as a two-lane walking track and landing spot for movable bleachers having been removed to make it more affordable, but the initial $1.62 million that voters approved still fell short. If the voters approve the use of $365,000 for the field, the capital reserve fund will still have $1.77 million left for other uses. The total cost of the new field is expected to be just under $2 million.

The synthetic turf field project was initially approved in 2013 by a vote of 585 to 507, but the New York State Education Department took more than two years to approve the plans. In the interim, projected costs rose, and when the district finally received bids from companies interested in building the field, those bids were hundreds of thousands of dollars over budget.

The turf field would be used by all grades at Pierson for gym classes and recess and by the field hockey, soccer, junior varsity and middle school baseball and softball teams, and for other student activities and off-season programs. Built into the $365,000 request, the school board asked for funding for an option called CoolFill, a coating for the crumb rubber pieces that reflects rather than absorbs heat, which is said to moderate the temperature on artificial turf fields.

"We can't tell you how to vote, we can just encourage the community to vote on a very spirited topic," Ms. Graves said. "At the end of the day, we are still a community."

Addressing the question of the safety of the artificial turf with an infill made from rubber from recycled tires — the primary sticking point among the project's opposition — Ms. Graves cited the United States Environmental Protection Agency, which has said that "limited studies have not shown an elevated health risk from playing on fields with tire crumb, but the existing studies do not comprehensively evaluate the concerns about health risks from exposure to tire crumb." The E.P.A., in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and other federal consumer protection agencies, launched a research plan on the crumb rubber infill products used on artificial turf fields.

Should the proposition fail, Ms. Graves said, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo "has approved our moving toward a different option if this is not approved -- a natural grass option." School officials have said in the past, however, that a natural grass field could be more restrictive because of limitations connected to weather and overuse.

In her presentation, Ms. Wood focused on the alleged risks of the artificial turf fields. She said they include increased injuries for athletes, such as "turf toe," burns on hot turf, and joint trauma on fields that have not been maintained properly. She said athletes playing on turf fields are exposed to harmful chemicals via the crumb rubber infill most frequently used on the fields, including neurotoxins, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and carcinogens such as benzene that are present in the industrial rubber used to make the tires that are then broken down into the crumb rubber. That, she said, is accidentally ingested or inhaled by athletes who are breathing hard during games.

"This is why we're seeing a growing number of student athletes, mostly in high school and college, coming down with leukemia and lymphoma, particular soccer goalies," Ms. Wood said.

There is also the matter of exposure to bacteria on turf fields that are not disinfected regularly, she said. Artificial turf does not contain the microbes found in soil that naturally filter bacteria from natural grass fields after athletes sweat, spit, bleed, or vomit on the field, she said.

"We have a ton of science on this -- academic, peer-reviewed, independent studies," Ms. Wood said.

"This is what our organization does and does best. We put together digests of academic research on different issues, and none of it points to putting these fields down and taking a chance. At Grassroots, we embrace the cautionary principle. When an activity raises threats to human health or the environment, we take precautionary measures. It takes decades to establish scientific certainty."

In a spirited question-and-answer period following the presentations by Ms. Graves, Ms. Buscemi, and Ms. Wood, several residents spoke out against the project.

"I am not willing to risk my child's health or my neighbor's child's health or the children after us. I think we should wait," said Larry Baltz, a parent of a Pierson eighth grader.

Catherine Smith, another parent, said she objected to the turf field because "this is our only field" at Pierson.

"They're on it. We don't get to choose as parents to expose our children to this," she said. "We are sentencing them to cancer if we send our children to Sag Harbor schools. . . . Other schools have one field of many fields. It's not their only field. This is a death sentence and lawsuits up the wazoo for the school."

But Greg Burton, who has been a vocal supporter of the artificial turf field, said the fact that Pierson has just one playing field is exactly why it should be transformed into a turf field.

"The problem with having a natural field is that 60 people in the whole school will be able to be out there on the field, field hockey and soccer, and only for two months a year," he said. "So much for being in a rural or suburban area, because we don't have a field to play on. We have to be pragmatic."

Following the PTA and P.T.S.A. vote last Thursday, the two groups released an official joint statement over the weekend saying they "do not advocate for the proposition put forward by the district. We recommend a 'no' vote to the resolution being presented Dec. 14."