City Swaps Soil for Synthetic as Green Space Gets Less Green

It all started because of a strip of plastic grass.

 

When a group of Washington Heights residents found out that the dusty patch of their local park was set to be covered with artificial turf, they were up in arms. 

 

Bennett Park — the highest natural point in Manhattan, and the site of a Revolutionary War fort — is “very popular,” especially among neighbors with kids and dogs, said Lisa Reist, a 17-year resident. “It’s a place where you can stand and watch your kid play, without having to be right next to them. It’s safe. It’s visible from 360 degrees.”

 

“A lot of people had issues with the safety of [the turf], environmentally and for people’s health,” said Reist, who endearingly calls the neighborhood a “small town.”

 

Since 2021, a group of residents united under the “No Synthetic Turf” campaign has protested, engaged lawmakers and spoken at community meetings to try to stop the turf construction. But it was already too late. “Things were apparently already decided,” Reist said.

 

 

The field in Bennett Park, opened in November, is joining a growing number of green spaces in New York City that are actually plastic, drawing questions and concerns from environmentalists and residents. These discussions about turf have drawn heated debate from Inwood to the Lower East Side, where residents have fought various “turf battles” in their local communities, but with little success. 

 

As of April, the New York City Parks Department has over 35 artificial turf projects under planning or construction in city parks and playgrounds, including at least 14 new fields. These will add to more than 220 turf field systems that the Parks Department currently manages across New York, according to data that Columbia News Service acquired through a public records request in November.

 

On Feb. 27, District 1 City Councilmember Christopher Marte introduced a bill that would ban the installation of new synthetic turf in all New York City parks. In a morning rally outside City Hall, Marte led a group of about 20 environmental activists and community groups that held signs proclaiming their “Right to Touch Grass” and “Parks Not Plastic.” 

 

 

Representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council, Food and Water Watch, Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board, and citizens from northern Manhattan, the lower East Side and Brooklyn also demonstrated at the rally. Marte said he will seek more members of the council to sign onto the bill, nicknamed “Touch Grass,” before it goes to hearing. 

 

Councilmember Carmen De La Rosa, who represents Washington Heights, Inwood and Marble Hill, spoke in support of the bill. 

 

She said northern Manhattan, where residents already struggle with higher rates of health problems, was an “environmental justice community” with parks that “haven’t had any tender loving care for generations.” But, even with activists dedicated to improving their neighborhood green spaces, these parks were often locked into synthetic turf because of council decisions that already allocated funding to large turf projects. “Our hands are tied,” De La Rosa said at the rally.

 

“It is a really false choice when we’re made to choose between having projects continue or using synthetic turf that may have long-term impacts on the health of our community and the health of our children,” De La Rosa told Columbia News Service. 

 

Initiated through the years-long Parks capital projects process, projects like turf are difficult to stop once approved and procured. While the planning process involves a mandatory community input meeting through local community boards, residents of several Manhattan communities said many people weren’t aware of turf projects until the barricades started to go up for construction — at which point it was too late to stop or amend the projects. 

 

Also, each turf eventually wears out and must be removed and a new one installed every eight to ten years. Such “replacement” projects may not require community input like new projects do, the Parks website states.

 

While running for office, Mayor Eric Adams pledged to reserve at least 1 percent of the city’s budget for its parks, but his administration instead cut park funding to its lowest budget share in the last decade, The City reported.

 

But while Parks’ resources have shrunk, over the past 15 years, the city has ramped up allocation of city funds on synthetic turf projects. 

 

 

 

For the last 15 years, mayoral budgets have sustained the majority of these projects. Of capital projects that include artificial turf that started design between 2010 and October 2024, the mayor’s budget paid for or co-funded over 80 percent. 

 

Turf installation cost $34 million for the 107 contracts issued between May 2013 and November 2024, according to listings on the Office of the City Comptroller’s contracts database. More than $3 million more is under review.

 

In the list of Parks’ capital projects as of October, 58 turf reconstruction projects cost $132 million over the last 15 years. The average cost of the 34 sub-contracts that involved installing or reconstructing turf on a single field was $380,000. But costs varied widely, with some smaller turf panels cashing in at around $40,000 and the price tag of some larger fields at over $1 million.

 

As the Parks budget has shrunk, many grass fields have become muddy, unkempt surfaces that could put athletes at risk. 

 

This was the case in Inwood Hill Park, where the old soccer field was “dangerous to play on, with rocks and boulders poking through,” said David Sykes, executive director of Uptown Soccer, a youth sports group. 

 

“The Parks Department told me they have only one or two ride-on mowers to maintain fields north of Central Park, so it’s impossible to maintain grass fields,” Sykes said. “With heavy rain for a couple days, they’ll close the field for a few weeks.”

 

In 2020, the Parks Department suggested turf as a long-term solution for the sports players. Grass “wasn’t even on the table,” Sykes said, whose soccer group provides free sports programs for about 1,000 kids from the neighborhood who are mainly low income. Uptown Soccer signed on.

 

 

But for months, another local group has fought the installation of this synthetic turf field, which will border the Hudson River at the northernmost tip of Manhattan. In recent years, turf has come under fire for its risks of increased heat and plastic pollution, possibility to cause injuries, and chemicals that have been linked to cancer, according to dozens of studies.

 

Proponents of artificial grass often cite the lower day-to-day maintenance costs of synthetic turf once it is installed. But while new turf fields are still constructed in the city every year, it’s the reconstructions that are requiring larger and larger amounts of money. 

 

Costs for removing and disposing of it were also tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the contract data.

 

The Parks Department often procures the turf from hundreds of miles away, with preferred manufacturers based in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Ohio and Canada. Just one is based in New York State, according to the department’s official specifications for synthetic turf on sports fields provided through a Freedom of Information Act request to community organization East River Park Action in September.

 

 

 

The Parks department currently manages 221 artificial turf fields and play areas taking up about half of a square mile, according to Kelsey Jean-Baptiste, the department’s press officer.

 

“While we love the feel and appearance of natural grass for relaxing in our parks’ meadows and natural spaces, we’ve found that for more active uses, synthetic turf offers a number of advantages,” Jean-Baptiste wrote in a statement. “Synthetic turf fields are highly durable, usable

year-round, and able to accommodate a variety of sports and activities.”

 

Dianne Woelke, a California-based board member for national nonprofit Safe Healthy Playing Fields, said artificial turf is the “cash cow” for the plastic consumer industry, so there’s little incentive to pivot toward greener alternatives.

 

Nationally, her group has tracked an uptick in turf construction as several states, from Maine to California, have passed laws or imposed new regulations on turf, some that go into effect this year. “They’re doing 10-16 fields at a time, because they know that legislation is coming,” Woelke said.

 

A new ban on ‘forever chemicals’ in turf, but uncertainty around Parks’ materials 

 

Like an iceberg, the plastic grass for artificial turf is only the visible top of a turf field. In recent years, the rubber material traditionally used to construct the turf’s infill — the thick layer just below the artificial grass — has been decried for its large amounts of “forever chemicals.” These per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) found in items like clothing and cooking pans have been linked to cancers, liver and heart damage, and impacts on childhood development and immune systems.

 

Preliminary results of a Mount Sinai study show some PFAS chemicals at the “highest concentrations” in blood samples from New Yorkers since 2007, said Dr. Dania Valvi, a professor at Mount Sinai’s Department of Environmental Medicine and Climate Science. Another recent study by an environmental nonprofit showed that soccer players whose games are held on turf have PFAS on their skin after games. 

 

In 2023, the New York State legislature passed a law prohibiting the sale of any carpet, which includes artificial turf, containing PFAS, starting Dec. 31, 2026. 

 

 

 

A few activists in upper Manhattan claimed that the Parks Department is ramping up its turf projects in advance of the end-of-2026 implementation date for the new law that bans PFAS in turf.

 

The Parks Department’s official specifications for synthetic turf on sports fields prohibit the use of rubber crumb and notes that synthetic turf must be in compliance with the new carpet law. But although these specifications include detailed requirements for independently testing each turf for heavy metals and semi-volatile organic content, there is no mention of testing for the PFAS chemicals.

 

Instead, the department said it relies on companies to self-report that their products don’t contain PFAS. The department’s current testing requirements are in accordance with testing methods by the Environmental Protection Agency and ASTM International, according to the statement shared with CNS.

 

 

For months, Maggi Farmer, a Washington Heights resident, lawyer and mother of a 3-year-old, has been trying to learn the details of the materials used in the contested turf in Bennett Park.

 

“We had emails, phone calls and Zoom meetings with higher-level people at Parks,” she said. She filed a lengthy Freedom of Information request in May. The first response came in December, but as of March she hadn’t yet received information on the chemicals used in the Bennett Park turf.

 

Meanwhile, the new Bennett Park turf opened in November, and her young son is already playing on it with other kids in the neighborhood.

 

“That’s what grinds at me the most,” she said. “I’m like, ‘just tell me what’s in it,’ but it’s already in, and my kid’s walking on it, and I never got the information that it’s safe.”

 

Farmer said she was worried, but the park was the center of their tight-knit community. “Every other child is on [the turf], so how can I be like, ‘you can’t play here?’” she said.

Correction: a previous version of this story misstated that Lisa Reist grew up in Washington Heights.