from high school soccer fields to multi-million dollar sports complexes artificial turf fields are seemingly everywhere and they're dividing New Jersey communities over the potential health and environmental risks they pose as more Town councils move to replace real grass with synthetic Fields insisting it'll save money and time lost from play Ted Goldberg reports the possibility of replacing real grass with fake grass has created a turf war in Scotch Plains I think it's environmentally irresponsible to pull up natural grass and replace it with plastic especially given the situation that we're in where we're cutting back on Plastics earlier this year the Scotch Plains Township Council approved a nearly 4 million dollar plan to make improvements in Brookside Park among them replacing the grassy baseball field with the more versatile artificial turf residents like Tim Wagner say there's a united front in trying to stop the plan in its tracks Republicans and Democrats they were old people young people they were Sports families and non-sports families and um yeah for the most part it was kind of a uniting issue for people I mean which we found refreshing because it's we're living in an environment where there's a lot of division and a lot of name-calling and so forth as a community we should stand behind our environmental cause and not introduce more plastic into the environment we're teaching our kids get grades K through 12 to take care of the environment and then we're sending them outside to play on a plastic heat island so there's just a lot of hypocrisy plastic heat island might sound dramatic but turf fields can get a lot hotter than your typical grass fields a 90 degree day could lead to Turf temps of more than 150 degrees while Turf promises less maintenance and more durability than grass people are concerned about the extensive use of plastic so close to water and the possibility that turf fields could be full of pfas or forever chemicals for a field this size you're talking about 40 000 pounds of plastic carpet on this that gets covered typically with this rubber granules after wear and tear and you know just general environment exposure the plastic blades break down into microplastics and these of course if you know are well Waterway you know or you know drinking water era something like that there's not a single study that says it's safe there are studies that have said we've not found anything yet we equate it similar to the cigarette companies where back in the day it was like well we don't know anything yet and we do believe there's going to be proof in years forward that it is the chemicals are not good pfas have been found in some turf fields but the non-profit Synthetic Turf Council says testing has not been able to determine if forever chemicals can Leach from Turf pellets into water they also sent this statement Synthetic Turf is safe and has the added bonus of eliminating the needs for chemical pesticides and fertilizers as well as saving hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a typical Synthetic Turf field can provide many more hours of play than a grass field and one group in New Jersey concluded it can cost six times less to maintain than grass you're replacing perfectly for steam land maybe some native trees and some ecosystems and then you know know once those turf fields are actually installed you create more impervious cover and you also could inadvertently create these heat island effects you're putting all of this these chemicals in the ground that's not easy to remove um so basically once it's in that's it the turf companies are then guaranteed millions and millions of dollars every eight years because you have to replace the plastic so these plastic Fields just go to a landfill and then are replaced with brand new plastic as more turf fields pop up around New Jersey the decision for a possible field in Scotch Plains is now up to voters as part of a referendum this November in Scotch Plains I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight news [Music] [Music]