Willoughby City Council’s Gore Hill Oval in Sydney is a flagship sports field development using artificial turf. Credit: Willoughby City Council.
Surface Tensions Martin Sheppard explores Perceptions, Reality and Arguments around Synthetic Sports fields
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n March this year, the Sydney Morning Herald and various associated papers featured an article on the community concern regarding Councils across Sydney replacing old grass ovals with synthetic playing fields. By quoting various ‘experts’ who offered emotional commentary to the argument in areas that they were not qualified in, the NSW Planning and Public Spaces Minister, Rob Stokes was prompted to order his department to review the sustainability of artificial turf playing surfaces The question should be asked, why has this come about? Over the past decade or so, as the intensity of populations has increased in inner-metro municipalities, the natural turf sports fields have become more stressed with the intense usage. Due not only to the increased population needs, but also the extension of some sports codes from winter into summer competitions, natural turf fields have less time to rejuvenate. Artificial turf allows near year round use to cater for increased sports field demand.
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The consequence of which is that with up to 50 hour usage over 30 or more weeks of the year, no principle style field can cope with that intensity. Some local governments have rightly invested in better natural turf infrastructure, such as improved drainage and irrigation which reduces some of the stress on natural grass. It allows the grass to manage the increased loads better, but still cannot cope with 100+ children/athletes, over 40 or so hours a week. This is when many local Councils explore the use of synthetic technology. While increased access to sports fields is welcomed by participants, community groups are often less happy with such change and all-too-often look to arguments to prevent synthetic playing field developments. Fuelled by internet research they raise alarms, which in turn encourages the broader community to stand-up with this argument. This is where mis-information fuels perceptions, which turns into reality. The consultation program being undertaken on Minister Stokes behalf, between the community groups, users and local government has been facilitated by environmental consultants, looking to achieve a balance between usege needs and environmental concerns. Findings from this review are due to be presented to Minister Stokes in the near future. The reality is that the majority of the community concerns can be addressed easily, their issues are actually masking their real concerns. In the past decade, all of the community ‘calls to action’ have been because the community feel that they are going to be displaced or inconvenienced by the synthetic turf field being installed. Their fear is that ‘their’ parkland will be so busy that they won’t be able to walk their dogs when they want or take the family down for a kick-around, or that it will be so noisy due to the added usage. Indeed the added usage will have the lights on longer, more cars and even reduce value of their property.
