The 32-year-old structural engineer designs buildings - really big buildings. Right now, he's hard at work on a 42-story, cement-and-steel skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan.
So, to some at least, it might seem odd that he vehemently opposes an artificial-turf football field proposed at Lynbrook South Middle School, a half-block from his recently refurbished split. After all, the field would ensure that students played on the latest, greatest playing field available, right?
Kiefer worries that a synthetic field is full of tiny black pellets to make it soft enough to play on. Those little pellets, which add up to 8,000 pounds, are made of used tires. A Rutgers University scientist, Dr. Junfeng Zhang,recently found that they contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, known carcinogens.
A private group, the Friends of the Lynbrook Field Restoration, formed to raise the $1 million needed to buy the plastic-grass field. Kiefer and his wife, Patti, are organizing neighbors to fight it. Already, Kiefer's spoken against the plan at two Lynbrook Board of Education meetings.
Kiefer says he's committed to what he anticipates will become a pitched battle, but he's not as "intense," he admits, as the folks in Rockville Centre.
There, the Rockville Centre Athletic Council, also private, is raising money to lay an artificial field at South Side High School. Neighbors around the school at first got together to fight stadium lighting there. Then, concerned about potential health and environmental concerns associated with artificial turf, they joined in a fight against the planned synthetic field. They call themselves the Rockville Centre Quality of Life Council, Inc. The group hired an environmental attorney to sue the Rockville Centre School District, hoping to force it to perform an Environmental Impact Study before the now grass field is ripped up and replaced by synthetic turf. Apparently, the field sits above what was once a sewage sump for the Village of Rockville Centre. Who knows what's down there? wonders Kelly Carr, a Quality of Life member and special-education teacher in Valley Stream.
In the 2006-07 academic year, the Bellmore-Merrick Central School District was roiled by a six-month debate whether to install artificial turf at its three high schools. I live in the community. I spoke out against the proposal several times in an Editor's Notebook column. The district ultimately went with sod -- that is, real grass. Baldwin, which also considered synthetic turf last year, decided on sod as well. Officials in both districts said plastic grass was too expensive.
Oceanside school officials, however, opted for synthetic turf last year- paying for it with a 20-year bond. Hewlett High School apparently set off the synthetic-turf frenzy across the South Shore when, in 2003, a private athletic council bought a plastic-grass field. How, many athletes and parents in other districts asked, would they keep up now that Hewlett had this marvelous new field?
In short, just fine.
Kids have excelled on grass fields for longer than any of us can remember. Coaches and parents - not plastic grass fields - teach our young athletes the values they need to succeed in sports.
I agree with Baldwin and Bellmore-Merrick that synthetic fields cost too much. In addition to their $800,000 to $1 million price tags, there are those pesky fees and contingencies that rarely get laid out in full in architects' presentations. In Bellmore-Merrick, they would have added up to nearly $200,000 - more than the price of a good sod field, which runs around $170,000. The architect's fee alone would have been $60,000. You could replace a sod field every two years - and it would still be cheaper than plastic grass. Sod fields, though, have lifespans longer than two years. They might last three, four, five years, or more. In Bellmore-Merrick, the fields were used 25 years before parents started complaining about their deteriorated state, according to school officials.
And let's not forget about the cost of disposing of a plastic-grass field. It has to be trucked to an out-of-state landfill. That currently runs $2.25 per square foot, according to the Rutgers University Cooperative Research and Extension. For a 57,600-square-foot field, that's $129,600. In 10 years (the generally accepted life expectancy of an artificial field), the fee would be $169,094, given a 3 percent inflation rate.
All of this good green cash could be used to improve academic programs. At the least, taxpayers could keep it for themselves. Even if an outside group is donating an artificial field, a district might face significant costs (i.e. disposal) that must be fully outlined before it agrees to accept the gift.
Fake-grass proponents say everyone's installing it. Everyone's not. There are 72 stadiums used by the National Football League, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer. Of those, 53 - or nearly 74 percent - have grass fields.
That might be because many pros prefer the real deal. In 2006, the number-one comment on the NFL Players Association's annual turf survey was "make all fields grass to improve safety." Big, burly football stars worry about turf burns and infections caused by sliding across plastic carpet. Bacteria grows rapidly on synthetic turf, whereas it quickly breaks down in natural grass.
Plastic grass might even contribute to global warming. According to the Ontario-based Athena Sustainable Materials Institute, a non-profit scientific think tank, removing a grass field - a giant living organism - and installing plastic grass is the same as cutting down 1,860 10-year-old evergreen trees. That's because natural grass sucks up carbon dioxide and emits oxygen.
I could go on. Suffice it to say, artificial turf is a bad idea any way you look at it.
