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Turf plans unfeasible
(by Erin Patricia Griffiths - July 22, 2008)
The River Vale Council had planned for an artificial turf to be laid down at the Mark Lane Complex to combat the overuse of the fields from large numbers of athletic groups that play on them. But the status report that was delivered by Dennis Harrington, town engineer, exposed several problems with the nature of the material beneath the athletic fields that would make the project a time-consuming and expensive endeavor.
“Our idea was to have this beautiful facility that was field turf, or whatever brand, with some improvements for the whole community, and we’ve run into some obstacles along the way,” said Council President Glen Jasionowski.
The status report on the project, issued on July 8 in draft form, outlines the subsurface of the fields, summarized in a report by a geotechnical subconsultant.
The facilities were constructed over an old municipal garbage dump, which required between eight and 10 feet of fill beneath the playing surface to level the ground. Some areas where the fill was laid are still settling, and will continue to settle as can be seen by the depressions that have surfaced in the present field composed of natural grass.
If an artificial turf were to be laid on the field, future settling of the land would cause a number of problems both aesthetically and internally. The drainage system required for the turf would not be able to support the settling of the land, and the turf would not be able to be filled in the way regular grass can with topsoil and seed. A settlement of just one to two inches would render the fields unusable.
In order to prepare the land for artificial turf, the settlement would have to be accelerated manually. It would require using different types of compaction equipment such as dynamic compaction or rollers used in landfills to roll material out to force compaction. The old landfill would need to be excavated and refilled and packed. According to Harrington, it would not be a technically difficult project, but would be time consuming and require a greater financial commitment from the township.
The filling of the old municipal garbage dump is not the only problem plaguing the project, due to the facility also being built over an old outwash from Holdrum Brook. Below the fill level, where the outwash formerly existed, a layer of peat moss was added. It is also a compressible layer of material, and depending upon where the peat moss is in its life cycle determines its compressibility. The weight that would be added to prepare the grounds for an artificial turf would also squeeze the peat moss and cause settlement.
“I think that we’ve seen that this is a dead end at this point,” said Jasionowski. Jasionowski has requested a meeting with the project committee in which they could revisit the possibility of a plan to fix every natural grass field in town instead of installing artificial turf at the Mark Lane Complex.
Erin Patricia Griffiths' e-mail address is GriffithsE@northjersey.com.
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