April 12, 2024
Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors
70 West Hedding, East Wing, 10th Floor
San Jose, CA 95110
Via email: BoardOperations@cob.sccgov.org
Dear President Ellenberg, Vice President Lee, and Supervisors,
The Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter and Green Foothills heartily endorse the April 16, 2024 Agenda Item #11 (LF 24-5361) to direct the Administration to report to the Board on options for consideration relating to a County ordinance to prohibit new installation of artificial turf and synthetic grass on Santa Clara County property.
We support this referral for the following reasons:
- The Santa Clara County Medical Association’s opposition to artificial turf on playing fields for reasons relating to public health (https://www.sccma.org/Portals/19/Artificial%20Turf%20Article.pdf)
- The Santa Clara Valley Water District’s rejection of artificial turf as a sustainable alternative to non functional turf (https://www.valleywater.org/sites/default/files/01_Artificial%20Turf%20Fact%20Sheet_030614%20BA.pdf)
- The NFL Players Union members overwhelmingly prefer natural grass (https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/nflpas-howell-92-players-grass-fields-turf/story?id=107045615)
- A sports field wears out every 8-10 years necessitating disposal of 40,000 pounds of plastic and more than 10 times as many pounds of infill, and that there is no method for sustainable recycling of these materials, which then winds up in landfill and, in turn, breaks into microplastics that wash into our waterways (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-us-recycled-just-5-percent-of-its-plastic-in-2021-180980052/, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/23/recycling-can-release-huge-quantities-of-microplastics-study-finds, https://www.turi.org/var/plain_site/storage/original/application/64eb18d6cea7b44882ffaebe71855c79.pdf)
- That microplastic from artificial turf have been found in oceans, in clouds, and in carotid artery plaque during open heart surgery (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0269749123010965, https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-find-microplastics-inside-clouds, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822)
- That artificial turf contributes to greenhouse gas emissions (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0200574, https://www.mvtimes.com/2019/02/20/synthetic-turf-will-contribute-greenhouse-gas-problems/)
- That artificial turf comes with chemical additives, such as PFAS chemicals, to reduce flammability, to provide color, to provide structure etc., and these additives are not tested in advance by the artificial turf industry for their public health effects as, for example, the plastic heats in sunlight (https://cen.acs.org/environment/New-method-spots-unreported-forever/101/i36, https://ceh.org/latest/press-releases/new-testing-reveals-high-levels-of-toxic-pfas-in-artificial-turf/)
There are reasonable alternatives to artificial turf. Artificial turf is not a necessary product. In the past decade natural grass growers and researchers have categorized and bred cultivars that are meant for a drier warmer climate, such as exists in the Western U.S. (https://ipm.ucanr.edu/TOOLS/TURF/TURFSPECIES/charhighht.html, https://www.nimss.org/projects/view/mrp/outline/18821)
- Successful cultivars have been grown and placed in California athletic fields, including San Diego Sate University’s Snapdragon Stadium and Manteca’s East Union High School’s Dino Cunial Stadium (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/aztecs/story/2022-06-02/snapdragon-stadium-update-grass-latitude-36-bermudagrass-american-sod-farms-san-diego-state-aztecs-sdsu-arizona), https://www.mantecausd.net/post-details/~board/district-news/post/east-union-high-school-unveils-renovated-dino-cunial-stadium)
- There are sustainable, low pesticide and fertilizer growing methods, even athletic field grass grown using the same organic management techniques used in agriculture (https://www.beyondpesticides.org/resources/power-organic-parks-program)
For all of the foregoing reasons, the Sierra Club looks forward to having the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors agree to look at options relating to a County ordinance prohibiting new installation of artificial turf and synthetic grass on Santa Clara County property.
Sincerely,
Susan Hinton
Chair, Plastic Pollution Prevention Team
Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter
Alice Kaufman
Policy and Advocacy Director
Green Foothills
CC:
James Eggers, Chapter Director, Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter
Gita Dev, Chair, Conservation Committee, Sierra Club Loma Prieta Chapter