Six-Figure Cleanup Cost for District Fields

The cost to clean up the battered high school fields in the wake of Irene will come at a price of over $100,000, according to Superintendent Dr. Daniel Fishbein. However, the district believes the local taxpayers likely won't bear the full burden of those costs if history is any indication.

The superintendent said at Monday night's school board meeting that work on the fields has already begun and the district is projecting RHS Stadium Field–which suffered a rip in the seam and featured large "bubbles"–to need repairs and cleaning worth just over $58,000. Stevens Field, meanwhile, checked in at $32,585 for a repair and cleaning.

With "G-Max" tests needing to be performed as well as other costs relating to Irene damage, notably in landscaping and a repair to the bulled-over fence, the grand total "is going to be about $118,000," Fishbein said. 

to the high school fields, just a year after installation.

As a point of comparison, Fishbein said, the cost to clean up the then-grass fields after Hurricane Floyd in 1999 was nearly $300,000. The extreme flooding–a result of about 10 inches of rain–destroyed the track just over a decade ago. With combined claims to FEMA and its insurance company return after Floyd, the district was only on the hook for "about $10,000" Fishbein said.

"It's too premature to tell you what we're going to get from FEMA," said the superintendent. "We had our first meeting with them today, so we'll see."

Weather permitting, district officials say, Stadium Field should be ready for use by the upcoming weekend. Stevens should be ready shortly thereafter, sometime next week if all goes according to plan.

Neighbors want further tests

Neighbors flooded in as well to say their piece on Monday night. Tom Kossoff, of Heermance Place, challenged the individual members of the board to say what yearly maintenance cost they would be comfortable with stomaching as a result of annual flooding. His request went unheeded.

Kossoff also said neighbors of the flood plain fields are more than happy to fund an "inexpensive" permeability test, to objectively record how well the fields are actually draining. He, like Susan Schreiber of Warren Place, believe the turf is not draining and its effects have diverted rushing water to nearby homes like it never had before.

"We were told the turf would improve the drainage," Shrieber said. "It hasn't. The brook overflows and brings the sticks, the twigs, the mud, the debris. There's no where for the water to go."

In a 15-minute monologue of sorts at the end of the meeting, board VP Bob Hutton said, as far as he can see, it's going to remain as Field Turf in spite of some opposition and unpredictable maintenance costs.

"We have Field Turf facilities. That's what we want. We know the consequences," Hutton said. "Those fields . . . I think are going to remain Field Turf for the forseeable future."

Hutton said, as many other board members and administrators, the storms of 2011 "are an anomaly."

"My friend Bob Hutton misses the point," said Ridgewood High School Neighborhood Association spokesman Jim Morgan. "We have invested over $3.5 million in these fields and no one is seriously suggesting that they be taken out no matter how misguided the BOE was to put them in the location it chose in first place. What is now being requested is that the BOE study whether they are the cause of increased flood damage and, if so, what can be done to mitigate future costs. Let’s move on and address the future costs."

The district's stance, Kossoff said, runs counter to the village's. continually building sheet rock and throwing away money at replacing it was foolish.

"They're devising a plan. They don't want the same thing happening at Village Hall. They don't want to spend that money. Sooner or later, someone may say the same thing with the fields," Kossoff warned.

"Did it really pay to put a Maserati in a floodway?"

Of the permeability test, Kossoff said: "I think it's something you owe the neighbors and the public."

Fishbein will be consulting with professionals to determine whether the district should do the test, Lenhard said after the meeting.