Return to SBCAG.com Home Page

Goleta City Council candidates are all for soccer fields, but no one discusses what kind. The Camino Real Shopping Center used to be grasslands (as in photo) about 10 years ago, with coyotes, raccoons, possums, and countless choruses of frogs. When it rained, the grassland and trees would soak up water, and the frogs were very happy. As environmental mitigation for covering this extensive grassland with concrete, Girsh Park was built with grass athletic fields to: help slow the rain runoff, trap carbon, regenerate the ground water table, and allow the land to work as a percolator when there are heavy rain years. This benefitted the community by having a green space that did not use drinking water, since reclaimed water was used to water the grass, which has a higher CO₂ absorption per gallon than trees.

However in September 2008, the City of Goleta Planning Department quietly gave residents several days to oppose this removal of oxygen-producing grass at the Girsh Park soccer field, and began to replace the grass with artificial turf like astroturf. (Click for notice.) The City personnel seem to have rushed this through and there are issues of Proper Notification and potential Brown Act issues associated with the approval of the project, as well as a lack of a declaration of "Negative" environmental impacts regarding the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). It would seem that covering a carbon trapping, oxygen producing field with a hydrocarbon rug must have environmental implications, that need to be disclosed.

Days after the hearing was over, the bulldozers, scrapers and graders began fervently working overtime to rip up the soccer field grass, break out the reclaimed irrigation piping, and install the pricey plastic pitch which will funnel rainwater into the inadequate storm drain systems, which sometimes now backup several feet of water into local streets. This fake field will increase that risk of flooding.



In October 2008 the City sent a newsletter to some residents, which for some reason is still not available online in November 2008, that predicts flooding due to the Gap Fire destroying much other vegetation upstream, and is advising residents to get flood insurance.

This gold-brick grass project will promote flooding, and has the add benefit of tending to increase injuries particularly to adolescents and teenagers. Astroturf is known to be rough on feet, knees and other joints, and abrasive to skin. Professional Soccer leagues continue bans on astroturf, and many professional soccer teams have refused to play on artificial turf because of such problems (English Football Association (FA), Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA)). William Gaillard, UEFA communications director, said in October 2007: "We are planning to keep the regulations as they are. The president thinks it is better to play on natural grass but, for climatic reasons (freezing), in places such as Moscow, artificial grass may be better."

Perhaps the City of Goleta is expecting severe global cooling? Following are some issues involving this project:

• The field had a functioning reclaimed water system to keep the field grassy during the summer, so the City actually spent money to remove the fairly new system.
• Feces and guano from seagulls, crows and other animals will fester on the artificial surface.
• Skin injuries caused by contact with the abrasive surface may expose the children and other players to avian flu, hanta virus and other infections.
• An elaborate entry way was built for this field, at a time when the City is going bankrupt.
• The artificial surface is probably made from petrochemicals, but when the City was called in 2008, no information was given about what companies are making money from this project.
• The City is contributing to Global Warming effects by removing this grass and topsoil. According to the organization Carbon Farmers of America (CFA), the most promising method of carbon sequestration is to increase topsoil area. According to CFA, the amount of topsoil lost in the Great Plains over the last 150 years can sequester the same amount of carbon that has been released into the atmosphere by human industry since the Industrial Revolution. By restoring the same amount of topsoil, we could reduce atmospheric CO₂ to pre-industrial levels. On a global scale, we could achieve the same result by merely increasing the level of topsoil by 1.6%! Trees take much more water than grass for the same amount of carbon uptake.

Views expressed in this page are not necessarily those of anyone who is known by anyone associated with this webpage. Readers are encouraged to seek answers to the questions presented in the preceding discussion.