New York's Appellate Division, Third Department has rejected an environmental challenge to Cornell University's synthetic-turf athletic project in the City of Ithaca and upheld the fields' environmental approval.
The court found that Ithaca planners adequately examined concerns over PFAS, microplastics and other chemicals, Brian Lee reported Thursday in the New York Law Journal. Planners had approved the project without requiring an environmental impact statement.
What The Planning Board Signed
The project at issue is the Meinig Fieldhouse proposal. In a notice dated Sept. 18, 2024, the state Department of Environmental Conservation recorded that the City of Ithaca Planning Board, as lead agency, determined the proposal would not have a significant adverse environmental impact.
That determination is a negative declaration. It is the formal conclusion that the project did not require an environmental impact statement, not a laboratory finding about what the turf is made of.
The Ithaca Voice reported that the planning board voted 4-0 to move the synthetic-turf project forward. The proposal would put two new synthetic-turf fields on Cornell's campus, one of them indoors.
The Review The Court Accepted
The environmental group argued that regulators had not adequately examined risks from PFAS, microplastics and other chemicals. The Third Department's reported conclusion was narrower than a clean bill of health for synthetic turf: Ithaca's planners had looked hard enough at those concerns for the approval to stand.
The ruling leaves the city's environmental sign-off in place. It does not, on the facts reported Thursday, rewrite the planning record or convert later laboratory disputes into findings the board itself made.
A Different Field, A Different Board
Cornell's turf plans do not stop at Meinig Fieldhouse, and the cases should not be folded together. On Game Farm Road, in the Town of Ithaca rather than the city, a separate project turned an existing grass practice field into outdoor synthetic turf and added a clubhouse with an indoor synthetic-turf training space.
Ithaca.com reported that the Town of Ithaca Planning Board determined in March that the Game Farm Road project would have no significant environmental impact and approved Cornell's site plan. The same coverage said Cornell completed that turf installation in September.
Zero Waste Ithaca has kept pressing after trial-level dismissals. Ithaca.com reported that the organization was appealing court decisions in lawsuits involving Cornell turf fields. Those appeals are a separate track from Thursday's reported holding on the city planners' review.
Tests That Did Not Settle The Case
Local coverage of the wider dispute describes conflicting PFAS tests, and the numbers do not all point the same way. Cornell contracted Sports Labs for testing under EPA Method 1633; that test did not detect any of the 40 PFAS compounds it targeted. Zero Waste Ithaca contracted Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Sciences, also using Method 1633, and Bigelow's report stated that two PFAS compounds were detected above reporting limits.
Those results are laboratory reports described in coverage of the turf fights. They are not findings issued by the City of Ithaca Planning Board, and they are not a determination of the turf's full composition or of any health effect.
Finger Lakes 1 reported last November that a court did not consider independent test results because they were submitted after project approval. Zero Waste Ithaca said three accredited lab reports submitted after approval found total fluorine at 53 parts per million and PFAS in turf blades at thousands of parts per million. The group was preparing another appeal.
A Comparison The Group Itself Limited
The argument has traveled. In an August report, Zero Waste Ithaca compared its records dispute over Cornell's turf review with a synthetic-turf fight in the Hastings-on-Hudson school district, while stressing that the projects are not identical.
According to the organization, a parent filed an Article 78 lawsuit in June challenging that district's approval of its turf system. The comparison shows how these reviews are being litigated elsewhere. It does not make the Hastings record part of Ithaca's.
For the City of Ithaca project, the concrete result of Thursday's ruling is that the planners' negative declaration and approval remain standing, without an environmental impact statement. The Game Farm Road installation, approved by a different board, was already reported complete.
