Zero Waste Ithaca Preparing Appeal, Citing Judicial Deference and SEQRA’s Erosion of Public Oversight
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 10, 2025
Cornell’s PFAS-tainted synthetic turf field on Game Farm Road, seen beyond the remaining meadow of goldenrods. The university proceeded with installation while the legal case was still pending, despite community objections. Independent testing later confirmed PFAS contamination in the turf — a sharp contrast to the natural landscape it replaced. September 2025, Ithaca, New York.
Ithaca, NY — Despite independently verified lab results showing PFAS contamination in the material, a New York State Supreme Court judge — part of the state’s lower trial court system — has ruled in favor of Cornell University and the Town of Ithaca, allowing Cornell’s synthetic turf project on Game Farm Road to proceed. Zero Waste Ithaca announced that it will appeal the decision, arguing that the findings required a full environmental review under New York’s State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) law — a safeguard meant to prevent precisely this kind of oversight failure.
The ruling, issued by a Cornell alumnus, limited its inquiry to whether the Town Planning Board acted “reasonably” within the official documents the town reviewed before approving the project. Rather than examining how the Board handled evidence that contradicted Cornell’s claims, the court applied a standard of deference, concluding that the Board’s actions met that threshold — a determination that left key scientific questions unresolved. The court also accepted the Planning Board’s reliance on reports from Cornell’s hired consultants as justified. This outcome highlights a gap in SEQRA enforcement, where institutional self-reporting is often treated as sufficient even when later evidence proves it wrong.
“The court’s ruling improperly deferred to the Planning Board’s own PFAS determination, despite evidence challenging its basis,” said Zero Waste Ithaca. “SEQR law requires the Planning Board itself to conduct an independent, evidence-based review — it cannot simply outsource its judgment to the applicant’s consultants.”
“While the court’s role was to assess whether the Board acted reasonably, not to re-evaluate the science, this high level of deference creates a dangerous loophole. By ruling that the Board’s reliance on Cornell’s consultant reports was ‘reasonable,’ the court has effectively reinforced a system that rewards unverified claims over independent scrutiny.”
Zero Waste Ithaca’s three accredited lab reports — each with full chain-of-custody documentation — detected total fluorine at 53 parts per million and thousands of parts per million within turf blades, a significant source of microplastic pollution. Cornell’s own “non-detect” result, by contrast, used an EPA method that screens for only forty specific PFAS compounds — a fraction of the more than 14,000 chemicals that fall under the PFAS class — and does not detect the polymeric forms bound into plastic turf. Both sets of results were submitted after the Town approved the project, issuing what it called a “Negative Declaration.” Because of that timing, the judge excluded the data from review, yet his deference to the Planning Board effectively upheld Cornell’s flawed “non-detect” result — a test too limited to determine whether plastic turf is PFAS-free.
Turf samples from Cornell’s “PFAS-free” synthetic field, GreenFields TX Pro Plus by TenCate Grass, collected for independent testing. Laboratory results confirmed PFAS contamination in the material, directly contradicting Cornell’s claim of a PFAS-free product.
Although the court set the data aside on procedural grounds, the results remain clear: SEQRA review should have caught from the start that Cornell University’s “PFAS-free” claim was false. The independent lab findings go beyond procedural detail — they reveal the scale of contamination that the approval process failed to catch. The tests detected PFAS in the parts-per-million range, far exceeding the parts-per-trillion levels considered safe in water. For perspective, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency now limits some PFAS in drinking water to just a few trillionths of a part — levels millions of times lower than what was measured in the turf. Yet federal limits address only a handful of PFAS among the tens of thousands now recognized, leaving most untested for safety.
The outcome mirrors an earlier ruling on Cornell’s Meinig Fieldhouse synthetic turf projects, where the lower court likewise deferred to agency discretion rather than probing conflicting scientific evidence. Together, these rulings show how increasing deference erodes SEQR’s core purpose of independent review.
This ruling arrives as New York State continues to expand SEQR exemptions — a trend that has steadily weakened the ability of communities to challenge large institutional projects shielded from public scrutiny.
“Cornell’s PFAS-free claim remains unsupported by science,” the group added. “The Town Planning Board failed to take the hard look the law requires, and the lower court stopped short of doing so. We are preparing an appeal. When the process favors convenience over caution, our health and environment pay the price.”
See the full laboratory reports and chain-of-custody documentation here.
For supporting scientific, policy and media coverage references, see The Case Against Artificial Turf Expansion at Cornell: A Zero Waste Ithaca Bibliography (180+ pages, regularly updated, annotated and indexed by topic; start with the table of contents and use Ctrl + F for keywords).
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