Norman Griffiths Oval refurbishment goes ahead
The Ku-ring-gai Council has voted to progress a AU$ 24.4 million project to resurface the Norman Griffiths Oval in northern Sydney with synthetic turf, despite opposition from the local community.
The project has been besieged with delays and cost increases relating to contractor disputes and changes to the stormwater detention of the field.
Originally, a budget of AU$3.3 million had been allocated. That was in 2021.
According to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), newly elected mayor Kim Wheatley said that she didn’t think it was money well spent, but the field needed to be completed.
“It’s been sitting there idle for two years. It’s costing ratepayers a considerable amount of money per month,” she told a local radio station. The council has spent an average of AU$60,000 a month to maintain the construction site since they repossessed it from the contractor in May last year. According to council minutes, the contractor hadn’t done enough due diligence on the project.
The community consultation the council scrapped in its latest sitting, was agreed only a week prior to that meeting.
The refurbishment of the Norman Griffiths Oval includes a new all-weather synthetic turf playing surface (replacing the existing natural grass, which has chronic drainage and coverage problems), new sports lighting, improved drainage, new fencing, pathways and landscaping and an electronic scoreboard.
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Why do they oppose synthetic turf?
Norman Griffiths Oval currently functions as a natural detention basin for stormwater flowing off the upper reaches of Quarry Creek and Bicentennial Park. During major storms, excess flow surcharges onto the field via an inlet culvert which is also why the ground floods so often and games get cancelled. An earlier synthetic-turf proposal was rejected at one point specifically because of the high cost of replicating this detention function.
The current design replaces the above-ground detention basin with an underground OSD system which will have a capacity of 2.4 megalitres. It will be built using a Stormtech-style trench/chamber (crated gravel/void) system beneath the synthetic turf pitch. A bioretention basin and a continuous deflective separation (CDS) unit / gross pollutant trap will catch sediment and gross pollutants before water reaches Quarry Creek. According to the engineers, the technology will be capable of withstanding a one in a 100-year storm.
A 200 mm concrete perimeter kerb around the synthetic surface is supposed to prevent infill (rubber crumb/cork) migration and keep surface water off the field in smaller storms.
While the intentions are good, a flooding incident in April 2024 resulted in repeated discharge of sediment-laden, turbid water from the construction site into a nearby stream. This has rattled environmentalists, who fear a similar incident with crumb rubber once the oval is finished.
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