She Refused to Be Silenced: How a New Jersey Marine’s Environmental Fight Inspired Statewide Legislation
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Amy McCambridge was given a clear choice: stop publicly speaking about environmental concerns involving local athletic fields to protect her soccer career, or keep speaking and risk losing it all.
The U.S. Marine Corps veteran chose to keep speaking. She lost her job, faced a state investigation into her nonprofit, and saw historic preservation decisions overturned. Instead of backing down, McCambridge escalated her local crusade into proposed statewide legislation—the New Jersey Living Fields Act, now under review by State Senator Raj Mukherji’s office.
The Battleground: Clean Water & Synthetic Turf
At the core of McCambridge’s advocacy is water safety. As Ridgewood, NJ, confronts ongoing PFAS contamination in its drinking water, McCambridge raised critical questions about replacing natural surfaces with synthetic turf:
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Watershed Contamination: Synthetic turf fields situated feet from natural waterways flood during heavy rains, potentially transferring PFAS and other chemical runoff directly into local water systems.
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Child Health & Safety: After two decades training youth athletes, McCambridge argues that protecting sports shouldn’t come at the cost of clean drinking water.
Infrastructure Under Threat at Zabriskie-Schedler
The fight extended to the historic Zabriskie-Schedler property, where plans for a synthetic field threaten nearly 200 mature trees along Route 17.
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Trees as Living Infrastructure: Mature trees absorb stormwater, filter highway exhaust, store carbon, and buffer neighboring homes reliant on private drinking wells.
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Cumulative Impacts: McCambridge emphasizes that incremental environmental losses across towns aggregate into complete ecosystem destruction.
Personal Costs & Targeted Backlash
McCambridge’s persistent advocacy met heavy personal and professional resistance:
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Career Loss: Refusing to stay silent on environmental issues cost McCambridge her beloved position as a professional soccer trainer.
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State Investigation: A complaint triggered a New Jersey Department of Agriculture Division of Animal Health investigation into her equine nonprofit, The Unbridled Heroes Project. Inspectors checked all 11 horses and closed the matter after finding the facility fully compliant with state standards.
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OPRA Records: Public records requests later revealed the complaint originated from a local official using a council address, highlighting the severe pushback residents can face when challenging municipal decisions.
The Solution: The New Jersey Living Fields Act
Recognizing that communities fight identical environmental battles town-by-town, McCambridge drafted the New Jersey Living Fields Act. The bill aims to establish statewide standards addressing:
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Independent scientific evaluation of synthetic surfaces.
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Protection of living soil and local watersheds.
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Comprehensive analysis of cumulative environmental impacts.
“Do not confuse consequences with being wrong. Sometimes standing for something costs you something. Stand anyway.” — Amy McCambridge
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This woman is so courageous and truly amazing! Thank you for fighting the good fight that so many are afraid to do.
True hero fighting against Vagianos’ administration where he was voted in by the sports organizations demanding turf and corralled other individuals from the community to do the same when they ran. Weitz and Winograd also on board for turf even when they know of the imposing health hazards. There’s also Mortimer the turf loving Bee Man. You just cannot make this stuff up. Sad that this council would try to hurt and publicly shame someone for their advocacy.
The local administration and sports groups took it personally. Their inflated egos prevented them from recognizing that this fight was never about them—it is bigger than any individual, organization, or personal interest. By making it personal, they lost sight of what is truly at stake.
GO AMY!
who was the local official ????
That’s the bigger story. Who was it?
same question
Siobhan Winograd.
And this elected official has nothing more to say? And no one on council has spoken out against her alleged actions?
The sports organizations are supposed to be teaching our children lessons in exemplary sportsmanship. What theyve taught young and older folks in our community about is bullying and winning through intimidation at all costs, even when it means firing a coach that the kids loved. Boo hoo to Maroons Soccer for firing Might be time to rename them to Morons soccer.
Didn’t all of the sports organizations just donate a ton to secure their pay to play schemes at Schedler. I guess Whino needs to secure her re-election by making promises. Her first set of promises were lies so lets see what happens now.
Hi, I appreciate the article, and yes, they went after my non-profit. Everything I love and I’ve worked so hard for. A complaint came in and next thing I know, this DEPT. OF AG is at my farm. I asked them what the complaint was, we are a sanctuary, we rescue horses from the worst type of abuse. So I didn’t understand why they were there. They said they had received a complaint, I asked from where. They told me Ridgewood, I found that really odd because my FARM is in Allendale. I requested all of the records but was blocked by the village attorney Matt Rogers at every single step. It took months until I finally got the records. The person who made the complaint under her official capacity as council woman was Siobhan Winograd. She used the council as her address and abused the position she was given to serve the people. To me, she should lose her position as council woman due to these false allegations in another attempt to get me to stop. She is an awful human being and the council, the mayor of the Village manager, they are also so extremely corrupt. We are not done fighting. And someone mentioned in one of the comments that the Maroons and the other sports groups donated all of this money to Schedler, that is completely true. What so sick about all of this is the damage environmentally it’s going to do and long-term health risks that we don’t know about yet. It’s definitely not over and they are in for a fight. They can laugh and giggle and collect all the money they want but the field is not going happen. They failed to realize that we ourselves as humans are part of nature.
Siobahn probably knew exactly what she was doing in light of her affinity for soccer. I suppose she thought she would get away this anonymously with the village residenrs not knowing what she did. Well, surprise. Pretty scrappy and really bad karma to try to hurt someone a veteran no less and an animal lover and caretaker. It is really a new low that she would stoop to to try to bring someone down.
It was such a low blow. I would literally die if I had to for one of my rescues, and I mean that serious. I put myself in some pretty dangerous situations to save them and to bring light to the abuse that happens. What she did was like a kick to my heart. And the person who doesn’t like this, Siobhan it’s probably you, and honestly shame on you, and shame on anyone who condone this. If I were to walk into the police station and say hey, I have a complaint about a farm and a different town, they’d go tell me that they can’t help me and to go to the town and file a complaint. She specifically used her official position as a council woman to put in this complaint. Apparently she got an anonymous letter in the middle of the night.🤯. It was her and clearly the council had to know about it because she acted in her official capacity as she says and used the council‘s address. Matt Rogers did everything to make sure I did not see the complaint. I kept getting the same answers over and over. After months, they finally told me that I had to go to the Ridgewood Police department to get the records so I did that, but the records didn’t exist according to them. I continue to push and push and to be completely honest, I think someone didn’t get the memo to not give me the record and they sent it to me. I am so so angry because she puts everything that I love in jeopardy. It was a cheap shot. And as much as I want to go personal with her, I’m not going to. I’ve learned that the best revenge is simply staying on task. What I am going to do is stop that field. I’m not gonna let her distract me or the council distract me. But that field is not gonna go up and those trees aren’t going to be destroyed and the neighbors well water is not going to be contaminated due to the turf field, the animals, micro species, earthworms everything that lives there, they’re going to get to keep their home. This was never our land to begin with. It belongs to all living things. I’m not going to watch the greed of some destroy what is priceless. So she can do whatever she wants, but it is public, and it will hurt her campaign, and if this gets in front of the attorney general and the ethics committee, she is done. People like that should not be in any type of office.
Where is the Bergen Record on this? NJ.com? The NY Times? News12?
This needs to be known.
mostly behind a paywall or subscription.
Gotta search it up and try to get it from the headline.
Maybe you know: “Where is the Bergen Record on this? NJ.com? The NY Times? News12?”
Tell us!
It’s amazing for the past 30 years how villager officials kiss the asses of the sports group in town. It’s ridiculous, they’re part of the problem with mingling with individuals behind the curtain dirty business sometimes it’s more political than you think.
Vagianos is a sleaseball and now many people have woken up to the reality and understand that anyone associated with him, which is everyone on the council, the village attorney and village manager are all dirty birds of the same feathers. Oh sure they can dress up, wear fancy hats, or the like, but at the end of the day, they are all rotten and have been corrupted by things they perceive as important while the business district suffers and systemic problems continue. What Winograd did seems retaliatory. Not a good look for Ridgewood.
Where did the anonymous information go to? Like village hall, email, her house, the police department?
OPRA everything like video surveillance of town hall and her house
In today world there’s no such thing as anonymous
Thank you so much, she claims that she received it in the middle of the night and then she took the complaint to the Ridgewood Police. There was no factual information there, just awful accusations. I have. Oprad everything, but the village attorney and the council, and Mayor just keep blocking me. Since she used her official capacity as a council woman, I should be allowed to see every email, recordings, if she has ring recordings, which she has, but will never get them. When I brought it up at a council meeting, I was quickly told by the village attorney, I can’t address her. It’s so messed up. But it’s definitely not over, no one should be allowed to use any position of power over the people they are supposed to serve.
Winograd and McCambridge are both nuts. I wouldn’t take anything either of them said as the whole truth.
You always know when some salty a$$ loser from HS comments because they use her school name. Pathetic. Leave your HS grudges home.
So you can’t post your name, I would like you to tell me how I am “nuts”, honestly I’d truly like to know. If you’re gonna have the balls to throw out something like that, use your name. It’s easy hiding behind anonymous. Obviously I’d like to know who you are, but we know that’s not gonna happen because you’re too cowardly to post your name, but I would like to know why I am nuts. Because I don’t think there’s anything crazy at all to care about the community and to make sure that we have drinking water and that are natural resources are preserved and that our kids are safe.
Some troll that’s probably jealous of Amy. She’s actually quite brilliant, a lot smarter than many of us. You clearly do not know this woman.
Amy, thank you for exposing Village leaders for what they are and not backing down. Treating a veteran this way is as un-American as it gets. They should all resign in disgrace.
And now to turf fields are shut down, she has been right this whole time.