This article in the The Brooklyn Paper describes how the local city council decided, without really reviewing alternate materials, to use concrete to replace the old wood boardwalk on Coney Island, with a Parks Dept. official speaking against planks extruded from wood/plastic compound impractical because, he said, they are slippery when wet and warp over time. The newspaper put in a call to Richard Lehman, director of the Advanced Polymer Center at Rutgers University, who scoffed at the anti-WPC rhetoric.

Boom line is that it likely will come down to the bottom line: which material is less costly to install and maintain? But the decision to pour concrete is on hold, residents are against anything that isn't wood or at least appears to be wood, and the WPC proponents will get their say in a meeting scheduled for Nov. 17. May the best building material win, based on the facts.