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How the World’s Biggest Garbage Dump Transformed Into a Lush Green Oasis

Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimeS

The revolutionary solution for a noxious landfill site in Staten Island? Bury it, plant some grass and leave it for 20 years.

Landfill’s long road to lush landscape

At the turn of the millennium, Staten Island’s landfill was the largest garbage dump on the planet; three times larger than Central Park, with trash mounds 20 stories high excreting noxious methane and leaking unspeakable fluids into the waterways. Today, it’s a lush green oasis, and one of the most unlikely urban ecological restoration success stories of all time. The radical fix? Bury the trash, plant some grass and do nothing for 20 years. — via FutureCrunch 

All photographs accompanying this article are by Jade Doskow and are from an ongoing series documenting the rebirth of Freshkills.
New York City Skyline with One World Trade from North Mound, Looking Northeast toward Main Creek and the Greenbelt, Autumn, 2018 All photographs accompanying this article are by Jade Doskow and are from an ongoing series documenting the rebirth of Freshkills. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes

“No more garbage for the people of Staten Island,”

A little less than two decades ago, the last steaming load of garbage arrived at Fresh Kills Landfill. At the time, the New York Times reported a packed-high barge turned slowly out of the Arthur Kill — that long, dishwater-brown tidal strait that separates Staten Island from New Jersey — and then docked at the Sanitation Department’s pier, an event celebrated less as a matter of ecological stewardship at the time than a triumph of not-in-my-backyard politics.

For the New York Times, Robert Sullivan wrote

‘I remember the last barge because I happened to be there. It was March 22, 2001, and I was embedded with the Department of Sanitation’s film crew, greeting the barge from the rain-soaked deck of what is known to the Sanitation Department navy as a trash skimmer, a little boat that snags flotsam, like a mechanized sea gull. The barge had set off that morning from a transfer station in College Point, Queens, heading south into the East River. Fireboats saluted the trash with water cannons, and as it passed Gracie Mansion, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani saluted it from his front lawn.

About an hour later, Mr. Giuliani was at Fresh Kills himself, standing amid garbage hills 200 feet tall, alongside Staten Island’s borough president, Guy Molinari, and Gov. George E. Pataki. These three Republicans had worked together to close the dump that Mr. Molinari’s father first protested when it opened in 1948, a time when Fresh Kills was a saltwater marsh where kids swam. After 1948, it became an ecological nightmare and a political hot potato. A banner behind the politicians read, “A Promise Made, a Promise Kept.”

“No more garbage for the people of Staten Island,” said Governor Pataki.’

Source: NewYorkTimes

Today, Fresh Kills has been rebranded as Freshkills, and the park that is now at the site of the old dump is poised to accept visitors: the North Park will open in spring 2021, the rest by 2036.
North Mound, Winter, 2019 Today, Fresh Kills has been rebranded as Freshkills, and the park that is now at the site of the old dump is poised to accept visitors: the North Park will open in spring 2021, the rest by 2036. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes
Freshkills is possibly the least likely poster child for urban ecological restoration in the world, and it is radical not just for the way it works — by encouraging flora and fauna do as they please — but for its sheer size.
South Mound at Sundown, 2019 Freshkills is possibly the least likely poster child for urban ecological restoration in the world, and it is radical not just for the way it works — by encouraging flora and fauna do as they please — but for its sheer size. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes
As the park nears opening, it’s important to remember the political archaeology of the place. At conception, it was not the cutting-edge expression of sustainability that it is seen as today. The voters of Staten Island, reliably conservative, rallied around Michael R. Bloomberg, who, down in the polls in his first term, promised to trade their dump for a park.
Old Landscape with New Interior Road and Gabion Wall, West Mound, 2019 As the park nears opening, it’s important to remember the political archaeology of the place. At conception, it was not the cutting-edge expression of sustainability that it is seen as today. The voters of Staten Island, reliably conservative, rallied around Michael R. Bloomberg, who, down in the polls in his first term, promised to trade their dump for a park. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes
The core problem would be adapting the site to the trash — no less than 150 million tons of garbage had been dumped at Fresh Kills (roughly the equivalent of the amount of plastic currently floating in the ocean). The trash would be capped with plastic, then slowly covered with millions of tons of clean soils, the soils planted with native grasses.
Leachate Plant – Veteran’s Avenue Laboratory, 2020 The core problem would be adapting the site to the trash — no less than 150 million tons of garbage had been dumped at Fresh Kills (roughly the equivalent of the amount of plastic currently floating in the ocean). The trash would be capped with plastic, then slowly covered with millions of tons of clean soils, the soils planted with native grasses. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes
The four garbage mountains would be transformed into four soft green hills straddling the convergence of creeks. Tree planting (started by arborists, accelerated by seed-carrying birds) would occur in coordination with the careful engineering of what you might call the dump’s natural excretions, the methane and the leachate.
Leachate Plant Maintenance Shop, 2018 The four garbage mountains would be transformed into four soft green hills straddling the convergence of creeks. Tree planting (started by arborists, accelerated by seed-carrying birds) would occur in coordination with the careful engineering of what you might call the dump’s natural excretions, the methane and the leachate. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes
In this way, over the course of 20 years, the parks and sanitation departments worked together with Field Operations to restore or encourage tidal wetlands, to generate forests, scrublands, and the wide-open fields of grasses. The Sanitation Department refines the methane and pipes it to Staten Island homes for cooking and heat, which makes a cup of tea in a warm room on a cold day in the Arden Heights neighborhood a little miracle of noxious composting.
Influent, Sec. 6-7, 1-9, 2020 In this way, over the course of 20 years, the parks and sanitation departments worked together with Field Operations to restore or encourage tidal wetlands, to generate forests, scrublands, and the wide-open fields of grasses. The Sanitation Department refines the methane and pipes it to Staten Island homes for cooking and heat, which makes a cup of tea in a warm room on a cold day in the Arden Heights neighborhood a little miracle of noxious composting. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes
In 2007, capping of the East Mound began, and in 2011 a regular old park appeared, or reappeared, on the northwest edge of Freshkills. The renovated Schmul Park — a relatively small old-school park, with playgrounds, baseball fields and basketball and handball courts — was a tentative step, designed to keep nearby neighbourhoods interested. Truckloads of imported soil enter the site, much of it from the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, an iron-rich coastal soil that stains the roads on the Staten Island mounds red.
East Mound Low Road, Iron Stained Rainy Seeping, Gabion Walls, and Phragmites, 2019 In 2007, capping of the East Mound began, and in 2011 a regular old park appeared, or reappeared, on the northwest edge of Freshkills. The renovated Schmul Park — a relatively small old-school park, with playgrounds, baseball fields and basketball and handball courts — was a tentative step, designed to keep nearby neighbourhoods interested. Truckloads of imported soil enter the site, much of it from the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, an iron-rich coastal soil that stains the roads on the Staten Island mounds red. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes
Acres of wide-open grasslands are rare anywhere in the U.S. — and unimaginable in a city overrun by development. Meanwhile, newly planted grasses in Freshkills have attracted a steady population of birds, including the largest colony of grasshopper sparrows in New York State.
North Mound Trees (After S.M.), 2019 Acres of wide-open grasslands are rare anywhere in the U.S. — and unimaginable in a city overrun by development. Meanwhile, newly planted grasses in Freshkills have attracted a steady population of birds, including the largest colony of grasshopper sparrows in New York State. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes
The next creatures park planners are hoping to attract are humans, who have been locked out since these 2,200 acres of the island’s west shore were first locked down for trash. When 20 acres of trails and fields opens next spring, it will be a monumental event. Since the founding of the Freshkills Park Alliance, the nonprofit that manages the park and funds it, Freshkills publicity has tended to highlight the idea of transformation, indicating that the best is yet to come.
Barrier Protection Sand Pile, West Mound, 2019 The next creatures park planners are hoping to attract are humans, who have been locked out since these 2,200 acres of the island’s west shore were first locked down for trash. When 20 acres of trails and fields opens next spring, it will be a monumental event. Since the founding of the Freshkills Park Alliance, the nonprofit that manages the park and funds it, Freshkills publicity has tended to highlight the idea of transformation, indicating that the best is yet to come. Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes
‘The trick, when Freshkills finally opens, is to think of it not just in terms of sustainability. We have to see it too as a reminder of what the city consumes — those mountains are made of our trash. And we have to remember what it means that the hills’ growth stopped.‘ — Robert Sullivan
The New Wilderness, Freshkills, 2019 ‘The trick, when Freshkills finally opens, is to think of it not just in terms of sustainability. We have to see it too as a reminder of what the city consumes — those mountains are made of our trash. And we have to remember what it means that the hills’ growth stopped.‘ — Robert Sullivan Source: Jade Doskow/NewYorkTimes

What Freshkills means to one New York resident

Robert Sullivan, for the New York Times, wrote: ‘What Freshkills park initially represented back in 2001 was the Bloomberg administration’s plan to transfer garbage to way stations out of Staten Island and into neighborhoods where people of color lived. From there, New York’s trash was sent out of the city’s boundaries, as it still is today — by train to Ohio, to Virginia, to upstate New York and to several landfills in Pennsylvania among other places. Some of what would have gone to Fresh Kills is today incinerated in Newark, N.J., Niagara Falls and Chester, Pa., on the Philadelphia border, where 70 percent of residents are African-American.

Next year, when I look out from the top of the North Mound, I’ll be thinking about what the all-new grasslands and the restored marshes mean not just for the lucky-at-last Staten Island communities nearby but for the Mid-Atlantic coast. I’ll think of the migrating birds who see Freshkills and all of Staten Island’s parks as a life-sustaining stop on the way through the region, up through the Meadowlands and into Long Island Sound and beyond.

I’ll also think of the new Amazon fulfillment center nearby that’s standing on what could have been restored wetlands, another sad trade-off. A four-mile walk up the shore from Freshkills, the big flat building (neighbor to other multimillion-square-foot warehouses) is adjacent to Old Place Creek Tidal Wetlands Area, just beneath the new Goethals Bridge. Old Place Creek is, incidentally, about as close as you can get to seeing what Fresh Kills looked like before Freshkills Park and before Fresh Kills dump, when Thoreau might have paddled through.’

Note: All images accompanying this article are by Jade Doskow and are from an ongoing series documenting the rebirth of Freshkills.

Source: NewYorkTimes 

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