Freshkills Park Project
Monday, June 1st, 2009
Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island was New York City’s primary landfill from 1948 to 2001. Thousands of tons of daily garbage composed the largest man-made structure on Earth.
In 2001 the landfill was finally closed, with a brief reopening to accommodate the World Trade Center wreckage.
Since then it’s been the site of Freshkills Park, a 30-year project to cover and slowly open parts of the former landfill.
While the trash of New York City ships to other states, the park’s decomposing refuse mounds generate methane gas that National Grid sells back to the island’s inhabitants.
Wonderful series. Congrats to all cooncerned.
Thanks for the video, and the series. According to a MAS symposium I attended on May 27th at Urban Center, (Concrete Park Project in the South Bronx — Fresh Kills in Staten Island and Riverside South on the Upper West Side) Eloise Hirsh administrator, Freshkills Park, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, noted in her presentation on Fresh Kills that “The city earns 12 million dollars a year selling the methane gas from Freshkills to Con Edison.” -http://twitter.com/Newyorkist/status/1941996173
Another interesting note she made in her slide presentation, was a list of 100 hundred influential organizations in Fresh Kills future. Along with a large majority of City, State, and National gov’t and non-profits listed, was the Staten Island Advance. Not surprising, I just thought it was interesting that their influence was acknowledged. -http://twitter.com/Newyorkist/statuses/1942240462
Actually, MAS has a video up here on that presentation: http://mas.org/freshkills-update/
At a symposium on parks last week sponsored by the Municipal Art Society, Eloise Hirsh, administrator for Freshkills Park, offered some interesting details, such as noting the city earns 12 million dollars a year selling the methane gas from Freshkills to Con Edison. Most interesting to me was an comment by Eloise that the Department of Sanitation gave the park a digger, which is a huge machine they used to take the garbage from the barges and place it on the top of the trash mountain. Freshkills Park is going to use the Digger as a billboard. “I don’t like to say the word billboard at the Municipal Arts Society, ” she confided to the attendees. “So it’s just gonna be a really large identification sign.”
A picture of this billboard, and more, here: http://nyctheblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/fresh-kills-park-update-billboards-from.html
how good to know about Freshkills Park. thank you PBS Thirteen for telling everyone about this great feat!
Once again,THIRTEENPROVIDES MORE LOCAL INFORMATION THEN THE OTHER NETWORKS………..and no comercials!! Thanks. another small contribution is on it’s way. It would be nice if THIRTEEN could participate in any opening ceremonies.
Please let your audience know that in the debris from the WTC is human remains, clothes, shoes, along with the steel. This was and is a disgrace and your using Trash into a Treasure should not be a headline. All those remains belong to real people. Their families will never get over this hurt. Everyone deserves to be buried with out trash and with dignity.
How in God’s name can they dare to put a recreational park ON TOP of the HUMAN REMAINS that are in the ground there from the WTC 9/11 tragedy??!!
Please let the families reclaim the ashes and give their loved ones a proper burial!!
I don’t think enough people know about this!!
Sue the area where the WTC debris is buried, which is only one place, will be in the park but no activities will take place there. There will be a memorial but otherwise the area will be quiet in respect to the victims and families.