Fresh Kills Landfill

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Geographical overview of the Fresh Kills Landfill

Fresh Kills Landfill is a disused landfill in the New York borough of Staten Island in the United States . It was opened in 1948 and developed into the world's largest landfill in 50 years. In March 2001 the landfill was closed. After the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 , the landfill was reopened to pick up debris; since the twelve-square-kilometer area becomes a park converted .

geography

The Fresh Kills ( Kill is derived from the Dutch word kil , the river bed means) is a tributary of the Arthur Kill, a estuary , which is the western boundary of the scoring for the metropolitan area of New York City Staten Iceland and these from the state of New Jersey is separated . The Fresh Kills are made up of two arms, Rain Creek and Richmond Creek, through which the central part of Staten Islands is drained. The region was marshland before the landfill began .

The Fresh Kills Landfill area covers twelve square kilometers and thus takes up around 11% of the area of ​​Staten Island. Only about 45% of the landfill area was actually used for garbage storage; the landfill areas were concentrated in four sectors, which are separated by the river arms and the New York State Route 440 built in the 1960s .

History of the landfill

Barges bring garbage to the landfill (1973)

Fresh Kills Landfill was set up in 1948 according to plans by New York city planner Robert Moses . It was part of an urban development plan that included intensive use of Staten Island as a residential area. The landfill should initially only be in operation for five years and mainly serve to reclaim land in the swampy region. However, as more and more landfills were closed in the New York metropolitan area, the importance of the Fresh Kills Landfill grew . While there were around 90 landfills before the outbreak of World War II, there were only six in the late 1970s. In 1974, Fresh Kills Landfill took up 50% of all household waste in New York City, compared to 94% in 1989. In 1991, the last landfill in Queens was closed, making Fresh Kills Landfill the only remaining landfill in the city.

A Caterpillar D7 pulls wagons with rubbish

After the population in Staten Island more than doubled in the 1960s and the residential areas were getting closer and closer to the Fresh Kills Landfill , there was increasing demand for the landfill to be closed. In the absence of alternatives, however, operations were continued. In 1992 and 1993, the first two of the four sections of the Fresh Kills Landfill were shut down, followed by a third section in 1997. Previously, in May 1996, it was decided to close the landfill completely by the end of 2001. On March 22, 2001, the last transport of household waste was received in Fresh Kills. Most recently, more than 14,000 tonnes were unloaded on the Fresh Kills Landfill every day , and most of the transport to the landfill was carried out via garbage ships. Since the Fresh Kills shutdown , New York City has relied on shipping its garbage to landfills in neighboring states. As a result, garbage fees increased by 50%.

At the time of closure, the last segment of the landfill used had reached a height of 69 meters (225 ft). Plans in the 1980s had provided for an embankment to a height of 154 meters (505 ft) by 2005, with which the mountain of rubbish would not only have exceeded the height of the Great Pyramid , but also the highest point on the North American Atlantic coast south of Maine would have been. Fresh Kills Landfill is not only the largest landfill in the world, it is also considered one of the largest man-made objects ever. The volume of the garbage dumps is estimated at 115 million cubic meters, their weight at 150 million tons.

Six months after its closure, the landfill was briefly reopened because after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, a place had to be found to store and process the remains of the World Trade Center. In the months that followed, 1.62 million tons of rubble were transported to Fresh Kills Landfill , where it was then searched for the remains of the victims of the building collapse. After the investigation, the remains of the World Trade Center were buried in the area.

Environmental issues

The focus of criticism of Fresh Kill Landfill was the immense environmental impact of the landfill. Large amounts of rubbish were regularly lost, especially through ship delivery, which was then driven to the beach in Woodbridge in New Jersey by the Arthur Kill . The city of New York has been ordered several times to prevent the pollution of its waters. In 1987, New Jersey's beaches hit the headlines when medical waste, such as used syringes, was washed away by Fresh Kill Landfill . The city of New York was sentenced to pay damages. The incident became known as "Syringe Tide" and was mentioned in Billy Joel's song We Didn't Start the Fire , among others .

In addition, the environment of the landfill was polluted by waste decomposition products. Around nine million liters of landfill leachate were released every day , which got into the kills unfiltered before a treatment plant was set up . The result was a high level of pollution of the water with heavy metals .

Landfill gas emissions were of global proportions . Measurements from 1997 showed that 2650 tons of the greenhouse gas methane were released every day . This was equivalent to 6% of total methane emissions in the United States and 2% worldwide. The methane released has been collected since 1998, processed in special systems and sold to generate energy. The city of New York earns US $ 11 million annually from selling methane.

In addition to methane, numerous other volatile organic compounds were also released. Investigations by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1995 revealed more than 100 organic compounds in the landfill gas. A 1997 study suggested a link between air pollution from the Fresh Kills landfill and increased asthma incidence on Staten Island.

The Fresh Kills Park Project

After the landfill was closed, a design competition was launched in September 2001 to create Fresh Kills Park . In June 2003, the landscape architecture firm Field Operations was commissioned with the planning. Five interconnected parks are planned, which will take up a total of nine square kilometers and together will be around two and a half times the size of Central Park .

In addition to the creation of sports facilities such as golf courses , soccer fields and mountain bike trails, opportunities for water sports are also to be created. Areas near the coast should be designated as nature reserves after planting . In the largest park, West Park , a memorial is to commemorate the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

The completion of the entire Fresh Kills Park will take place in three phases and take around 30 years, as the heaps of rubbish will first settle and the emissions must subside as the waste decomposes. The level of the recently closed segment of Fresh Kills Landfill has already dropped by five meters between 2001 and 2006. The first parts of the park should open at the end of 2011 before the opening in March 2011 was postponed for another two years.

literature

  • Richard C. Firstman: The Hills of Fresh Kills . In Rush to burn: Solving America's garbage crisis? . Island Press , Washington DC 1989, ISBN 1-55963-000-0 , pp. 49-54
  • Joseph M. Suflita, Charles P. Gerba, Robert K. Ham, Anna C. Palmisano, William L. Rathje , Joseph A. Robinson: The world's largest landfill . In: Environmental Science & Technology Vol. 26, No. 8, 1992, pp. 1486-1495 doi : 10.1021 / es00032a002
  • Ken Stier: Fresh Kills . In: Waste Management World Vol 8, No. 6, December / January 2007 (online edition of the journal without page numbers)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ken Stier: Fresh Kills
  2. ↑ a b Kirk Johnson: Dumping Ends at Fresh Kills, Symbol of Throw-Away Era . In: The New York Times , March 18, 2001
  3. ↑ Ken Johnson: A Landfill in the Eyes Of Artists Who Beheld It . In: The New York Times , February 1, 2002
  4. ↑ Kirk Johnson: After 53 Years, Fresh Kills Gets Its Final Load of Trash . In: The New York Times , March 23, 2001
  5. ↑ a b Brook Raflo: New York Begins Its New Era of Exportation . In: Waste Age Magazine , May 1, 200
  6. ↑ Richard Severo: A Wonder Of Waste Rises on SI . In: The New York Times , April 13, 1989
  7. ^ Richard C. Porter: The Economics of Waste . resources for the Future, Washing DC 2002, ISBN 1-8918-5342-2 , p. 55
  8. ^ New York City Department of Parks & Recreation website , accessed March 23, 2009
  9. ↑ Michael Powell, "This is a very sacred place of humility . " In: Die Welt , January 24, 2002
  10. ^ Alfonso A. Narvaez: New York City Loses a Ruling In Trash Battle . In: The New York Times , October 27, 1987
  11. ↑ Thomas Schuler: The city, the garbage and the mafia ( Memento from April 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) . In: Wiener Zeitung of January 29, 1999
  12. ↑ Alfonso A. Narvaez: New York City to Pay Jersey Town $ 1 Million Over Shore Pollution ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / select.nytimes.com archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: The New York Times , December 8, 1987
  13. ↑ Eric A. Goldstein, Mark A. Izeman: The New York Environment Book . Island Press, Washington DC 1990, ISBN 1-55963-018-3 , p. 7
  14. ^ Robert L. France: Handbook of Regenerative Landscape Design . CRC Press, Boca Raton 2007, ISBN 0-8493-9188-1 , p. 11
  15. ^ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry: PETITIONED PUBLIC HEALTH ASSESSMENT: FRESH KILLS LANDFILL , May 3, 2000, accessed March 23, 2009
  16. ↑ Anthony DePalma: Landfill, Park ... Final Resting Place ?; Plans for Fresh Kills Trouble 9/11 Families Who Sense Loved Ones in the Dust . In: New York Times , June 14, 2004
  17. ^ Andy Newman: From Landfill to Landscape, a Staten Island Cinderella Story Still Unfolding . In: New York Times , June 25, 2006
  18. ↑ Liz Robbins: Putrid Past, and a Still-Distant Future as Fields of Play , New York Times , March 22, 2011, accessed December 17, 2011

Web links

Coordinates: 40 ° 34 ′ 36 "  N , 74 ° 11 ′ 14.4"  W.