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Unlike the most recent study, the previous ones did not find statistically significant elevations in cancer rates around the landfill when compared to the rest of Staten Island. Freshkills is the biggest park in New York City. These containers are then loaded, four containers each car, onto flatbed rail cars to be hauled by rail to a Republic Services landfill in South Carolina. [28] Although the park is not scheduled for completion until 2037, the Parks Department reported that in 201011 two hundred species of wildlife had been seen in the former landfill. The tidal marsh, which helped to clean and oxygenate the water that passed through it, was destroyed by the dump. In the years after 9/11, some workers who were exposed to debris at Ground Zero and Fresh Kills began to wrestle with health problems. As described in an inter-departmental report from 1946: "Because of the substantial sums involved in the preparation and acquisition of the [Fresh Kills] site, [in order to justify this expense] the City must dispose of refuse at this location for a number of years. The transfer stationan integral part of New York City's Solid Waste Management Planis expected to process an average of 900 short tons (820t) per day of Staten Island-generated residential and municipal waste. However, the Canal Street line which the VCF first drew in 2001 was arbitrary, lawyer Joel Kupferman, the executive director at the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, said. 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. Sixteen hours after the World Trade Centers first tower collapsed, debris began to arrive at Fresh Kills. Lanza, the city health departments spokesman, did not address Carpenter and Ozonoffs specific claims when asked. Initially, the land where the landfill was located was a salt marsh in which there were tidal wetlands, forests, and freshwater wetlands. A coroner attributed dust found in his lungs to Ground Zero, reportedly making him the first rescuer whose death was medically linked to dust inhalation from the site. Tracey Morgan Gallery, in Ashville North Carolina, presented Jade Doskow: Freshkills, a new exhibition of photographs taken at Staten Island's Freshkills Park.The exhibit ran from September 21, 2021 through October 30, 2021. Imagine a not-delicious mix of household waste excreting noxious methane and millions of gallons of ammonium-rich leachate, the technical term for the juice that flows from trash hills into the waterways. 1.83 miles. Planned attractions include playgrounds, athletic fields, horseback riding trails and a wildlife refuge. A typical day would unload twelve barges (six at each plant). tiers of thick soil, impermeable plastic, and gas-containment pipes, while native grasses grow on the top. Even then, she said, it could be difficult to prove anything. A wooden trestle bridge was built across Fresh Kills Creek to expand the Plant 2 operating area. Freshkills landfill, once the world's largest dump, being transformed It was one of the most upsetting things Ive ever seen, lawyer Michael Barasch, who has handled personal injury cases for 9/11 first responders and visited the site in the months following the attacks, said. Do cancer screening, do cancer prevention efforts, listen to the community, and dont sink money into a study that may or may not give you an answer, Ritz said. [12] The talk of using Fresh Kills for only three years may have been a ploy to allow Hall to save face politically. One is that you stop taking the waste but the other is that you have to install a whole system of final cover construction," explained Geller. It was reachable from Victory Boulevard. I remember the last barge because I happened to be there. LoPalo said the lawyers denied claims of respirator shortages and pointed to other factors that could be causing illnesses, such as lifestyle, genetics and other occupational exposures. These layers work to mitigate contamination, ensure safe collection of released gas as garbage decomposes and ultimately provide a safe, habitable and scenic space. The two landfills in Brooklyn and the two in the Bronx had, respectively, just one and two years left before reaching capacity. Part of the space will also be a place for solemn reflection. Nicole Navas, a spokeswoman for the VCF, said it was not aware of any claims filed by residents who lived near the landfill. Thats whats most wonderful about Freshkills; its a place to witness change, a giant viewing station for ecological adaptation. Staten Island's Freshkills Park was once the world's largest landfill, a dumping ground for New York City's abundant heaps of garbage. Plant #2 was located a bit upstream on the north side of Fresh Kills near where Richmond Creek branches off. Robert Sullivan is the author of numerous books, including Rats and The Meadowlands. He teaches at the Middlebury Bread Loaf School of English. Three years ago, the city health department launched a study the third of its kind in 25 years to investigate concerns like Nelsons and found little evidence to link living near the former landfill and cancer. She is on the faculty of the International Center of Photography and the CIty University of New York. Nineteen years later, some Staten Islanders fear the inactive landfill and its contents including the 9/11 debris is contributing to cancer rates in the borough. (The state legislature blocked the effort.) 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 neighborhoods interested. "They're gonna fly kites, they're gonna see a scientific mobile lab that we have there. They used a Draft Master Plan that integrated three aspectsprogramming, wildlife, and circulationand proposed five main parks: the Confluence, North Park, South Park, East Park, and West Park. Now imagine that times three. Ill also think of the new Amazon fulfillment center nearby thats standing on what could have been restored wetlands, another sad trade-off. ", "New York City to Pay Jersey Town $1 Million Over Shore Pollution", "New York State Seeks $76 Million In Fines Over Fresh Kills Landfill", "Where New York's 14 Million Tons of Trash Go - NYC Revealed", "At Fresh Kills landfill, a heartbreaking effort after World Trade Center attacks", "Recovery: The World Trade Center Recovery Operation at Fresh Kills", "Landfill Has 9/11 Remains, Medical Examiner Wrote", "Staten Island's Freshkills Park Gets City's Biggest Solar Array Getting Fresh", "Staten Island's Schmul Park, a gateway to the future Freshkills Park, to open Thursday", "Mayor Bloomberg officially reactivates the Staten Island railroad", Fresh Kills: New York City Department of Parks & Recreation information section, Items in the Staten Island Historical Society Online Collection Database pertaining to Fresh Kills Landfill, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fresh_Kills_Landfill&oldid=1154499178, This page was last edited on 12 May 2023, at 22:25. Over the years, I have often stopped outside the parks boundaries to study the great mounds, visible along the West Shore Expressway, or from the edge-of-the-kills neighborhood that 30 years ago was a hellscape: hordes of vermin and putrid smells that I heard a resident once describe as akin to having your head in a garbage can. The city never reached out to me. Freshkills Park: the history of the former landfill-turned-green space According to the World Bank, cities around the world generate 1.3 billion tons of solid waste annually. The city has acknowledged that thousands suffer from 9/11-related health conditions and added Zadroga to New York Citys Hall of Heroes in lower Manhattan, which honors NYPD members who died in the line of duty. Freshkills Park NY: Transforming the world's biggest landfill site to a We know we have a cancer problem whatever the cause is.. Feinberg added that his team did not rely on health data or experts to draw the geographic boundaries. As an ongoing experiment in a megacitys quest for a healthy future, Freshkills asks the kinds of questions we hadnt thought to ask: Why does the grasshopper sparrow prefer the East Mounds grasslands to those of the North Mound? While Landrigan and his team didnt collect samples from the landfill after 9/11, they did find toxic materials glass fibers, asbestos, lead and pesticides in air and dust samples taken from Ground Zero. What is Fresh Kills? (with pictures) - United States Now Staten Island News: Fresh Kills Landfill Officially Closes - NBC New York Be conscious. [9] Samuel Kearing, who had served as sanitation commissioner under Mayor John V. Lindsay, remembered in 1970 his first visit to the Fresh Kills project: It had a certain nightmare quality. But the American Cancer Society says many factors a persons environment, their lifestyle, their genes make people more susceptible to cancer and experts said it can be difficult to identify just one source. A legal not a medical question.. [3] From 1991 until its closing it was the only landfill to accept New York City's residential waste. That is then covered with a landfill cap that includes an impermeable plastic liner and a gas vent to release methane from the garbage as it decomposes. About 1.6million short tons (1.510^6t) of rubble came here for sorting. Which presidential candidates raised the most from April through June? We have to see it too as a reminder of what the city consumes those mountains are made of our trash. After 9/11, Staten Islands defunct Fresh Kills landfill became a forensic site for Ground Zero debris. In December 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced at a town hall that the city would fund a $350,000 study the same one published earlier this year examining the effects of Fresh Kills on nearby residents. Investigating a single cancer, Lanza added, would be difficult because it would require controlling for other risk factors and studying thousands of people over many years. A mobile science lab teaches visitors about how the space is being transformed. As a result of intense community pressure, a state law was passed in 1996 requiring that the landfill cease accepting solid waste by the end of 2001. Monitoring a communitys health can be expensive, but Borelli pointed to an obvious source of funding. Animals were also a problem. City officials have sought to examine Fresh Kills potential health effects before. "The plan for that is that when that area is kept enclosed, finally, there probably will be a public commission of some kind and probably some kind of a competition for a design for a monument. Dozens of birds circle the waving grasses, spreading seeds across the hillside. At the peak of its operation, in 1986, Fresh Kills received 29,000 short tons (26,000t) of residential waste per day, playing a key part in the New York City waste management system. How New York Turned The World's Biggest Landfill Into - LADbible 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. But (they) forgot about the residents of Staten Island they dumped it on., ID cards found in the remains of the World Trade Center are sorted in an evidence decontamination room at Fresh Kills. Presently closed-down and slated to eventually become phased into a public park, Fresh Kills used to be the largest landfill in the world, the Puente Hills Landfill of Los Angeles County now currently being the largest functioning landfill in the country. "Most cancers take more than 19 years to really show up, Clapp said, referencing the 9/11 debris brought to Staten Island in 2001. It is almost unbelievable that New York City would set aside a parcel of land as big as Lower Manhattan south of 23rd Street and just let it go to seed. After 1948, it became an ecological nightmare and a political hot potato. The citys law department did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Debris from the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, whose twin towers once stood just across the harbor, is buried on site. In adults living in the area around Fresh Kills during the same period, there were statistically significant elevations in five cancer types bladder, breast, kidney, non-Hodgkin lymphoma and thyroid when compared to residents elsewhere in Staten Island. I know way too many people with cancer on Staten Island, said Jamielee Nelson, who recalled standing on her balcony in Staten Islands Rossville neighborhood after 9/11 and watching smoke rising from Ground Zero. 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. This bridge allowed dumping east to Richmond Avenue. [17] After much deliberation, New York City was required to pay $1 million for past pollution damages as well as pay for the cleanup. Youth engagement is key to this process, informing young people about how trash shapes the landscapes of their future. [1] Ill think of the migrating birds who see Freshkills and all of Staten Islands parks as a life-sustaining stop on the way through the region, up through the Meadowlands and into Long Island Sound and beyond. But the researchers still saw little evidence of a link to the landfill because they could not find any reasonable explanations for how residents would have come into contact with materials in the landfill that were known or suspected to cause bladder or thyroid cancers, especially since Fresh Kills closed. But as the park nears opening, its important to remember the political archaeology of the place. But that victory was diminished when, after the September 11th attacks, then-Governor George Pataki reopened Fresh Kills and workers transported more than 1.8 million tons of debris, some of it found to be toxic, from Ground Zero to the landfill. 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. Barges arrived from the other boroughs (primarily Manhattan and Brooklyn). CBS News Each section of the park gives visitors a glimpse at the extensive undertaking. New York comes clean: the controversial story of the Fresh Kills We have a swimming pool (and) nobody wanted to even go swimming because (of) the stench. Eisler-Grynsztajn recalled. The trash would be capped with plastic, then slowly covered with millions of tons of clean soils, the soils planted with native grasses. 20 years later: From odor-filled dump to lush park, Fresh Kills in The site has become famous, primarily due to its sheer size; Fresh Kills is around three times the size of Central Park, and it can be readily identified in satellite images of Staten Island. Assemblyman Edmund P. Radigan introduced a secession bill in the Legislature. About an hour later, Mr. Giuliani was at Fresh Kills himself, standing amid garbage hills 200 feet tall, alongside Staten Islands borough president, Guy Molinari, and Gov. Its like lichen. Our decision was based on statutory interpretation, he wrote. Staten Islanders dont only suspect Fresh Kills as a potential environmental cause of their health problems. In October 2008, reclamation of the site began for a multi-phase, 30-year site redevelopment. Picture taken from the top of a mound at the former Fresh Kills landfill Tuesday, May 24, 2022 shows part of the area's waterway and Staten Island's industrial West Shore. They're gonna see phenomenal views that we have of the waterways and also the Manhattan-like Oz in the distance," said Hirsh. [16] In 1950, the height was increased to 2540 feet (812m). Thyroid cancer on Staten Island was nearly 70% higher than in the rest of the city and state, though the states researchers could not identify any environmental exposures and suggested that the results are skewed because Staten Island doctors screen for and diagnose thyroid cancer at higher rates than other parts of the city and state. Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting. Still, Fresh Kills at its height received about 10 million tonnes of garbage annually, transferred from barges by cranes and dump trucks to create trash mountains that towered over the. How could they say particles didnt travel farther? Richard Clapp, a professor emeritus of environmental health at Boston University, said Staten Island may see a rise in cancers in the years to come. The . The lower Manhattan skyline is visible from Freshkills Park. At the end of the landfill's usable life, new real estate would be created, allowing it to top off at 1015 feet (35m) above sea level. A recent city health department study looked at incidence rates for 17 cancers in the area around Fresh Kills. Destroyed cars and trucks sit at the Fresh Kills landfill January 14, 2002 in the Staten Island borough of New York City. The department also operates a registry to track health data on 9/11 survivors. Following that, an exception had to be made for it to receive the debris of the World Trade Center. In 2002, a UK study concluded that its research did not support suggestions of excess risks of cancer associated with landfill sites.. The native plant species were driven out by the common reed, a grass that grows abundantly in disturbed areas and can tolerate both fresh and brackish water. Workers spent more than 10 months sifting through rubble looking for evidence from the attacks including plane parts, office ID badges, jewelry and human remains. Thats a clear source of revenue that should go back to Staten Islanders, Borelli said. The draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) was published for public review in May 2008. The path of transmission was a lot farther than just Canal Street, Kupferman said. Feinbergs fund closed in 2003. On March 22, 2001, Fresh Kills Landfill received its last barge of residential solid waste. Fresh Kills Landfill - Wikipedia The area was declared a wild bird sanctuary, and some hawks, falcons, and owls were brought in. Dr. Otis Brawley, an oncology and epidemiology professor at Johns Hopkins University, said that an epidemiological study of Staten Islands cancer rates which would be more robust than the citys descriptive report would be lengthy and expensive. For more than a decade the city has trapped methane gas at Fresh Kills and sold it to National Grid, a regional utility. But federal court filings show that, through personal injury settlements with the city and its contractors, millions of dollars have gone to 1,800 cleanup workers who suffered from health problems after working at Fresh Kills. But what Hirsh hopes people take away from the park is a sense of responsibility when it come to managing our consumption and waste. As the actual dump site moved further from paved roads, it became more difficult for trucks to unload. The Justice Department-administered fund covers those who were injured while living, working, visiting or attending school in lower Manhattan below Canal Street in the months following 9/11. All debris from World Trade. It was reachable via Muldoon Avenue. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the funds extension would cost about $10 billion over the next decade. Feral dog packs roamed the dump and were a hazard to employees. The 32-year-old, who said there is no history of cancer in her family, said she worries that living near the former landfill is linked to the breast cancer diagnosis she received last year. The last barge ferrying trash to the landfill, bearing the celebratory banner Last Garbage Barge to Fresh Kills, docked on March 22, 2001. When 20 acres of trails and fields opens next spring, it will be a monumental event. Compared to much of the city, which is dense and dotted with skyscrapers, Staten Island is more suburban, with many single-family homes and few tall buildings. 1,394 shares By Alexandra Salmieri | asalmieri@siadvance.com STATEN ISLAND N.Y. -- The Fresh Kills landfill better known as the "dump" closed its gates in 2001. Though some still associate fresh kills with the former landfill, went a Freshkills Park Alliance blog post this past January, many have begun to recognize its significance as a symbol of renewal, rebirth, and rejuvenation.. The waste is compacted inside the 79,000-square-foot (7,300m2) facility into sealed 12-foot-high (3.7m) by 20-foot-long (6.1m) intermodal shipping containers. RFK Jr. condemned over false claim that COVID was "ethnically targeted", 5 dead, baby and sister missing after flash flooding in Pennsylvania, Tonight's $900 million Powerball jackpot is its 3rd highest ever, Alabama nursing student who disappeared after 911 call is found alive, Suspect in 4 Georgia murders killed in standoff with police, Country singer Jason Aldean suffers heat stroke on stage, Advances in prosthetics limb technology allow feeling, control, SOLA: Daring to educate Afghanistan's girls, NYC's Freshkills landfill reborn as a park. [26] It will consist of a variety of public spaces and facilities for a multitude of activity types. Fresh Kills - Google Books Fresh Kills and the Great Wall of China are the only two human constructions visible from outer space. In 2006, NYPD detective James Zadroga emerged as a harbinger of the uphill battle some 9/11 survivors would face in trying to prove their illnesses were a result of their time at Ground Zero.