From Behind the Mounds: Visitors from Addis Ababa
Last week, the Freshkills Park Team had the pleasure of meeting with a group of city officials and their consultants from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Addis Ababa’s Repi Solid Waste Disposal Site, a 40 year old open dump, has recently been closed and the City has installed a methane capture and flaring system. This system is the country’s first non-forestry registered project to be accepted as a Clean Development Mechanism, a first step to receiving certified emission reduction credits under the Kyoto Protocols. Now, city officials are looking to turn the closed landfill into a park and are touring the US looking at landfill-to-park transformation projects for ideas and best practices. After a morning presentation about the history of Freshkills Park, we took the visitors to the park. Awestruck by the vast expanse and the way in which the land had begun to transform itself – the Repi landfill is a clay covered mound at present – they brought home a vision of birds, native grasses, trees and wetlands for their park-in-progress.
