Freshkills Park Blog

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/17476706]

The PBS Thirteen series The City Concealed recently featured a segment on the Staten Island Greenbelt. This 2,800-acre continuous corridor of green space provides a host of natural recreational opportunities–including some of the best and most serene hiking in New York City–and acts as a refuge for native wildlife. 

We’ve recently added a series of  high-resolution aerial photographs of the Fresh Kills region to the Freshkills Park flickr stream, displaying the incredible transformation that the West Shore of Staten Island has undergone since 1943 (landfill operations began officially in 1948). 

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues on Wednesday, December 8th, with a talk by Dr. Robin Nagle.  Titled “The Twist-Tie that Binds: Garbage, New York City and You,” the lecture will recount how the City’s garbage connects New Yorkers to one another as well as to history, politics, infrastructure, and technology.

The Staten Island Advance profiles the Staten Island Transfer Station (SITS), where 750 tons of the island’s garbage is trucked every day, compacted, containerized and sent out on a seven day journey by rail to Lee County Landfill in Bishopville, South Carolina.

This weekend, Anthology Film Archives presents Site Recordings: Land Art on Film and Video, a series devoted to films by and about artists associated with the Land Art/Earthworks movement.

In the late 1960s and early 70s, modernism’s affirmation of fixity, permanence, and autonomy lost its hold on the Western imagination, shaping the manner in which a whole host of artists engaged with the moving image.

After a late summer hiatus, our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series resumes next Monday with a talk by Dr. Steven Handel, Director of the Center for Urban Restoration Ecology (CURE) at Rutgers University.  CURE’s research and practice focuses on ‘ecological services’ provided by patches of native habitat in urban and other degraded areas, and how to ensure the sustainability of those services with relatively low maintenance costs.

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Reflections on e-waste from Annie Leonard, who previously made the viral sensation “The Story of Stuff.”

(via The New York Times Green Blog)

Visitors on the Freshkills Park tour are always excited when we mention that there are deer on-site, but they rarely experience a sighting; deer can be shy when large vehicles and groups of people are on the approach.  But there have, in fact, been a number of sightings. 

The New York City Urban Field Station is a brand new office, laboratory and residence for visiting and resident urban ecology research activities and researchers, located in Fort Totten Park in Bayside, Queens.  The facility is a physical base for The New York City Urban Field Station program, launched in 2006 by the Parks Department and the U.S.

One of the most spectacular sights for visitors to the Freshkills Park site these days  is the installation of final cover on Landfill Section 6/7, the East Mound.  Final cover (also called the landfill cap) is composed of a series of layers of soil, synthetic textile, plastic and grass and is complemented by construction of adequate and sometimes elaborate drainage systems and basins. 

There’s no contest—no other season matches autumn for colors and shapes at the Freshkills Park site.  The grasses and trees are at their highest (or they’ve been mowed, leaving strong contrasts of height and texture), and the reds and golds really stand out among the golden browns and vibrant streaks of still-thriving greens. 

Yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe broke ground on the second project in the development of Freshkills Park, the $6.5 million renovation of Schmul Park.  (The 28-acre Owl Hollow Fields were the first project.)  An 8-acre park in the Travis neighborhood, Schmul Park will serve as a community gateway into the larger Freshkills Park. 

Landscape architecture and urban design firm James Corner Field Operations, designers of the master plan and early projects for Freshkills Park as well as of the High Line, have garnered another high-profile commission: designing a new nine-acre park on Seattle’s waterfront. 

The Sarnia Solar Project, an 80-megawatt (MW), 950-acre solar field operated by Enbridge, Inc. in Ontario, Canada, is the largest operating photovoltaic facility in the world.  A 20 MW section of the site, formerly farmland, has been commercially operating since last year, with the additional 60 MW, $300 million addition having come online at the beginning of October. 

MillionTreesNYC is seeking volunteers to help plant 20,000 trees at parks throughout the five boroughs this Saturday, October 23rd.  Spots are still available at two sites on Staten Island, Clove Lakes Park and Wolfe’s Pond Park, as well as at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx. 

Chasing Sanitation: Falling in Love with New York’s Strongest is a series of portraits and interviews with New York City Sanitation workers produced by writer Lisa Dowda and photographer Liz Lignon over the past two years.

Sanitation Workers – they’re not saints.

Sneak Peak was a huge success!  About 1800 people joined us at the Freshkills Park site on Sunday to make and fly kites, canoe in the creeks, walk the site with an expert, ride a pony, pet a goat, make a bag or a birdhouse, learn about composting and recycling and energy efficiency, receive a free bike helmet or fitting, enjoy the fun music, cool crafts and awesome food and generally celebrate the potential of this fascinating and amazing site. 

New York City has seen a surge in recreational access to urban waterways over the last 15 years.  There are active canoeing and kayaking outings in the Hudson River, the Bronx River, Jamaica Bay, even Superfund sites like the Gowanus Canal and the Newtown Creek. 

We’ve been eager to host a kite-flying event at the Freshkills Park site since the very beginning of this project.  The grassy, open landfill mounds soar above the surrounding landscape, not only making them high points with incredible views, but also providing access to some prime wind conditions. 

One of the things we’ve learned over the course of this park project is that the Freshkills Park site has been a part of many, many people’s careers: Sanitation workers, engineers, equipment manufacturers, scientists, policymakers, designers, artists, philanthropists—we are constantly astonished to discover a new realm of expertise on this site with which we’re so familiar.