Freshkills Park Blog

The Freshkills Park Talks lecture series continues on Tuesday with John McLaughlin, Director of Ecological Services for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).  John designed and oversees the ecological reclamation of the Pennsylvania and Fountain Avenue landfills, sited along Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn. 

Web Ecoist showcases some incredible feats in green roof and, especially, green wall design around the world.  These are always fun and inspiring image galleries, even when the projects seem slightly misguided.  At their best, green roofs and walls not only serve as aesthetic amentities, but also provide insulation, purify air and reduce storm water runoff.

A new online data mapping tool called IMBY – or In My Backyard (a play on NIMBY)– allows users to estimate the potential for renewable energy production on any given site, whether it’s a backyard, a roof or an empty lot. 

The City of New York has announced a $15 million project to clean up 38 acres of wetlands adjacent to the Paerdegat Basin Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Facility on Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn.  According to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, the project–slated for completion in 2012–will begin this Spring to improve water quality in the Paerdegat Basin by re-introducing native plants to the salt marsh and grassland habitats.

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULP2f9DxeQw&w=507&h=370]

The No Impact Project was started by Colin Beavan, also known as No Impact Man, to see if his family could live a zero-waste lifestyle for one year in New York City.  Through environmental education, the No Impact Project aims to empower others to reduce their impact on the environment (the No Impact Experiment, a “one-week carbon cleanse,” is featured in the video). 

The New York Times documents a rise in university programs focused on sustainability, especially regarding the urban environment.  The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education lists nine universities with master’s and doctoral programs in urban sustainability studies.  Most of these programs are interdisciplinary in nature, like the new graduate program at the City College of New York that will focus on sustainability in the urban environment, incorporating the approaches of architecture, engineering and science. 

A lecture on the biology of salt marshes, tonight at the Arsenal.

Natural habitats and ecosystems are delicate things, and in this lecture, you’ll learn the natural history of salt marshes and their plants and animals, along with the “unnatural history” of how humans have altered and damaged them physically, chemically, and biologically.

The New York Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects is hosting a panel discussion on Restorative Landscapes tomorrow evening, January 14th.  The panel will be comprised of:

• Jack Carman, founder of Design for Generations, LLC who specializes in the design of therapeutic gardens, particularly for the elderly;
• Nancy Chambers, director of the horticulture therapy program at the Enid Haupt Glass Garden within the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine;
• Naomi Sachs, founder and director of the Theraputic Landscapes Network and principal of Naomi Sachs Design.

Renewable energy company Beautiful Earth Group has unveiled a containerized solar-powered charging station for electric vehicles (EVs) at a site in Red Hook, Brooklyn.  The station is built from recycled shipping containers and is topped with an array of 235-watt photovoltaic panels, which reach a total capacity of almost 6 kW. 

A recent New York Times piece features a valuable piece of NYC Parks property: the Alice Austen House, a National Historic Monument located in the Rosebank section of Staten Island.  Accompanying the story is an audio slide show narrated by caretaker and curator Paul Moakley, a freelance photo editor and photographer who maintains the house, museum and grounds in exchange for free accommodation in the house’s upstairs apartment.  

MIT students have developed a roofing tile that saves energy and heating and cooling costs by changing color depending on temperature.  The tile turns white to reflect heat during the summer and becomes transparent during cool months, revealing a heat-absorbing black backing. 

The post-holiday season can result in a lot of waste.  Groups around New York City are offering a host of upcoming recycling and composting events to ensure that not everything simply ends up in a landfill.

• Parks all over the five boroughs will be participating in MulchFest this weekend, allowing you to bring your Christmas tree to a designated location to be chipped into mulch. 

Plans have been announced by Bio Energy Investments Ltd (BEI) for the construction of BEI-Teesside, a biomass power station to be built on a brownfield site on the banks of the River Tees in the UK.  The striking design is by British firm Heatherwick studio. 

Landscape architecture and urban design firm James Corner Field Operations has prepared three new design proposals re-imagining Cleveland’s Public Square.  The downtown park is bisected by two roads and perceived, in its current state, as a dead zone between skyscrapers. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkmDZpNKnms&w=507&h=370]

A new documentary called Garbage Dreams will be screening at Manhattan’s IFC Center for one week starting today, January 6th.  The film follows three teenage boys who grow up in a “garbage village” on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, where residents are referred to as Zaballeen, Arabic for “garbage people.” 

The New Yorker has published a list of the Ten Most Positive Architectural Events of 2009.  Highlights from the NYC-focused list include:

• the opening of the High Line on Manhattan’s west side;
• the pedestrianization of Broadway, a project transforming public space spearheaded by Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Kahn;
• the publishing of two books on architecture and the city: 1) Wrestling with Moses by Anthony Flint on the historic struggle between Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, and 2)Twenty Minutes in Manhattan by Michael Sorkin on the author’s changing experience of the city as manifested in his daily walk from his home in Greenwich Village to his studio in Chelsea;
• Cooper Union’s opening of 41 Cooper Square, a new academic building making Cooper Union NYC’s first LEED Platinum certified school.

In 2002, a year after the Department of Sanitation and and the Municipal Arts Society announced the design competition for the reuse of the Fresh Kills landfill, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) embarked on an investigative project called Garbage Problems aimed at understanding the processes behind waste management in New York City. 

We’ve uploaded a new flickr photo set of the Freshkills Park site in the glorious aftermath of the weekend’s snowstorm.  In most parts of New York City, snowfall is beautiful for the first hour and then gets plowed and turns gray and hangs around for two months, but, for the most part, it stays pretty pristine here on top of the mounds. 

A new study by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) is underway to assess the role US forests and soils can play in limiting emissions through carbon capture. The first phase of the study found that forests in the lower 48 states currently store about 90 billion metric tons of carbon and continue to capture about 30% of the country’s fossil fuel emissions each year.

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch?v=f09lQ8Q1iKE&w=507&h=370]

Photographer Chris Jordan makes staggering representations of human waste, consumerism and cultural practices, focusing on the immense environmental impact of collective consumption.  Jordan illustrates daunting statistics–4 million plastic cups used each day on airline flights alone, 166,000 overnight packages shipped by air in the U.S.