Freshkills Park Blog

As part of the Bureau of Land Management‘s Seeds of Success project, The Dixon National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank at the Chicago Botanic Garden is preserving the seeds of thousands of prairie species–1,500 by 2010 and 3,000 by 2020–that are native to the Midwest, as far west as the Rockies. 

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58 billion non-recyclable coffee cups are used and thrown away each year.  BetaCup aims to fund a design contest geared toward reducing or eliminating that waste.  Ideas and donations for sustainable alternatives are accepted.

Philosophy in the Land II, an exhibition featuring photography, drawings and prints by artist Agnes Denes spanning the last 50 years, is on view at the Leslie Tonkonow Gallery in Manhattan until January 16th.  Denes is a pioneer of the environmental art movment whose ecological and philosophical interests surfaced in her 1968 piece Rice/Tree/Burial, which has been described as “the first site-specific piece anywhere with ecological concerns.”

The NYC Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation (MOER)  is sponsoring a free workshop this Thursday on “Green Remediation and Sustainability.”  The workshop is the third in a series of events aimed at encouraging brownfield redevelopment and will include an introduction to MOER’s Local Brownfield Clean-up Program, quantitative tools for measuring sustainability at brownfield sites and presentations on remediation projects at both the local and national level. 

e-cycler connects people who want to collect recyclables for cash with people who need recyclables picked up, often in areas that lack municipal curbside recycling service.  Providers of recyclables can request a 40% cut of the collector’s profit or can allow collectors to receive the full rebate at recycling centers (though e-cycler takes a small cut, regardless). 

City planners in Guelph, Ontario have approved a master plan to transform a 200-acre decommissioned landfill into the world’s largest pollinator park.  The former Eastview Road Landfill, which operated as a municipal dump from 1961 to 2003, has been capped and outfitted with a methane capturing system that converts landfill gas into usable energy. 

Eli Cohen gave a terrific talk Monday night on his work, as director of Ayala Water and Ecology, using plants to remove pollutants and contaminants from water, soil and air.  We’re grateful to the huge crowd that poured into the Arsenal gallery for the event, to Laura Starr and Yamit Perez for putting us in touch with Eli and, of course, to Eli himself for sharing his work and his thoughts.

James Corner, founder and director of landscape architecture and urban design firm Field Operations, will speak about the firm’s current projects this evening at Cooper Union, hosted by the Architectural League of New York.  In addition to designing the Freshkills Park master plan and first phase projects, Field Operations continues to tackle a number of diverse and high-profile projects including The High Line and the 4,500-acre Shelby Farms Park in Memphis. 

The first phase of development is underway for 1,347-acre brownfield transformation project Orange County Great Park.  $65.5 million will fund the expansion of a 27.5-acre “Preview Park,” which opened in 2008 and features an observation balloon providing visitors a high-flying view of the entire site. 

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LentSpace is a 37,000 square foot temporary park and cultural space at Canal and Sullivan Streets in lower Manhattan.  The site opened to the public on September 18th–Park(ing) Day–and is on loan to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for three years from Trinity Real Estate, which hopes to build on it when the City’s real estate market improves. 

The New York City Department of Sanitation is testing out four models of hybrid diesel-electric garbage trucks as it considers how to upgrade its fleet.  The trucks have been designed to look and operate like typical, all-diesel powered trucks but use 30% less fuel and produce 30% less emissions. 

We’re excited to restart our Freshkills Park lecture series, Freshkills Park Talks, this coming Monday, December 7th.  Eli Cohen of Israel’s Ayala Water & Ecology will be speaking about his work designing naturally-based solutions to help remove contaminants from soil, air, and bodies of water and to rebuild ecosystems’ capacity for self-sustainability. 

MillionTreesNYC is hosting a research symposium on green infrastructure and urban ecology and is accepting submissions of papers to be presented at that symposium.

The purpose of this symposium is to showcase research and projects that contribute to knowledge on urban landscapes, green infrastructure, and public health in cities and urban areas.

Semakau Landfill, the world’s first offshore landfill and Singapore’s only waste destination, has been described by Singapore’s government as “Scenic Waste Disposal.”  The site has been open to the public for recreational activities since 2005 and has been envisioned as an eco-park featuring renewable energy generation and educational facilities. 

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Norway-based company Statkraft has just opened the world’s first osmotic power plant, tapping into the emissions-free energy produced when fresh water and salt water mix.  Osmotic power harnesses osmosis, the natural process by which a solute in solution travels from an area of lower to higher concentration across a semi-permeable membrane (permeable to the solvent but not the solute). 

In a roundtable conversation hosted by The Architects’ Newspaper, four New York City Commissioners–Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Design and Construction Commissioner David Burney, Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe–discuss recently designed and developed projects as well as what they believe is achievable during Mayor Bloomberg’s next four years, especially given tightening fiscal constraints. 

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Partners Waste Management and Linde Group have begun processing fuel at the world’s largest Landfill Gas (LFG) to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant, located at Altamont Landfill near Livermore, CA.  Waste Management–the leading US waste services company and largest national operator of refuse and recycling trucks–collects the garbage, and Linde, an engineering company, purifies and liquifies the LFG produced by the waste. 

The Open Source Live Solar Mapping Project, recently released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, tracks private installations of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels  by location in the US and maps them in time.  The map-video, spanning from 1998 to the present day, highlights the spatial concentration of solar energy harvest with changing colors that indicate the number of PV installations in each state. 

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According to the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), biking in New York City has increased by 26% in 2009.  This is following a 35% increase in 2008 and corresponds with 200 miles of new striped or separated bike routes developed over the past three years. 

As part of its Green Infrastructure Research Program, The EPA has announced that it will begin long-term testing of porous paving materials, in an effort to combat storm water runoff from streets and parking lots.  Storm water from parking lots often contains grease, antifreeze, oil and other toxins that can contaminate nearby soils and bodies of water.