Freshkills Park Blog

The Parks Department’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), on Victory Boulevard on Staten Island, sits on the site of what was once the Mollenhoff Family Farm.  From 1911 to 1992, the Molenhoffs operated a 32-acre vegetable farm that was well-renowned among small growers for its innovations in farming methods, including a mechanical watering system and steam-heated greenhouses.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has identified Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant as a prime site for methane gas harvesting, a process which has been bringing in approximately $11 million annually from the Freshkills Park site. 

NYU’s Robin Nagle, Anthropologist-in-Residence of the NYC Department of Sanitation, will be giving a talk tomorrow evening called Gotham and its Garbage: What it Was, What it Is and What It Might Become, at the Bloomingdale Library on the Upper West Side and sponsored by the Park West Neighborhood History Group. 

On Monday, the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities is holding a one-day conference called In the Wake of the Half Moon: Environmental Transformation of the New York Metropolitan Region: 1609-2109.  The discussion will center on current, former and future transformation of the City’s environment and the challenges to that transformation. 

In honor of America Recycles Day this Sunday, Brokelyn offers a Brooklynite’s guide to responsibly ridding yourself of stuff–through swaps, donations and recycling.  Lots of New York City-wide non-landfill options in the other boroughs here, too; this is a rich, comprehensive resource. 

Photographer Nathan Kensinger has posted a set of terrific photos and his impressions of the Freshkills Park site, collected during our photographers’ tour last month.  We’ve been doing these tours every few months; if you’re a professional photographer interested in participating in future photo tours, feel free to be in touch.

Recently opened Concrete Plant Park, in the Bronx, sits on the seven-acre site of a concrete plant that operated from the late 1940s through 1987.  The park has retained some of its industrial past in the form of newly-painted silos, hoppers and conveyors, structures that once served as mixing facilities and now distinguish the park as sculptural monuments to the site’s evolution. 

Since the closure of Fresh Kills Landfill in 2001, districts outside of New York City, and as far as Virginia and Ohio, have become destinations for the city’s garbage.  Just north of Philadelphia, a 6,000-acre complex of Bucks County landfills–in Tullytown, Falls Township and Morrisville, PA–receive about 2,500 tons of New York City’s trash each day. 

Hey! I’m Walkin’ Here! presents another Staten Island group walk tomorrow, Saturday, November 7th, roaming 15 miles of the island’s south shore.  Lots of beach walking and some rock scrambling involved; dress for the temperature and wear sturdy shoes. Participation is free, and Saturday’s walk will start with a meetup underneath the first S in the Staten Island Ferry sign outside the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Manhattan at 8:45 am.

Inspired by the success of the High Line, proposals to reimagine abandoned rail lines have popped up all over the country.

• Faced with the replacement of a section of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, Rael San Fratello Architects have proposed the creation of the Bay Line, a hanging neighborhood complete with housing, cultural and commercial buildings and bike and pedestrian paths. 

This Friday, journalist and land policy expert Anthony Flint will be discussing and signing his new book, Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City at the Greenbelt Nature Center on Staten Island. 

New York Times feature Entry Level profiles Freshkills Park’s Programming and Grants Manager, Raj Kottamasu.  In addition to being part of the planning and implementation team for the project, Raj works with artists to develop onsite projects, initiates and organizes programs and events, manages and seeks grants for park projects and edits and designs our publications.

The New York Times runs down recent initiatives aimed at making New York City parks more accessible and accommodating to immigrants.  These efforts have been accelerating as a result of the city’s language-access plan and a report from New Yorkers for Parks called Parks for All New Yorkers: Immigrants, Culture and NYC Parks. 

Last week, the Parks Department’s Freshkills Park team and Staten Island Urban Park Rangers took a canoe trip through the site’s creeks and wetlands.  We put in at “The Point,” near the Isle of Meadows, and headed east through Fresh Kills Creek to Main Creek, where we got up close and personal with the William T.

Submissions to NYC BigApps are currently being accepted for software applications that make the City’s data sets accessible and usefully legible to the public, with the goals of  fostering greater accountability and transparency of government operations as well as providing better tools for public policy advocacy and grassroots action. 

The City of New York recently signed an agreement with Natural Currents Energy Group that will put a renewable energy generation park on the southern tip of Ward’s Island, near the Triborough (RFK) Bridge.  The park will include four 100 kilowatt tidal turbines, a 140 foot wind turbine and 800 square feet of solar panels, generating, in total, enough energy to power 100 homes. 

The American Planning Association has released its top ten list of great public spaces for 2009.  #1 is New Haven Green in New Haven, Connecticut, which, it seems, was selected as much for its aesthetics as for its political significance:

General George Washington spoke here during the American Revolution.

Wednesday the 28th, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) will host a discussion called The Infrastructure of Urban Ecologies.  Speakers will include William Morrish, Dean of the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons, and Kazys Varnelis, Director of Network Architecture Lab at GSAPP. 

The New York Times surveys the growth of “zero waste” strategies in the US among private companies, institutions and entire municipalities.  “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” are really coming of age: biodegradable utensils, large-scale composting and citywide, warehouse-like free swap shops.  And it’s not just hippies and treehuggers participating anymore.

The Council on the Environment of New York City and the Staten Island Compost Project will be co-hosting a recycling and home composting workshop this Saturday afternoon at the St. George Library on Staten Island.  Tin can tricks and live worm bins, fun for all ages.