Freshkills Park Blog

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched MyEnvironment, a graphical web database of local environmental data on measures of air quality, cancer risk levels, water quality and brownfields.  Users can also find information on the conditions of local watersheds as well as the chemical outputs of particular built facilities, the quantity of those outputs, the facilities’ compliance with regulation and their current violations.

Choreographer/performer Jill Sigman and composer/vocalist Kristin Norderval have collaborated to produce Our Lady of Detritus, a performance piece focused on “trash and transcendence” that has been making its way through various outdoor New York City sites for the past month.

Habitat corridors are planted or wild strips of land between natural areas that encourage wildlife to migrate from place to place and, in turn, to help fertilize a broader range of places through the seeds they carry on them or digest.   

Researchers in Jerusalem are developing a new type of solar cell that can generate power from diffuse light. The cells form panels that transmit light to silicon solar receptors at their edges. GreenSun Energy of  Tel Aviv say their panels have achieved a 12% efficiency rate, much lower than the world’s most efficient cells, but hope to eventually reach a 20% efficiency.

Infrastructurist has posted its list of the ten greatest large urban parks.  It’s interesting to see them all viewed from above at roughly the same scale, and to see how they interact at that scale with the form of the urban fabric around them. 

Nature Find is an online tool provided by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) to aid in finding local nature or nature-related amenities.   Users plug-in a zip code, and the software locates nearby events, city parks, science centers, zoos and other wildlife-related happenings.

Pruned’s three-part “Under Spaces” survey (Parts 1, 2 and 3) explores the problems cities face when planning under and around elevated infrastructure like rail lines and highways.  Recent projects have converted these typically neglected landscapes into urban public centers, mountain biking and skating parks and waterfront green spaces.

We’ve updated our flickr stream with photos from the Composting Workshop we held at the end of August and last weekend’s reading from the works of Robert Frost.  Both events were rainy but drew enthusiastic and game crowds and speakers. 

Last week’s Dining Section of the Times printed a great review and slide show of delicious and affordable restaurants emerging from new immigrant populations on Staten Island.  We vouch for the Sri Lankan offerings at Sanrasa on Bay Street–very good food. 

Time.com has posted a short video piece on the history and transformation of the Freshkills Park site, featuring Park Administrator Eloise Hirsh and Department of Sanitation Anthropologist-in-Residence, Robin Nagle.

Researchers at the University of Texas are developing solar photovoltaics 10,000 times thinner than human hair that can be spray-painted onto surfaces.   The ambition of the  project is to develop a solution of sunlight-absorbing nanoparticles that can be sprayed onto a surface to create a solar panel–a process similar to newspaper printing. 

Catalyx Nanotech is the first company to use methane for nanofiber production. Through a demonstration project at a California landfill, the company was able to split methane into pure hydrogen and carbon to produce nanofibers.  Carbon-based nanofibers can be applied to a number of  uses: medical, energy, protection, textile; in this case, they’ll be used for hydrogren fuel supply. 

The Trust for Public Land, a national, non-profit land conservation organization, has released its annual city park survey, revealing some interesting statistics about the nation’s urban parkland.  Some notable facts from the survey:

• New York City has the most parkland as a percentage of city land–19.6%–of high-density cities in the US. 

GreenEdge NYC and Solar One‘s free, seven-evening Solar-Powered Film Festival begins tonight on the East River.  A series of environmental documentaries will screen in Solar One’s outdoor eco-theater, with projector and sound system powered by solar energy captured nearby.

Thursday, September 10 – Addicted to Plastic (2007, 85 mins)
Friday, September 11 – Who Killed the Electric Car (2006, 93 mins)
Saturday, September 12 – Flow: For the Love of Water (2008, 93 mins)
Sunday, September 13 – [Rain Date for any of above]

Thursday, September 17 – A Sea Change (2008, 85 mins)
Friday, September 18 – The Garden (2008, 80 mins)
Saturday, September 19 – Burning in the Sun (2009, 65 mins)
Sunday, September 20 – [Rain Date for any of above]

September 25 at 7 PM [Rain Date September 26] – What’s On Your Plate?

The New York Times chronicles developments at the Pennsylvania Avenue and Fountain Avenue Landfills in Brooklyn.  New York City”s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has completed the first phase of ecological rehabilitation of the site, which began in 2004.  After the landfill capping procedure was complete, DEP seeded the 400-acre area and planted shrubs and trees into a landscape of ecological islands. 

The Guinness Book’s record holder for World’s Largest Photograph was created at the site of the Orange County Great Park, a brownfield-to-park project in Orange County, California.  The Great Picture is a gelatin silver print measuring 10 x 30 meters, or roughly three stories high and eleven stories long. 

Hey! I’m Walkin’ Here! is a series of long group walks exploring various parts of the five boroughs.  Tomorrow’s 20-mile exploration of Staten Island will be the group’s 41st walk and its fifth on the Island.  Their flickr stream of photos from previous walks is pretty excellent. 

The New York Times features Dan Phillips and his construction company, Phoenix Commotion, which builds housing for low-income families out of discarded materials that would otherwise be sent to landfills.

So far, he has built 14 homes in Huntsville, which is his hometown, on lots either purchased or received as a donation.

The 2008 Massachusetts Clean Energy Biofuels Act requires petroleum suppliers in that state to make 2 to 3 percent of their sales, by volume, from biofuels by 2011.  And in a recent decision, the state says that waste-based biofuels are the only ones yet to meet the state’s renewable fuel standards, citing their significantly reduced contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. 

The aim of Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat’s recent ReBurbia design competition was to reimagine the American suburbs in the context of the current home foreclosure crisis and rising energy costs.  The competition’s cheeky winning entry posits the transformation of abandoned suburban mansions into wetlands and water purification systems for urban centers: the buildings become machines housing micro-ecosystems, and the front yards become micro-wetlands, providing habitat for wildlife.