Tags: events

Our judges have voted, and the winners of the Freshkills Park haiku contest are:

Adult winners:

Seen from outer space
Freshkills undergoing change
Refresh Google Earth

-L

a park in my mind
landfill scarred islanders’ hearts
reclaimed, restored land

-Lindsay Campbell

From trash to treasure
As from rubble to ramble
We grow; we evolve

-Jessica Kratz

Youth winner:

30 Years

The fresh air, boat rides
On the swings, flying your kite
30 years be there

-Shade, Esmeralda, Alexus

Congratulations!  

Today marks the end of the Freshkills Park Haiku contest. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and inspirations of the Park by crafting a haiku. Reading the entries–over 100 of them!–was a blast, and we are looking forward to announcing the winners on Monday. 

Last Thursday’s installment of the Freshkills Park Talks lecture series was terrific.  Ed Toth, Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), discussed the importance of floral biodiversity in urban settings, the GNPC’s history and operations–it’s one of the only municipal native plant providers in the country, if not the only one–and several citywide initiatives it’s taken on recently, including the Great Pollinator Project. 

This Saturday, Staten Island OutLOUD, a community dialogue and performance project, will be reading from the naturalist memoir Days Afield atop North Mound at the Freshkills Park site.  Days Afield, written in 1892, is a poetic exploration of Staten Island’s natural resources by naturalist, historian and Staten Island native William T.

Columbia University will be hosting The 350 Conference on climate change this Saturday. The one-day conference will focus on the need to lower carbon dioxide emissions (from the current 385 parts per million (ppm) to 350 ppm, hence the name of the conference). 

No need to keep Earth Day constrained to just one day: festivities continue through the weekend, with Earth Day New York holding a festival at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan on Friday and Saturday.  Exhibits and representatives from environmental groups and green businesses, organic food and live music are all part of the program.

The Freshkills Park Talks series continues this Thursday with a talk by Ed Toth, Director of the Parks Department’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center.  The GNPC’s mission is to supply New York City’s natural areas with native plants and seeds from local plant populations. 

NYC Wildflower Week kicks off its 2nd annual celebration of all things green and wild the first week of May.  Free activities throughout the city will include botanical walks, garden tours, ecology lectures, children’s events, planting opportunities, cooking classes and food tastings.

Another fun competition: FlyNY, in partnership with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation, is hosting an international kite design contest. Participants will get to show off their aspiring designs and fly their kites on Saturday, May 9th on Pier I on the Hudson River. 

The MoMA is kicking off  a new exhibit today, “In Situ: Architecture and Landscape,” an exploration of the relationship between the built environment and its surrounding landscape.  Exhibited 20th century works of architecture and landscape will highlight  “spatial, social, and environmental aspects of human life and how they had profound reverberations in both architecture and landscape design.” 

Two years into Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 initiative, the Sustainability Practice Network is hosting a panel at NYU the evening of April 21st to discuss the status of PlaNYC initiatives and review lessons learned.

Launched on Earth Day, 2007 Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 promised to address the major environmental sustainability issues facing the city, with 127 initiatives on housing, open space, water, air quality, transportation, brownfields, and the city’s impact on climate change.

Electronic waste contains some pretty dangerous stuff and is best kept out of landfills.  Starting in 2010, disposal of electronics with your regular trash will be illegal in New York City, and any resident who throws electronics into their trash will be charged a $100 fine. 

Thanks to everyone who came out to last Thursday’s talk on the history of operations at Fresh Kills.  Dennis Diggins’ fascinating and wide-ranging overview touched on the history of sanitary landfills and the city’s solid waste management system, the evolution of equipment used for transporting, compacting and containing waste, Dennis’ own personal anecdotes about working at Fresh Kills from 1991-2006 (including the sage advice: “Don’t walk with your hands in your pockets in a landfill,” because if you trip and fall your hands are the only things keeping you from falling head first into the trash) and the Department of Sanitation’s tremendous role in the clean-up and investigation of the World Trade Center attack in the days and months following 9/11.

If you want to learn more about solar energy and its implementation, I Heart PV, a pro-solar campaign launched out of Solar One Green Energy, Arts & Education Center, will be giving a special presentation at The Park Slope Food Coop tomorrow  on Photovoltaic technology (“PV”) and current attempts to establish New York as a leader in solar adoption.

The spring conference of the Forum for Urban Design is called The 21^st Century Park & the Contemporary City.  The first evening’s panel is free, and there will be some big name landscape architects on it: Ken Greenberg, George Hargreaves, Michael Van Valkenburgh and James Corner, principal of Field Operations, who are designing Freshkills Park as well as the High Line. 

We’re happy to begin our third year of public bus tours through the Freshkills Park site. Tours run from April through the middle of November on alternating Saturdays at 10 a.m and 1 p.m, and we’d love for you to come out on a tour. 

The Growing and Greening New York exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York continues on until April 22nd (Earth Day).  If you’re interested in the conversation about how New York City needs to adapt for a more sustainable future, you’ll want to check out the show. 

Please join us for a talk on the history of landfill operations at the former Fresh Kills Landfill.  Dennis Diggins, Deputy Director, Bureau of Waste Disposal at NYC Department of Sanitation, will discuss the history of waste management at New York City’s former landfill.