Tags: Freshkills Park

Join Mr. Ted Nabavi, Director of Waste Management Engineering at DSNY, for a behind-the-scenes tour of the Fresh Kills Landfill Leachate Treatment Plant. Leachate, a landfill by-product, is created when water seeps through solid waste. Leachate treatment includes biological and chemical treatment to remove harmful constituents so the treated water can be safely discharged.

Join us for a special tour of the construction at North Park Phase 1, the first Freshkills Park project to be built within the former Fresh Kills Landfill boundary. See the progress on building the bird tower and the wetland observation deck as well as the spectacular views of Main Creek.

At 2,200 acres, Freshkills Park is almost three times the size of Central Park and the largest park to be developed in New York City in over 100 years. It also has a significant history as the site of the Fresh Kills Landfill, which was the largest landfill in the world before closing in 2001.

Rachel Aronson is the Education Programming Coordinator for Freshkills Park. She loves spending time with kids and being outside, and she is passionate about improving access to parks in urban spaces. Rachel has worked as a classroom teacher, environmental educator, and manager of the Hazon Seal of Sustainability, a sustainability program for organizations.

Over the years of Freshkills Park’s transformation from landfill to park, its name has taken on a variety of meanings. Though some still associate “fresh kills” with the former landfill, many have begun to recognize its significance as a symbol of renewal, rebirth, and rejuvenation.

As Freshkills Park undergoes its long transformation from landfill to public greenspace, access remains limited and it can be challenging to convey to the public all of the things going on inside the park’s boundaries. The Freshkills Park Development team has created an interactive map to serve as a virtual tour of the park project.

Karl Vetter is the Project Development Coordinator for Freshkills Park.  A native of the Bronx, he has been highly involved in urban greenspaces as a Central Park volunteer, an intern in a Hydroponic greenhouse in Newark, an Americorps Coordinator with the New York Restoration Project, and a seasonal staff member of Partnerships for Parks.

It was yet another busy fall at Freshkills Park this year, with a number of park developments, programs, and events serving as a reminder of the radical transformation that continues to occur at what was once the world’s largest landfill.

Discovery Day

On September 15^th, over one thousand visitors flocked to Freshkills for its annual Discovery Day, in which several hundred acres were open for hands-on arts and STEM activities, kite-flying, biking, and free exploration.

Since its inception, the Freshkills Park team has fostered partnerships with artists from a variety of disciplines in an effort to document this preliminary phase of park development through creative expression. Over time, a number of works have emerged, ranging from ink studies produced within the confines of an old shipping container to bound notebooks created from the park’s ubiquitous invasive Phragmites plant.

Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship

This summer, researchers from College of Staten Island completed their fourth year of Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) bird banding at Freshkills Park. MAPS is a collaborative, continent-wide research effort coordinated by the Institute for Bird Populations, with over 1,200 participant banding stations.

This summer, Freshkills staff and interns conducted fieldwork to assess the levels of moisture in the grassland soil on North and East Mounds. This research is part of an ongoing project to characterize the differences between the grasslands within Freshkills Park.

With temperatures climbing into the 80s this weekend, over one thousand visitors flocked to Freshkills Park for a warm edition of Discovery Day, a chance to experience the world’s largest landfill-to-park project as it continues to undergo development. Though the park is normally closed, events such as Discovery Day give visitors a chance to see what this former waste dump now has to offer in the way of passive and active recreation, wildlife habitat, and innovative engineering.

This week marks the beginning of a new collaboration between Freshkills Park and New Ventures Charter School. For the next twelve weeks, students from New Ventures will report to Freshkills Park four days per week, two and a half hours per day, for environmental science lessons, hands-on fieldwork projects, art activities, and other curricula that tie into their graduation requirements.

Fastnet: Plein-Air Drawing at Freshkills Park is an exhibition of plein-air drawings and ink studies of Freshkills Park that were produced through a series of workshops held within a 20-foot shipping container called Fastnet. The exhibition will be on display at the Arsenal Galley in Central Park from September 13th – November 14th. 

Discover Freshkills Park and experience the unique landscape and spectacular views the landfill-to-park project has to offer. This free event is a special opportunity to explore the future park while the site is closed to the public. Hundreds of acres and miles of trails will be open for tours, bicycling, and activities for all ages.

Phase one of North Park will be the first section inside the Fresh Kills Landfill boundaries to open to the public, connecting visitors to spectacular views of the site’s hills and waterways. NYC Parks and NYC Sanitation broke ground on the project in July 2017.

Freshkills Park teamed up with the design studio Partner & Partners to create What is Freshkills?, a fold-out poster pamphlet that illustrates the history, engineering, and ecology of the unique 2,200-acre park in an accessible and easily distributed format.

The Fresh Kills Landfill was the largest landfill in the world before it closed in 2001.

Freshkills Park remains closed to the public for most of the year while the project is under development. NYC Parks and the Freshkills Park Alliance work hard to offer as many ways to experience the Park as possible during this time, but we know nothing is quite like being inside the gates witnessing the landfill-to-park transformation firsthand.

Freshkills Park will offer a Discovery Day event on Sunday June 26th from 11am to 4pm. During this free event, 700 acres and eight miles of trails in the normally closed site will be open, providing opportunities to explore and learn about the landfill-to-park project.

Freshkills Park will offer a Discovery Day event on Sunday, June 26th from 11am to 4pm. During this free public event, 700 acres of the normally closed site will be open for a one-day opportunity to discover the unique experience and views the park has to offer.