Tags: Freshkills Park

New research shows coastal seagrass store up to twice the amount of carbon as above-ground forests, but are being threatened by dredging and water pollution, among other factors. Treehugger reports on the global analysis by Nature Geoscience showing seagrass can store “83,000 metric tons of carbon per square kilometer, versus 30,000 tons for a typical forest” and “29% of all historic seagrass meadows have been destroyed, primarily due to dredging and water pollution, with 1.5% of seagrass meadows destroyed each year.”

Mayor Bloomberg and several City of New York agencies recently released The Wetland Strategy report, which outlines plans to protect and improve city waterways. The report contains strategies to address goals in PlaNYC 2030. Among the 12 initiatives are plans to:

• invest $48 million in projects that restore and enhance nearly 127 acres of wetlands and neighboring areas,
• add 75 acres of wetland to the New York City Parks system,
• create the natural areas conservancy to encourage a public-private partnership for wetlands management,
• create a wetlands mitigation banking or in-lieu fee mechanism for public projects.

Methane gas produced from decomposing waste at Fresh Kills landfill is generating revenue for the City of New York of up to $12 million each year as the site is developed into a 2,200-acre park.

With the help of advanced landfill gas collection infrastructure throughout the landfill, the New York City Department of Sanitation is actively harvesting methane, through rigorous state and federal public health and safety guidelines, from the decomposing waste buried at Fresh Kills landfill.

We are looking for a Public Art and Grants Manager to help us in the planning, implementation, coordination and evaluation of public outreach projects that will serve to identify Freshkills Park as the park is being built. Responsibilities also include the development and management of grant applications for project funding.

On April 21st, during Earth Day weekend, Freshkills Park hosted our very first volunteer project! Staten Island Boy Scout Packs 5 and 118 (and their parents) tended to the Million Trees planting area in the South Park section of the site.

It is time to announce the winners of our fourth annual Freshkills Park Haiku Contest! April was National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, we asked fans of Freshkills Park to submit a haiku inspired by the park.  We split the entries into two categories, Adult and Youth, and our judges selected three Adult winners and two Youth winners.

New wildlife sighting! A coyote was spotted earlier this month at the Freshkills Park site by Nick Mirto, who was delivering a truckload of soil to finish capping Section 1/9, the future West Park. The photo above is courtesy Mr. Mirto’s iPhone.

Eel populations are making a comeback in the metropolitan region and along the eastern seaboard.  After years of rehabilitation of the area’s waterways, eel populations are showing signs of a resurgence in Staten Island.

Joining the work of the American Eel Research Project, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection has set up a testing site in Staten Island’s Richmond Creek, one of the improved waterways.

April is National Poetry Month which means it is time for the fourth annual Freshkills Park Haiku Contest!  We will be celebrating by asking you to share your impressions, experiences, thoughts and ideas of what Freshkills Park is, will be, and what it means to you- in haiku form.

The Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) team recently announced the release of their Field Guide to Renewable Energy Technologies, a free resource they hope will prove useful to “all designers, homeowners, urban planners, students, artists, architects, landscape architects, engineers, and anyone else interested in a clean energy future”.

Earlier this month, the 2012 Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) ideas competition, in partnership with New York City’s Department of Parks & Recreation, opened with a call for large-scale artwork proposals with the ability to generate renewable energy for New York City.

Join us for our first tour of 2012 as we search for the birds of Freshkills Park along the site’s wetlands, creeks and meadows. This tour, like all of our bi-monthly birding tours, will be held jointly by naturalists from the Staten Island Museum and a member of the Freshkills Park development team.

This Saturday evening a demonstration of PARK, the ever-evolving performance language developed through fieldwork conducted at Freshkills Park by choreographer Kathy Westwater, will take place as part the annual Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference at the Gibney Dance Center in Manhattan.

The New York Times profiles Ed Toth, Director of the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), a greenhouse and nursery operation that provides seed and plant material for restoration projects across the city’s 1,700 parks. 

This Saturday, members of the community dialogue and performance project Staten Island OutLOUD, will be reading from the writings of Sandra Cisneros at Freshkills Park. Cisneros is a leading American writer, whose works highlight the urban, Latina-American experience. Excerpts from works including The House on Mango Street will be read in English and Spanish from the top of North Mound, against spectacular views of Staten Island and the Manhattan skyline.

About 2,000 people joined us for the second annual Sneak Peak at Freshkills Park on Sunday, soaking up the incredible fall weather and taking part in the many, many activities we had to offer: making and flying kites, kayaking in the creeks (our registration records show 317 kayakers over the course of the day), walking the site with an expert, riding ponies, petting goats, making bags and birdhouses, learning about recycling and energy efficiency, enjoying the fun music, cool crafts and tasty food and generally celebrating the potential of this fascinating and amazing site.

At last year’s Sneak Peak we were lucky enough to get Mierle Laderman Ukeles‘ iconic mirrored garbage truck, ‘The Social Mirror’ to feature prominently as a preview of public art to come in the future park.  This year, we’re able to deliver a little bit more of that future with a total of 15 art installations throughout the event site, curated with the assistance of the Council on the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI). 

Over the course of the various stages of its history, a wide range of professionals have spent time working on or thinking about the Freshkills Park site: sanitation workers, engineers, equipment manufacturers, scientists, policymakers, architects, designers, artists, philanthropists. There are countless layers of expertise to mine in understanding the site. 

Once you work up an appetite kayaking, biking and touring the site at Sneak Peak, make sure to stop by the food vendors for an assortment of tasty grub.  We will have the Vendy Award-winning King of Falafel and Shawarma, Carmelo’s Brick Oven Pizza, and Killmeyer’s Old Bavaria Inn serving up savory fare as well as The Treats Truck, Staten Island Iceman, and Nonie Chu’s Pastries with sweet treats.

There will be plenty of activities and fun and gorgeous scenery at Sneak Peak this Sunday, but it’s important to remember that the Freshkills Park site is a landfill because of us–all of us, and our constant production of garbage.  And it’s important to take this site as an example to act more responsibly.