Tags: reclamation

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.

Dear Freshkills Park Supporter:

We hope your time with the Park this year was inspiring, enlightening, and fun. While the site is currently closed to the public, the Alliance offered over 6,000 visitors the opportunity to experience the Park through arts and science activities, hikes and tours, education programs and recreation events.

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.

Throughout August, Freshkills Park researchers have been monitoring the diversity of fish species in the park’s Main Creek. This research has been ongoing since 2016 as a means of staying up to date on the health and quality of the aquatic ecosystems at the 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.

Are you new to Freshkills Park and want to learn a little bit more about the exciting changes occurring at what was once the world’s largest landfill? Freshkills Park is excited to announce the release of new videos that introduce newcomers to the park in three themes: “Welcome”, “Freshkills Park Science and Research Program”, and “Landfill Infrastructure at Freshkills Park”.

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. 

On Friday October 24, 2014 New York City Department of Parks and Recreation launched the Capital Project Tracker, an interactive map of all active Parks Department projects. There currently are over 400 active projects on the Tracker, with a timeline of each project and dedicated sections including Design, Procurement, and Construction phases.

The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized its cleanup plan for Gowanus Canal. The Brooklyn Canal, bound by Park Slope, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens and Red Hook, was declared a Superfund site in 2010 and communities have long been pushing for its cleanup.

On September 29^th, Freshkills Park opened its gates to the public for the fourth annual Sneak Peak event and attracted 3,500 people, a steady increase from previous years.

They came on bikes, on ferries, and in cars; with family, with friends.

Freshkills Park CELEBRATES National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month which means it is time for the fifth 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.

In 2010, two years after its closure, Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport was reopened to the public as Tempelhofer Freiheit, a large city park just two miles south of the city center. Since it’s reopening, little has been done to the airport’s landscape; existing walkways are largely disconnected and only minimal infrastructure and amenities are in place.

Stapleton, a neighborhood of Denver, Colorado has released an innovative plan to turn the decommissioned Stapleton Airport into a 4,700 acre mixed-use sustainable development. The planning for this development started more than 10 years ago after the completion of the nearby Denver International Airport, which effectively replaced Stapleton International Airport.

For more than 20 years, Department of Sanitation New York City worker Nelson Molina has curated a collection…of trash. Call it a gallery, a collection, or a museum, Molina and other Sanitation workers have transformed an unused room in an Upper East Side sanitation facility, located on 99th Street between First and Second Avenues, into a showplace for found art in collected trash.

A San Francisco company is spurring local urban agriculture by turning organic waste into mulch, and giving it away for free. Bayview Greenwaste collects plant waste for a fee, grinds it into mulch, then gives it away to any organization that wants it, including nonprofits, municipalities, private citizens, schools, and power plants.

A closed landfill in Canton, Massachusetts plans to implement solar power infrastructure that will generate $16.3 million for the city. The landfill sat unused for over 20 years when city officials decided to build a solar array on the site that will include 19,844 solar panels, citing the relatively low investment and significant return.

A recent look at a centuries-old landfill – the eighth hill of Rome – presents new insight into the variety of uses and cultural identities reclaimed landfills today might strive toward. On Places, architect Michael Ezban explores the history and current status of Monte Testaccio as an integral part of the Roman urban fabric.

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.