Tags: Staten Island

After learning about Freshkills Park through tours and presentations, Saint Adalbert teacher Donna Dawson assigned a final project for her 8th graders to create an interpretive model of the park’s future, encouraging the use of recyclable materials. The students assumed the role of urban park planners, conducted research, constructed practical visions of the park, and wrote accompanying reports.

Freshkills Park will participate in the 6th Annual Green and Clean Festival on June 8th. Organized by the Staten Island Economic Development Corporation (SIEDC), the festival is the largest event on Staten Island combining sustainability and industry.

The SI Green & Clean Festival brings together over 400 sustainable businesses, green innovation and technology companies, efficient energy experts and local residents interested in sustainable living.

Photographers can enter a contest for the chance to have their portrait of Freshkills Park published in the Staten Island Advance. Winning photographs will also be displayed for the public at the Staten Island Arts Culture Lounge at the St.

The upcoming Staten Island Unlimited Triennial Talk at the Alice Austen House will include a discussion and Q&A with Michael McWeeney, whose photograph of Freshkills Park is included in the photography exhibition.

McWeeney has been photographing Freshkills Park as part of Capturing Change, a series of photo essays in collaboration with Urban Omnibus that invites small groups of photographers to the site to document the engineered landscape’s evolution.

Freshkills Park will offer Discovery Day on May 15th from 11am to 4pm. During this free public event, 700 acres of the otherwise closed site will be open for outdoor recreation, providing opportunities to explore and learn about the landfill-to-park project.

Fifteen years ago this week, the final barge of household garbage arrived at Fresh Kills Landfill. To celebrate this milestone, the website’s new interactive landfill-to-park timeline illustrates almost 100 years of changes in the area.

The last barge to Fresh Kills marked the end of 53 years of landfill operations.

Freshkills Park will offer Discovery Day events on May 15th and June 26th, 2016 from 11am to 4pm. During these free events, 700 acres of the otherwise closed site will be open for tours and recreation.

On President’s Day weekend, millions of birds were recorded as part of the Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC). According to the New York Times, this was the 19th year that both amateur and expert ornithologists worldwide have contributed bird sightings to this citizen science project, run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the National Audubon Society and Bird Studies of Canada.

New York City is in the process of creating its first wetland mitigation bank in the marshlands surrounding Saw Mill Creek on Staten Island.  Saw Mill Creek, a tributary to Prall’s Creek and the Arthur Kill, is encircled by the largest expanse of remaining salt marsh along Staten Island’s west shore. 

The Design Trust for Public Space is now accepting submissions for the Future Culture Photo Urbanism Fellowship, in partnership with Staten Island Arts and the Alice Austen House, to focus on the cultural community of Staten Island’s North Shore in a time of transformation.

It’s easy to make resolutions at the start of the new year, but many of us struggle with keeping them for more than a few months. Fortunately, Freshkills Park will be there to help you accomplish a wide variety of goals in 2016.

It’s been an amazing year at Freshkills Park.  We have accomplished so much!

2015 by the numbers

Over 10,000 people experienced Freshkills Park this year, whether visiting the park during our new Discovery Days, special events, and programs or participating in presentations around the City.

We love the New Springville Greenway. Completed this summer, the 3.2 mile bike and walking path runs the length of Freshkills Park on the eastern edge along Richmond Avenue. To celebrate the new 3-mile greenway, we’re sharing NYC Parks Landscape Architect Andrew Deer’s 3 favorite places along the way.

This October, the Freshkills Park Alliance is participating in Archtober, a month-long festival of architecture activities, programs and exhibitions throughout New York City. Every day in Archtober has its own “Building of the Day,” giving visitors the chance to tour and learn more about architecture in the five boroughs.

On the 4th of October 2015, Staten Island officially welcomed the addition of the New Springville Greenway, a 3.2-mile pedestrian and bicycle pathway alongside Richmond Avenue. The development is part of the ongoing NYC Parks effort to transform Freshkills Park, which is nearly three times the size of Central Park, from a former landfill into a public space.

Here at Freshkills Park, we’re fans of trees. I mean, we’re a park, how could we not be? This year, the NYC Parks Department is conducting its decennial street tree census, TreesCount, and we’re teaming up to count a bunch of street trees outside of the park.

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 Department of Education and the Department of Sanitation jointly run the “Organics Collection Program,” which diverts organic materials such as food scraps, soiled paper, yard waste out of the landfill stream and into regional collection centers and the Anaerobic Digest-er Eggs, which extract methane from decomposing organic matter into energy.

Garbage is big business in the Big Apple—nearly 2 billion dollars worth of the city’s budget goes to the Department of Sanitation (DOS); and of that: $300 million is spent just disposing of it elsewhere. Last year this amounted to a cost of $95 per ton, up 28% since 2004, far outpacing inflation.

A flash of yellow flutters among the upper branches as the students below point out the never-still yellow warbler to one another. Spring migration is here. During this precious time, a winged kaleidoscope of colors and patterns drop down from the sky.