From Ecological Disaster to Public Park: Exploring Staten Island’s Freshkills

Freshkills Park is a stunning expanse of meadows, creeks and rolling hills on Staten Island, New York’s southernmost borough. By the time this multi-million dollar investment is completed in 2036, the park will be almost three times the size of Central Park and will be the largest green space to be opened in the city in 100 years.

Freshkills has taken on many identities over the years. Most recently, it was a dumping ground for garbage and industrial waste from New York, as well as the wreckage of the World Trade Center after 9/11.

Long before the first debris appeared, this 2,200-acre landscape served as rich homeland for the Lenape people. In the 17th century, Dutch settlers expelled the indigenous tribe and renamed the land killwhich means “river bed” or “water channel” in Dutch. Salt marsh hay was intensively grown to feed the horses carrying New Yorkers until the popularity of cars increased in the 20th century.

In 1948, Robert Moses, New York City’s planning commissioner who shaped much of the city during his more than 40-year career, declared the once pristine landscape “useless”; valuable only as a dumping ground for garbage collected in other communes. According to Freshkills Park program coordinator Christopher Ricker, Moses declared it would become a temporary landfill for at least three years, but would eventually be developed for housing. Then “three years turned into 53 years,” he explains.

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The story of a New York garbage dump turned into an urban oasis

From 1948 to 2001, as much as 29,000 tons of garbage were removed he came to the Fresh Kills dump every day; the weight of approximately 129 Statue of Liberty. At one point, all the garbage from the five boroughs ended up here, making Fresh Kills the largest landfill in the world, Ricker says. The landfill cemented Staten Island’s status as a “victim zone” – an area negatively impacted by pollution and environmental degradation.

Ricker, a Staten Island resident, recalls that when he looked out his bedroom window growing up, he couldn’t see the horizon beyond the piles of garbage and swarms of seagulls. Mark Murphy, a fourth-generation Staten Islander and administrator of Freshkills Park, remembers covering his face and running into buildings near the landfill to avoid the smell of the stench filling the air.

After decades of public pressure, the landfill was ordered closed in the late 1990s, Ricker explains. When the last garbage barge arrived at the turn of the century, the landfill’s four mounds of trash – the tallest of which is about 200 feet high – were covered with an impermeable plastic liner, fitted with a maze of underground gas pipes and vents, and completely covered with a thick layer of dirt and vegetation. Today, visitors would probably never guess what garbage formed these hillocks.

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Rewilding: a new home for various bird species

Instead of staring at seagulls, American kestrels often visit this area to hunt prey. Sedge wrens and upland sandpipers are a few other bird species that visitors to the Freshkills may encounter – a rare occurrence elsewhere in New York. This is proof of the resilience of this land.

As part of a project to tag species such as the field sparrow, ecologists discovered that “birds that Hatched in the park, they come back year after year, and sometimes even a few meters from where we saw them the year before.” sits Dr. Shannon Curley, senior researcher at Freshkills Park Alliance and postdoctoral fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “It’s a good habitat for them. We have enough resources for them here,” Curley explains.

The director of science and research development for Freshkills Park and a PhD candidate in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources at Rutgers University, José Ramírez-Garofalo adds: “In late summer and early fall we see all these really interesting sparrows and huge numbers of Palm Warblers. You won’t see this anywhere else in the region. It’s truly spectacular.”

For a chance to spot such rarities, birdwatchers now gather at the site’s two observation decks. Outdoor recreation enthusiasts can find similar sightings throughout the city North Park on this site – 21 acres area that opens in fall 2023.

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Sustainable initiatives at Freshkills Park

Although only a small portion of the facility is currently open to the public, by 2036 Freshkills is expected to be almost three times the size of Central Park and potentially become equally important to the fabric and future of the city.

“(Freshkills Park) really helps us make huge strides to make Staten Island, and frankly the entire city, more resilient to climate change.” says Sue Donoghue, commissioner of New York parks.

Visitors to the park will be able to see sustainable initiatives in practice, including: an active gas flare station that uses methane from the rotting filling of the mounds and converts it into electricity. At their peak, emissions from these mounds powered 22,000 homes a year.

From 2025, the pollinator garden will grow native plants that can be used in other city parks and green infrastructure projects. On across the property, New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) The plant transforms organic waste into compost, which will then be distributed to the community. By during the compost drive, all New York residents, nonprofits and city agencies can pick up 40-pound bags of the nutrient-rich soil supplement for free.

That doesn’t mean New York has completely resolved its garbage problems since then days Robert Moses. After the Fresh Kills Landfill closed, the city began shipping its inorganics to other states in the Northeast and South instead. “Our garbage still affects people.” says Ricker, pointing in the distance to the troop of orange wagons he will soon be pulling garbage to South Carolina. “There is still a lot to do, but we can take this place as a warning.”

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What is worth knowing when visiting the park

Once Freshkills is fully developed, each transformed mound will have a theme and purpose. The park around the south mound will be a recreation center for the neighboring community with sports fields, picnic tables and a public plaza. North Park and East Park will be popular spots for bird and wildlife watching, with miles of running and cycling trails. West Park, where the wreck of the World Trade Center is buried, is intended to serve as a tribute to 9/11 with a view of the Freedom Tower Of course days. Side master plan calls for the middle section, where the two streams intersect, to have waterfront restaurants, an educational visitor center and a boat dock.

For now, visitors can explore the open areas of North Park (located at 350 Wild Avenue) from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. The entrance is a 20-minute drive from the terminal Staten Island Ferry, which runs free 24 hours a day from downtown Manhattan. Alternatively you can go or take the bus over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, which connects Staten Island with Brooklyn.

Once you arrive, you can bike on the bike paths, play on the soccer fields, or explore the area on designated trails surrounding the cairn mounds. Freshkills Park Alliance hosts free public events throughout the year, including photography and art workshops, sunset and sunrise yoga classes, and hikes on the mounds themselves, which are not yet officially open to the public.

From spring to September you can go kayaking. Streams on site they form part of a tidal estuary, which means they are constantly filtered by incoming water and, amazingly, stayed clean throughout the day of storage. “This is the cleanest tidal estuary in New York, which is further evidence of the reclamation of this space,” says Ricker, an avid kayaker who considers Freshkills the best place in the city to kayak. Its waters are calm, quiet and full of opportunities to see waterbirds and ospreys up close.

Upon request, the association also organizes private trips for larger groups such as schools, running clubs and community organizations.

Regular events at Freshkills include: The Great Gobbleran annual gravel bike race held in late November that features 16 miles of secluded trails and Raptor Festivala day of observing rare birds of prey such as eagles, falcons and hawks, which attracted over 400 spectators in September. While fall and spring are typically the busiest times of year at Freshkills due to mild weather, Murphy and Ricker find the park to be deeply quiet after the snowfall. The Number of Christmas birdsa recurring community science project aimed at recording winter birds in the park attracts tourists until December.

Freshkills is a staging ground for wildlife and the final resting place for garbage. It is a rebuke to the environmental transgressions of the past and a voice for a more sustainable future. “We have dealt with an ecological disaster, we have rebuilt, regenerated and renewed it. It’s a testament to who we are as a community,” Murphy says.

“It’s a great metaphor for the resilience of Staten Island and New York City as a whole,” adds Ricker.

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