A Word About Recycling with Ollie Maier
A little more information on the article started last week concerning the world’s largest landfill being made into a park, as taken from a Waste Age newsletter. Going into the history of it, you may remember we ended last week with: In becoming the world’s largest landfill, we find art its peak in 1986 and 1987, the landfill received as much as 29,000 tons of waste per day and employed 680 people. By 1991, the site was the city’s only landfill accepting residential waste.
Because it was nearing its capacity in 1996, New York passed a law requiring the landfill to stop its operation at the end of 2001. With this law in mind, the New York Department of City Planning, together with several other city organizations started meeting in 1999 to decide what to do with the site after it closed.
Through these meetings, the decision was made, that the site that topped out at 150 million tons of solid waste, would be given a second life as a park after more than 50 years as New York’s primary dump.
When the landfill closed in 2001, the city’s Municipal Art Society, reached out to Mayor Rudy Giuliani and called for an international design competition for the 2,200-acre site. A team was formed and met from 2003 to 2006. It developed an illustrative park plan. In 2006, the NYC Parks was assigned to implement the plan.
“The park was designed to hold various public spaces and facilities and include everything from playgrounds and athletic fields to horseback riding trails and large-scale art installations. The redevelopment, which started in 2008, is slated to run through 2036. When all is said and done, (a spokesperson) says the park will be three times the size of Central Park and the largest park developed in the city in more than 100 years.”
Closing a landfill site isn’t easy, especially when it is the world’s largest. There are a number of regulations and safety measures to be followed. Among the many things to contend with are the landfill’s byproducts – landfill gas and leachate. Thus, several companies, both in-state and outside with experience in closing landfill sites, were contracted.
As the spokesperson for the effort explained, “Public safety concerns about making the landfill into a park have been addressed through transparency about the regulatory process, both during tours and in informational materials. We hold public events throughout the year, allowing the public to tour the site and learn about the transformation, including the detailed capping process and safety measures.”
A little more about the landfill site itself, it is composed of four mounds of waste. In 1997, two of them were closed and capped. The other two started to be capped in 2007 with plans to be completed by the end of this year. The cover placed on the mounds is built out in phases to maximize hydraulic performance, slope stability and durability of the systems.
Would you believe we have come to the length we try to make these articles and still have a lot of what we thought is interesting information on the subject to cover? Thus, if you will bear with us, we will try to finish it up next week.
Till next week, do have an enjoyable and safe one.
--
Ollie is a local citizen concerned with the environment and helping others. A retired Air Force fighter and instructor pilot, he is a graduate of Leadership San Marcos and received his degrees at Texas State University where he worked on staff before totally retiring. For questions or comments, he invites you to call him at 512-353-7432 or e-mail omaier@txstate.edu.
