Day 22 - This Place Used To Be A Dump!

Literally.

The Fresh Kills Landfill operated for more than 50 years, much to the chagrin of every single Staten Islander except, perhaps, for DSNY guys who worked there and also lived on the Island. For much of that time, it received every shred of household garbage disposed by New York's 7 or 8 million residents. It was originally devised in the late 1940s as a place to dump fill from a variety of Moses-era projects on the Island and slated for closure in fewer than 5 years. But over time, our society's disposable approach to the world required more space to stick the increasing residue of a consumer economy--of 7 or 8 million people. Over time Fresh Kills grew to over 2000 acres--more than 3 square miles--of stinking trash piled high on the former tidal mud flats of Staten Island's western shore. Some spots are now more than 10 stories high.

I grew up about 10 blocks away. It didn't always stink, but it did quite often. People in the neighborhood would joke that we were just used to it always smelling. Folks who didn't live nearby asked if the stench was unbearable in the summer. In fact, I remember fall and winter as being the smelliest times. Maybe the heavy, humid air did a better job at tamping down the odors than the crisp, fresh breezes in cooler weather. And it seemed to only ever smell at night. Stories, many apocryphal I'm sure, circulated as to why this was. My favorite, told by the elders on the block with a conviction that recalled their stories about being in wars, was that the tractors turned the garbage over at night when the sea gulls that infested the landfill would be less likely to swoop in and carry away chicken carcasses or apple cores or dirty diapers. I've seen the gulls at the dump. Nightfall would not have stopped them from a meal.

Another story shared, perhaps a bit more plausible since it was relayed (or maybe just repeated) by our teachers at school, was that Fresh Kills was one of only two human-made structures visible from space; the other being the Great Wall. What is undeniable is that by the end of its life, Fresh Kills was receiving 12,000 tons of waste a day. That 24,000,000 pounds of shit in one form or another. Every day of the week.

In 1999 The Dump, as it was uniformly called, was finally closed to the cheers and psychic relief of everyone on Staten Island. In September 2001 a portion was pressed into service again, temporarily, to take in a good deal of the debris from the World Trade Center. Here the solemn, macabre task of sifting through fine dust and debris for a variety of objects of human significance--papers, ID cards, family photos that used to be propped up on desktops, wedding bands which were not pulverized by the pancaking floors, and, yes, bone fragments--was conducted around the clock by a specially trained group of forensic investigators. Much of what was too fine to be identified, but which almost undoubtedly contained traces of mementos of the lives of more than 3000 people, remains in on a hallowed hilltop poking up from this ignoble expanse.

Over the past 5 or 6 years, several City agencies have been working on a plan to transfer this site--three times the size of Central Park--from the Department of Sanitation to the Parks Department, and to develop it over the next 20 years into recreation and and reclaimed natural areas. Now if that's not turning the term "reclamation" on its head (mud flats and the like are typically "reclaimed" from nature by filling them in and building subdivisions or Home Depots on them, praise God), then you've me. The NYC Urban Park Rangers are giving tours of The Dump from time to time. So this weekend, my girlfriend and I hopped on our bikes and joined an intrepid and sometimes quizzical dozen other folks to see how the last few years of inactivity at Fresh Kills have begun to transform the natural landscape. The results follow below. It was a hazy day, but it made the bucolic wetlands feel of the place even more apparent. Nevermind the subdivisions and Home Depots in the distance.

You'll also see a few other pictures from our bike trip which included a trip to the German-style beer hall Kilmeyer's near where Joseph Mitchell wrote about the freed slave community of Sandy Ground in the Charleston section of Staten Island. And then there are the bricks from the Kreischer Brick Works (scroll down about 1/4 of the way) which was about one-quarter mile away from Kilmeyer's and, at one point, responsible for quite a bit of the fireproof brick construction in NYC. The sidewalks are still paved with them out there. Enjoy!