Editorial Review
Fresh Kills, the famous gargantuan former landfill a park? Hard to believe, but true. The city carefully transformed this controversial site into an important asset for Staten Island, New York City and the region. Now that the landfill is nearly covered with protective caps and grass, the site is actually a remarkably beautiful place.
New York’s new parkland at Fresh Kills will be one of the most ambitious public works projects in the world, combining state of the art ecological restoration techniques with extraordinary settings for recreation, public art, and facilities for many sports and programs that are unusual in the city. At 2,200 acres, the site is 2.5 times the size of Central Park. It has the potential to become an international model of creative reuse that will transform how we experience vast, reclaimed urban landscapes.
Only 45% of the Fresh Kills site is landfill. The rest is creeks, wetlands and open fields. 995 acres of the 2,200-acre site are composed of six landfill mounds, which range in height from 90 feet to 225 feet. 760 acres of the site, an area nearly equal to Central Park, have never been filled with garbage or were filled more than twenty years ago. These flatter areas and open waterways host many things, from precisely engineered infrastructure to intact wetland and wildlife habitats.
By the way, "Kill" is a word of Dutch derivation meaning a stream or creek.
