Landfills: a Growing Menace
Landfills: A Growing Menace
When asked to think of the largest man made structure, people will invariably come up with an answer like The Great Wall of China, the Great
Pyramids, or the Taj Majal. In contrast to these striking achievements of mankind is the Durham Road Landfill outside San Francisco, which occupies over seventy million cubic feet. It is a sad monument to the excesses of modern society [Gore 151]. One must think this huge reservoir of garbage must be the largest thing ever produced by human hands then. Unhappily, this is not the case.
The Fresh Kills Landfill, located on Staten Island, is the largest landfill in the world. It sports an elevation of 155 feet, an estimated mass of 100 million tons, and a volume of 2.9 billion cubic feet. In total acreage, it is equal to
16,000 baseball diamonds [Miller 526]. By the year 2005, when the landfill is projected to close, its elevation will reach 505 feet above sea level, making it the highest point along the Eastern Seaboard, from Florida to Maine. At that height, the mound will constitute a hazard to air traffic at Newark airport
[Rathje 3-4]. The area now encompassed by the Fresh Kills (Kills is from the
Dutch word for creek) Landfill was originally a tidal marsh. In 1948, New York
City planner Robert Moses developed a highly praised project to deposit municipal garbage in the swamp until the level of the land was above sea level.
A study of the area predicted the marsh would be filled by the year 1968. He then planned to develop the area, building houses and attracting light industry over the landfill. The Fresh Kills Landfill was originally meant to be a conservation project that would benefit the environment. The mayor of New York
City issued a report titled "The Fresh Kills Landfill Project" in 1951 which stated, in part, that the project "cannot fail to affect constructively a wide area around it." The report ended by stating, "It is at once practical and idealistic" [Rathje 4]. One must
When asked to think of the largest man made structure, people will invariably come up with an answer like The Great Wall of China, the Great
Pyramids, or the Taj Majal. In contrast to these striking achievements of mankind is the Durham Road Landfill outside San Francisco, which occupies over seventy million cubic feet. It is a sad monument to the excesses of modern society [Gore 151]. One must think this huge reservoir of garbage must be the largest thing ever produced by human hands then. Unhappily, this is not the case.
The Fresh Kills Landfill, located on Staten Island, is the largest landfill in the world. It sports an elevation of 155 feet, an estimated mass of 100 million tons, and a volume of 2.9 billion cubic feet. In total acreage, it is equal to
16,000 baseball diamonds [Miller 526]. By the year 2005, when the landfill is projected to close, its elevation will reach 505 feet above sea level, making it the highest point along the Eastern Seaboard, from Florida to Maine. At that height, the mound will constitute a hazard to air traffic at Newark airport
[Rathje 3-4]. The area now encompassed by the Fresh Kills (Kills is from the
Dutch word for creek) Landfill was originally a tidal marsh. In 1948, New York
City planner Robert Moses developed a highly praised project to deposit municipal garbage in the swamp until the level of the land was above sea level.
A study of the area predicted the marsh would be filled by the year 1968. He then planned to develop the area, building houses and attracting light industry over the landfill. The Fresh Kills Landfill was originally meant to be a conservation project that would benefit the environment. The mayor of New York
City issued a report titled "The Fresh Kills Landfill Project" in 1951 which stated, in part, that the project "cannot fail to affect constructively a wide area around it." The report ended by stating, "It is at once practical and idealistic" [Rathje 4]. One must
Cited: Gore, Albert. Earth in the Balance. New York: Houghton, 1992. MacKibben, Bill. The End of Nature. New York: Random House, 1989. Miller, G. Tyler, Jr. Living in the Environment. Belmont CA: Wadsworth, 1994. Rathje, William and Cullen Murphy. Rubbish!. New York: Harper, 1992. Turk, Jonathan. Environmental Science. New York: Holt, 1984. Udall, Stewart. The Quiet Crisis. New York: Holt, 1963.