Fresh Kills Landfill

Plans and Operation

The symbolic potential of Fresh Kills was recognized and discussed from its very inception, albeit in a less critical vein than is commonly taken up by 21st-century critics of the site. From its origins, Fresh Kills was meant to serve as a model facility that showcased advanced strategies of municipal waste disposal. The landfill's charter subscribed to a modern code for “sanitary” landfills that called for the placement of a clean daily cover (such as dirt) over the working face at the end of each day, the construction of a 24-inch-thick final cover, and the prevention of waste material from entering open water.

The landfill occupies 2,200 acres and, at the peak of its operation in the late 1980s, received around 29,000 tons of waste every day. The landfill closed on March 22, 2001, but was temporarily reopened later that year following the terrorist attacks of September 11. Approximately 2 million tons of rubble from Ground Zero, which included the remains of more than 3,000 people who died in the attack, were brought to Fresh Kills for sorting, identification, and disposal.

Despite the high hopes of certain New York officials that appropriate management of the site would make it a positive example of waste disposal, a good deal of resentment has attended the operation of the landfill over the years. Residents of Staten Island have grudgingly borne the brunt of New York's steadily mounting waste output since the 1950s, especially after it was discovered that the landfill, initially unlined, was failing to live up to its promise of keeping toxic leachate out of the water (alterations in the landfill's design have since been incorporated to address the problem).

Controversy

Residents of Manhattan Island's lower-income neighborhoods have also had sufficient reason to complain. Garbage from Manhattan and its neighboring boroughs travels to the landfill via the Harlem transfer station where the traffic from nearly 100 heavy trucks converges on a daily basis. The diesel exhaust generated by this traffic has created concern about air quality in the area, with many environmental justice advocates arguing that the increased risks of Harlem residents acquiring diseases like childhood asthma, [Page 280]bronchitis, cancer, and emphysema have become too great to ignore. Though the landfill has closed, the Harlem and Staten Island transfer stations continue to process most of the city's solid waste, which is (as of 2010) exported by rail to distant states rather than buried.

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