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Fresh Kills was a landfill in Staten Island, New York, that closed in 2001 due to environmental issues. It covers 220 acres and is being transformed into a public park with environmentally friendly features, including wind farms and native plant and animal species. The site was reopened in 2001 to intern World Trade Center debris and housed a mobile morgue. The project is underway and closed to the public, but tours are available.
Fresh Kills is a section of Staten Island in New York that was used as a landfill between 1948 and 2001. The site has become infamous, primarily due to its size; Fresh Kills is about three times the size of Central Park and can be easily identified in satellite images of Staten Island. Fresh Kills is also the site of an ambitious environmental remediation project, which aims to transform the place from a rubbish heap into a vast public park with numerous environmentally friendly features.
In all, Fresh Kills covers approximately 220 acres (890 hectares) on the western side of Staten Island. It is located on the Fresh Kills Estuary, which explains the name; “kill” is a Dutch word meaning “stream” or “river”. The site opened in 1948 as a landfill and was originally intended to be temporary. In 2001, 20 barges traveled to Fresh Kills each day with trash from New Yorkers, and the site was becoming an environmental problem.
Towering mounds of trash at Fresh Kills sometimes loomed higher than some New York City landmarks, and the site was so massive that people compared it to major archaeological monuments, such as the Great Wall of China. In March of 2001, Fresh Kills was closed and the city began looking for an alternate location for its trash, opening the Staten Island Transfer Station on the site to process the waste for offsite shipment.
In September 2001, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan presented New York City with a major problem: a huge pile of debris that needed to be removed quickly, but respectfully. The city realized that the cost of transporting debris from the site to a distant location would be formidable, so it reopened Fresh Kills specifically for the purpose of interning World Trade Center debris. The site also housed a mobile morgue, where anthropologists sifted through the tons of debris for human remains, aiming to identify as many victims as possible.
In 2003, the City of New York began a plan to transform Fresh Kills, turning it into a public park with walking trails, recreation areas, wind farms, and numerous native plant and animal species. As of 2008, the project was underway and the site is closed to the public, though people can arrange special Fresh Kills tours to learn more about the proposed park. If successful, the plan will surely transform the face of Staten Island and no doubt confuse future archaeologists.
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