FRESHKILLS PARK
Freshkills Park occupies 2200 acres in Staten Island, New York. Robert Moses decided to bury the garbage produced in New York City there and that went on for 50 years. Now, New York City is transforming the four mounds of garbage into a park. The effort will take 30 years.
Landforms and plants, April
I made these photos in April of 2017 while there were still large areas of dormant grasses covering the mounds and some plants were beginning to green, before the leaves of trees. The landforms, the grade of the garbage mounds, how roads and waterways bisect the landscape are easier to see at that time of…
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Birdwatching in Freshkills Park
On March 27, 2011, I traveled to the Tottenville Station by public transportation: subway, bus, and finally the Staten Island Railway. Pictured here are the waiting areas at the Station where I waited for the rest of the group to arrive by car from nearby neighborhoods. We came to watch birds in Freshkills Park; they…
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Freshkills Park in 1990
Back in 1990, the New York City Department of Sanitation operated Freshkills as a landfill. The trash from the five city boroughs arrived by barge and truck. Over fifty years, four large mounds grew. Heavy machinery graded the slope of the mounds with layers of trash and soil. Seagulls searched for edible scraps. There were…
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Building and Digging
This blue claw is part of a digging machine parked in a lot at Freshkills, still under the management of the Department of Sanitation on November 9, 2009. I visited the park to experience it and make photographs. We traveled together in a van driven by Raj.
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