
How the world’s largest garbage dump evolved into a green oasis - mcone
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/nyregion/freshkills-garbage-dump-nyc.html
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TedShiller
I don't know if this is supposed to be a propaganda piece, but nothing about
that dump is an "oasis". If you've driven by there, and I have many times, it
smells so awful you have to close your car windows and turn off the car
ventilation. It smells absolutely rotten and toxic. I worry for people who
live and grow up in the vicinity.

Underneath the soil, everything there is toxic, a mix of whatever people put
in landfills. Of course it will seep liquids into the ground eventually,
despite the waterproof layer underneath, it's only a matter of time.

I acknowledge and appreciate the positive intentions, but we should not fool
ourselves into viewing this a success. To do so would be an act of denial, and
would be dangerous for our planet's health.

~~~
voidhorse
As someone who grew up in SI and could smell the stench of the dump while my
parents drove down amboy road as a kid, I can confirm that, even if a smell
lingers, it is _far_ more palatableand less intense and all encompassing than
it once was. While it was an active dump you could smell it for miles. It was
disgusting. I’m not claiming the original dump should be forgiven, but it
seems quite cynical and ineffective to tarnish what has been pretty
objectively a positive environmental development for Staten Island residents.
We’re not talking about a small feat either. This was one of the largest
dumping grounds in the world.

I don’t think the times piece is by any means suggesting that such disasters
are completely reversible and that we should therefore commit more of them—it
just highlights a positive turnaround project which we’ll certainly need more
of in the coming years if we’re going to save the planet.

~~~
pizza234
> we’ll certainly need more of in the coming years if we’re going to save the
> planet.

How does that contribute to saving the planet? It's as close as it gets to
"sweeping the dust under the rug".

This has been satirized brilliantly in the Simpsons' episode "Trash of the
titans", and I'm very perplexed how, while the episode is undoubtedly
horrifying, an initiative like this can be perceived as laudable.

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gumby
This approach was taken with the Mountain View dump next to Google (and Palo
Alto’s next door). Shoreline amphitheater And the nearly Park/lake (next to
where Google is now) was built on it; I went to the first few shows when it
opened and remember smoky emissions from the seating area — not from the
audience I mean.

The flat area where the office buildings are was a bean field. When shoreline
opened. I used to walk from my office, cutting through years farm, to go to
shoreline. Then SGI and J&J built buildings there (which later became the
Google campus) and the park and amphitheater just seem to most people to be
part of the landscape. Which is great!

~~~
pottertheotter
I grew up in Sunnyvale in the 80s and this made me nostalgic for the old days
of Silicon Valley. I had always heard that sometimes the gas from the dump
would ignite from smokers at concerts. I guess it's true!

"In its opening year, a fan attending a Steve Winwood concert flicked a
cigarette lighter and ignited methane that had been leaking from a landfill
beneath the theatre. Several small fires were reported that season. After
those incidents, the city of Mountain View commissioned methane testing
studies to define the location of methane vapors emanating from the soil
within the amphitheater. These tests were used in developing a design for
improved methane monitoring and more efficient methane extraction to ensure
the amphitheater became safe as an outdoor venue. Ultimately, the lawn was
removed, a gas barrier and methane removal equipment were installed, and then
the lawn was re-installed."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreline_Amphitheatre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreline_Amphitheatre)

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wrkronmiller
Interesting. How are they managing the continued break-down of the garbage
that's still buried a few (dozen?) feet below?

The article doesn't convince me that this dump is totally reformed, just that
life has developed on top. This also isn't a "sustainable" solution as we will
continue to need dumps for the foreseeable future...

~~~
hinkley
Because landfills are not meant to break down. If they did, that would mean
who-knows-what kinds of fluids leaching into groundwater, and that would be
very bad.

They cap them with materials designed to make sure water sheds off the top of
the landfill instead of percolating through.

So essentially we've capped these things, but they're intended to stay as they
are now basically forever. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

~~~
pottertheotter
There can be quite a bit of organic material in SWFs that breaks down,
although most of that process is completed within ~20 years of being
deposited. Modern facilities often incorporate electricity generation plants
powered by all of the methane produced from the breakdown of organics. Also, a
landfill has a bottom liner that is usually much more robust than the top (a
couple feet of clay and a thick membrane) plus leaching pipes to carry away
leachate. I don't believe the final cap is intended to completely shed water,
but it is meant to divert a lot of it from getting into the landfill.

~~~
shum1
I found some videos on youtube that give a more visual explanation of this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwNWjBxGadA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwNWjBxGadA)

~~~
hinkley
It's worth noting that the business model for this group is to treat a
landfill a little differently to boost methane production. But in the end
they're still keeping the leachate on site, and some of the water escapes as
vapor (they dewater the methane before burning it).

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BrianB
That dump used to stink somewhere between pine sol (I think they used to try
and cover up the smell with something?) and rotting trash. And it is right in
the middle of the island so any time you had to drive anywhere on the highway
you passed it and got to enjoy the smell.

I would never set foot on that land, god only knows what horrible toxic stuff
has been dumped there.

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jacknews
"Imagine Central Park with trash mounds 20 stories high. Now imagine that
times three."

Are there no old photos?

Or would that be too evocative of what lies below?

~~~
m4rtink
Well, big part of Tokyo is built on artifical islands filled in with garbage.
Some of the most lucrative places including Ginza are like that. :)

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awiesenhofer
Tangentially: Is heat threatment at all a thing in the US? With articles like
this about landfills it never seems to be mentioned much while its the norm, i
think even required by law (before dumping), here in europe.

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01100011
Today's garbage dumps will be tomorrow's resource deposits. I suspect the
concentration of many raw materials is greater in the dump than it is in many
active mines.

~~~
repiret
There is no case where it’s economic to mine a landfill where it’s not more
economic for the landfill operator to sort recyclable materials from the
incoming trash.

Given that private landfill operators don’t generally do that, we can conclude
that the raw materials in a landfill actually aren’t so concentrated or easily
extractable to be of any use.

~~~
owenversteeg
While you're correct in a simple short-term scenario, there is one very big
hole in that argument: if the composition of the incoming trash changes over
time. Which it does. Plenty of things were not recognized as valuable at the
time they were thrown away.

There's the classic example of low-background steel, but there are more arcane
things as well: an old high school teacher of mine bragged that he salvaged a
large amount of discarded old wood planks, worth as much as a nice new car!
Even common items may help factor in to making recycling old dumps economical
(until recent years, an enormous amount of consumer electronics, containing
precious metals, were simply tossed in the trash.)

One way I could easily see this becoming big fast is from some sort of law
enforcing a heavy carbon tax or pollutant tax. Steel production is highly
polluting and currently nobody pays the true price of things (including their
carbon footprint.) If a government takes one of these steps - which I could
totally see happening - then people will definitely consider mining landfills.

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throwaway_pdp09
If you leave something 20 years, trees will start growing pretty rapidly. They
even mention deliberate tree planting, but in the pics there are few trees and
those present look like they're struggling. Looks like it's mainly grass
because that's what can cope, not because it's a plant eden of any sort.

Arborists please chip in.

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rasengan0
Shiny happy plastic everywhere
[https://youtu.be/-dk3NOEgX7o](https://youtu.be/-dk3NOEgX7o)

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ohgreatwtf
>covers up rotting pile/hole/toxic waste nature is healing!

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aaron695
Contradicting lie #142 from the environmental movement.

The worse you make land for humans the better it is for the environment.
See... anything radioactive.

~~~
jacoblambda
To be fair, this area will have the exact same problem that regions with
radiation problems have. Nature will reclaim the area but it won't be
"healthy" nature. The animals will have increased health problems due to
toxins (or radiation) from the environment.

The only reason ecosystems rebound in areas where there are radiation problems
is because nobody is there to hunt or deter them. Had there not been the city
Chernobyl, nature would be far better off. The same goes for this landfill.
Had it not been created, the area would be far healthier.

~~~
aaron695
> The animals will have increased health problems due to toxins (or radiation)
> from the environment.

No. This isn't correct.

The problem with these areas is the might increase cancer a small amount.
Animals don't care about cancer or toxins, it's only rich present day humans
that do.

Hunter and Gathers living at Chernobyl wouldn't care at all as long as they
don't go in the building.

This is the biblical fear that's the problem.

Yes, as an ultra rich person I would not live on this landfill, but even for
at least 40% of humans in the _current_ world they'd be better off living on
the landfill.

If you care about the environment, create more rubbish, the more landfill, the
more oasis's of green the environment gets.

~~~
imtringued
That makes no sense. It's cheaper to declare an area to not be settled by
humans than to destroy it and then declare the area to not be settled.

~~~
aaron695
But they don't do they?

Environmentalist doomed us to global warming from religious fear of nuclear
energy, yet the one main accident created -

"the area is essentially one of Europe's largest nature preserves."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone)

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DrAwdeOccarim
I'm a little confused. I'm pretty sure they kept this dump open specifically
so they could dispose of the Sept 11 attack detritus. How could the NYT miss
that detail so completely?

Edit: It's even in fucking wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Kills_Landfill#September...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Kills_Landfill#September_11,_2001_and_aftermath)

Boy I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder...

~~~
lhorie
You hope someone lost their livelihood due to the perception that they did not
write down a piece of trivia in an article? Geez. I get the magnitude of 9/11,
but the hyperbole seems misplaced here.

~~~
tomjakubowski
It's a line from the Simpsons, so I think it was meant as a self-deprecating
joke. Though the reference is a little out of nowhere. (I guess there was the
episode where The Who played a concert on top of Springfield's garbage dump)

~~~
dmix
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxw5nQX7SA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxw5nQX7SA)

