The mega landfill Fresh Kills Landfill It was the largest ever built in the world (while the largest for electronic waste is the Acra landfill in Ghana): remained operational for over half a century between 1948 and 2001, has stored huge quantities of waste, until 29,000 tons per daythe equivalent weighing about 129 statues of freedom. Furthermore, after being abandoned, she was reopened extraordinary to accommodate the rubble of the World Trade Center. Born on Staten Island, the southernmost neighborhood of New York, today instead of the landfill you walk in a landscape made of grasslands, waterways and hills, all completely artificial and born from a conversion project whose completion is expected for the 2036the park concluded will become almost three times larger than the Central Park.
Its story begins in 1948when the urban planner Robert Moses He allocated the area to landfill but only temporarily, for three years, transforming Staten Island into an area suffocated by bad smells and garbage hills visible to kilometers away. Unlike what was initially planned, the landfill remained active for over 40 years and only after years of protests, in the 90s the closure was decided.
The project of his disposal was entrusted to the US engineering US multinational AECOMwhich provided for the coverage of waste with a succession of layers of geocomposite and geomembrane of polyethylene together with particular drainage systems and protection barriers. Everything has been integrated with a sophisticated system of canals and banks to manage rainwater.
The transformation was surprising today Freshkills, it is also a Sustainability workshop Thanks to the presence of a special system that captures the methane produced by the decomposition of waste and transforms it into electricity, sufficient to feed about 22,000 houses per year.
