Science and Technology in NYC

On the outskirts of Staten Island, the least known borough of New York City is the location of the world’s former largest landfill. Fresh Kills Landfill is situated on the western shore of Staten Island, along the Arthur Kill.

The area includes the Isle of Meadows, an unpopulated island and Fresh Kills Estuary, a body of fresh and salt water that is formed when a large river meets the sea. Before it was turned into a landfill Fresh Kills composed of a vast tidal wetland with several fresh and salt water springs.

1948 was the first year that Fresh Kills began operating as a landfill. 1,200 acres of the areas 2,200 acres were used for depositing waste. The massive size of Fresh Kills takes up 11 percent of Staten Island and makes it over twice as large as Central Park.

Fresh Kills closed its landfill operations in 2001, fifty-three years after its first use – all of Staten Island rejoiced. The area of horrid smells and heaps of disgusting garbage would finally close, this brought excitement to the residents of Staten Island to whom the largest landfill was nothing but an inconvenience.

September 11, 2001 would change all the plans of having Fresh Kills Landfill be something in the past. The terrorist attacks on New York City on that early September day would end in masses of rubble, debris, and human remains. The city needed to remove the materials and found Fresh Kills as the most logical choice. Thus, Fresh Kills once again became the site of depositing waste.

Over a million tons of remnants from Ground Zero, the area of the former World Trade Center can be found in Fresh Kills. The ash, dust, and debris made their way to Fresh Kills Landfill directly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

These materials from the lower Manhattan site were disposed and sorted by city government employees. New York City firefighters, police officers, and workers from the Department of Sanitation sorted through the countless human remains, masses of steel from the World Trade Center buildings, and other debris and ash.

A great amount of these materials is hazardous to the environment and has proven hazardous to the health of the volunteers and government employees who helped in transporting the materials and later in sifting through them.

Over 800 people have died at the World Trade Center and Fresh Kills sites because of the perilous debris and materials. Hundreds toiled at Fresh Kills and many of them acquired cancer from sorting through the rubble. These cancers included cancers of the digestive organs, lung and throat cancer, and cancers of the blood.

A study by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene shows that those who were exposed to the Ground Zero rubble and debris were more likely to develop asthma, an inflammatory disorder of the airways. In fact, twelve times as many workers and volunteers developed asthma than is on average expected for the adult population.

The firefighters, police officers, construction workers, and volunteers developed this disorder simply because they breathed in the hazardous ash and debris found in sites that contain 9/11 rubble.

Other findings based on medical exams show that close to seventy percent of 9/11 responders had worsened or newly developed lung problems after the World Trade Center attacks. Sixty-one percent of workers developed lung problems while working on the toxic materials.

These reports all show that the materials taken to Fresh Kills are also hazardous to health. Many of the workers at the World Trade Center site were also the ones who transported and sorted through the materials at Fresh Kills.

According to decisions made by city government officials, these hazardous materials will remain at Fresh Kills, including the remains of countless victims. Officials cite the difficulty and cost of removing the materials and finding another site to move them to.

In effect, this means that the materials that led to lung problems and cancer risks for the hundreds of government employees and volunteers who worked to clear and sort through the rubble will continue to be present in Fresh Kills, Staten Island.

It is important to note that Fresh Kills was never designed to intake hazardous waste, thus proving that keeping these materials in Fresh Kills is even more dangerous.

The New York City Department of Planning has devised a plan to build a large-scale park and recreation area in place of the landfill at Fresh Kills. This is worrying considering many sections of the landfill are temporarily covered with dirt and much of the garbage at the site will take over 30 years to properly decompose.

Residents dislike the idea of going to a park that was once the site of the world’s largest landfill and contains toxic chemicals and residue that led to severe health problems in government employees who worked at the dump.

Andrey Grebenetsky, a Baruch College student who has lived on Staten Island for most of his life expressed his dislike for the future park: “I wouldn’t even toss a football in that park. A park built on a toxic dump? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

It seems that there is no win-win situation for Fresh Kills but building a park on a site that is filled with hazardous materials from one of the largest terrorist attacks in the world does not seem like the best idea.

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