How New York City Turned the World’s Biggest Garbage Dump Into a Park
NYC opened Freshkills’ North Park in Staten Island, giving the public access to where the landfill once sat. It's a lesson for other cities.
Staten Island’s Freshkills was once the world’s largest dump. In 2001, New York City shut it down and began the process of turning it into a park. A soccer field opened in 2013 and a bikeway in 2015. North Park, the first section allowing public access into the interior of the former landfill, opened last weekend.
When NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses selected Freshkills as a landfill site after World War II, it was a wetland. The plan was to build housing on top of it after three years. But New York was growing fast, and all the new trash needed to go somewhere. The site accepted as many as 29,000 tons of garbage daily, which consumed more acreage and created a mighty stink. After many lawsuits, the city began its transformation.