How the world’s largest garbage dump evolved into a green oasis
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
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.
Covered over is not clean. This piece is disgusting. Is it really trying to claim that because it has green plants that it is clean?
The author must consider Chernobyl lovely too.
A lot of recycling now goes there too since China stopped taking American recycling.
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.
> I can confirm that, even if a smell lingers, it is far more palatableand less intense and all encompassing than it once was
Sounds like you’re in agreement with the statement that it’s far from an oasis?
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.
it's calling it more than reversible, it's calling it a green oasis
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!
"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."
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...
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.
Gravel over an impervious layer is, for all intents and purposes, a drain. Unless the slopes are all wrong so the water pools in the middle.
I would never set foot on that land, god only knows what horrible toxic stuff has been dumped there.
Are there no old photos?
Or would that be too evocative of what lies below?
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.
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.
Even if the materials were sorted today on the way in, it may not be economical to do anything with them, so storing them in a sorted landfill could make sense.
Arborists please chip in.
The worse you make land for humans the better it is for the environment. See... anything radioactive.
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.
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.
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."
You might be thinking of "if humans go away, even if the land is horribly toxic, life finds a way to re-colonise it."
Edit: It's even in fucking wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_Kills_Landfill#September...
Boy I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder...
"The South Mound was capped in 1996, the North Mound the next year. Shortly after that last barge arrived in 2001, the park’s design contest, sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society, was complicated when debris from the World Trade Center disaster wound up in Fresh Kills, now buried in the West Mound."
Equivalent to the last three days of COVID-19 deaths?