The saga of the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island has so far run more than 70 years, but has turned towards an ending far better than I would have believed when I was a kid and it was regularly held up as proof that garbage would eat the entire planet. “How the World’s Largest Garbage Dump Evolved Into a Green Oasis” by Robert Sullivan and with photographs by Jade Doskow nicely describes the current state of the landfill-to-park conversion. It’s a relief to have some good news.
A side note: the ominous-sounding name is actually the most innocent thing about the story. “Kill” as a word meaning a creek or stream is a corruption of the Dutch “kil”, with the same meaning, and is found all over the Hudon Valley thanks to the New Netherlands colony. Fresh Kills means only that the stream was fresh water even though it feeds into the salt-water Arthur Kill, which separates Staten Island from New Jersey.
