Landfills :: essays research papers fc

It has long been believed that the largest entity brought upon the Earth byhumankind is the benefit of the Sun, constructed in Mexico around the startof the Christian era. The mammoth structure commands nearly thirty millioncubic feet of space. In contrast, however, is the Durham Road Landfill, impertinent San Francisco, which occupies over seventy million cubic feet of thebiosphere. It is a sad monument, indeed, to the excesses of advanced societyGore 151. One might assume such a flagitious mound of slobber is thelargest thing ever produced by human hands. Unhappily, this is not the case.The Fresh Kills Landfill, located on Staten Island, is the largest landfillin the world. It sports an upside of 155 feet, an estimated citizenry of 100million tons, and a volume of 2.9 billion cubic feet. In total acreage, itis equal to 16,000 baseball diamonds Miller 526. By the socio-economic class 2005, whenthe landfill is projected to close, its elevation will reach 505 feet abovesea le vel, making it the highest point along the Eastern Seaboard, Floridato Maine. At that height, the mound will constitute a lot to air trafficat Newark airport Rathje 3-4.Fresh Kills (Kills is from the Dutch book of account for creek) was originally a tidalmarsh. In 1948, New York City planner Robert Moses developed a highlypraised project to deposit municipal garbage in the swamp until the level ofthe land was above sea level. A study of the area predicted the marsh wouldbe filled by the year 1968. He then planned to develop the area, buildingho utilisations and attracting light industry. city manager Impelliteri issued a hidetitled "The Fresh Kills Landfill Project" in 1951. The report stated, inpart, that the enterprise "cannot fail to affect constructively a wide-cut areaaround it." The report ended by stating, "It is at in one case practical andidealistic" Rathje 4. One must appreciate the irony in the fact thatRobert Moses was, in his day, considered a leading conservationist. Hismajor accomplishments include asphalt parking lots throughout the New Yorkmetro area, paved roadstead in and out of city parks, and development of JonesBeach, now the most polluted, dirty, overcrowded voice of shoreline in theNortheast. In Stewart Udalls book The Quiet Crisis, the former Secretary ofthe intimate lavishes praise on Moses. The JFK cabinet member calls JonesBeach "an imaginative base ... (the) supreme answer to the ever-presentproblems of overcrowding" Udall 163-4. JFKs introduction to the bookprovides this foreboding course "Each generation must deal anew with theraiders, with the scramble to use public resources for private profit, and