A Fresh Start for Freshkills
A Fresh Start for Freshkills
The 2,200 acre park on Staten Island is a work in progress.
Freshkills used to be the world's largest landfill until it closed in 2001.
Today it's being transformed into a park that'll be three times the size of Central Park with soccer fields, kayaking, picnic areas, and bike trails.
But with all these new additions, the finished site might not look too different than the way it does now.
Eloise Hirsh is the Park Administrator. She says the most dramatic part of the Freshkillls transformation was capping off the landfill's garbage with soil and grass. Now, the site is a natural landscape.
"It's spectacularly beatiful," she says, "So we want to take advantage of that and figure out ways for the public to come in and enjoy it."
The park's five sections will open in phases over the next 25 years, and Hirsh says some parts will be open within the next year or two.
Hirsh says in deciding which projects to take on first, they wanted to focus on the areas of the park adjacent to residents. She says after so many years of living by a landfill, she wants to give them some much needed park space.
On Thursday, the New York City Council gets an update on the construction of the park.
