A New Role For Fresh Kills

New York, NY —

Within days of the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11th, city officials had to decide what to do with the debris there. They chose to take most of the material to Fresh Kills. The 54-year-old landfill, much despised by Staten Islanders, had received what was supposed to be its final load of waste last spring. As Fresh Kills has taken on its new role, the perception of this huge landfill has changed. WNYC's Amy Eddings reports.

Most of Fresh Kills is composed of silent, grassy swells…the contours of about two billion tons of trash. But this 175-acre section rumbles with the activity of backhoes, and trucks loaded with World Trade Center debris. Nearby are a cluster of trailers that form a kind of on-site forensic anthropology lab. This wasn't here before. Fresh Kills had received its last barge of garbage and was declared closed on March 22nd -- an historic day for Staten Islanders, who had been told in 1948 that the landfill was temporary. But September 11th was another historic day. While the Twin Tower's huge steel beams are being sent to recyclers, Fresh Kills has been re-opened to take everything else.

William Allee, Chief of Detectives, NYPD: This is the area where all of the fire aparatus, most of the fire apparatus, ends up.

William Allee is Chief of Detectives of the New York City Police Department. He stands near a line of about thirty demolished fire engines and ladder trucks.

William Allee: You can see the condition of the trucks, and these are the people that responded, and these are the vehicles they came in. There are others you'll see that are unrecognizable. These are recognizable.

Chief Allee oversees about 300 investigators at Fresh Kills, who examine debris as it passes by them on six conveyor belts. They pick out personal items such as credit cards, I.D.s, rings and watches….and they look for human remains. At least 46 victims have been identified through remains found here. Some family members have complained about their loved ones being found at a garbage dump. But Chief Allee sees it differently.

Chief Allee: I'm tired of hearing that people are coming to a dump. This is not a dump. This is a special place. And it was closed. There's no, there's no garbage here.

Shortly after the Fresh Kills operation started, flowers were placed near the landfill's entrance. Volunteers co-ordinated a support team to provide donated food, clothing and supplies for workers at Fresh Kills. And many Staten Islanders, who had been very vocal about their hatred for the dump, suddenly found themselves rethinking that term. Ronnie Micciula co-ordinated the volunteer support program.

Ronnie Micciula: A lot of the volunteers would come in, and when they first came in, they'd say, we need to do something. We need to work with the people at ground zero. And I'd say, we don't do that. We work with the people working on the hill. And they'd say, you mean the dump? And I'd say, we don't call it that here. It's not a dump.

Micciula still hates Fresh Kills, and wants it closed for good. It's just that she's more accepting of the fact that it's been re-instated for a time, for what she thinks is a good cause. But Barbara Warren, with the group, Staten Island Citizens for Clean Air, wants to see the World Trade Center debris go elsewhere, once it's been combed through. And she worries that the current operation is a slippery slope toward a full-fledged re-opening.

Barbara Warren: The Department of Sanitation, and many individuals within that department, have, had wanted to keep Fresh Kills open for many more years, 20, 25 years. And we see it as sort of keeping that notion alive.

City officials -- and even Governor George Pataki -- have promised to close the landfill again when the World Trade Center clean-up is finished. That promise is an expensive one. At Fresh Kills, the city spent about $43 dollars per ton to dispose of its 11-thousand, four-hundred daily tons of garbage. It now pays about $63 dollars a ton to have private haulers take the garbage out of state. Meanwhile, the city faces an estimated four billion dollar budget gap this fiscal year. Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty says he's looking at ways to cut costs, but re-opening Fresh Kills is not an option.

Commissioner Doherty: As the commissioner, and a Staten Islander, I have no intention of re-opening it. I don't even think about that, even under the worst conditions. I think the Mayor will find ways of handling the budget that do not include re-opening Fresh Kills.

Commissioner Doherty says the city is reviewing three plans on what kind of open space, recreational facilities or development might be appropriate for Fresh Kills. He did not rule out some way of honoring the landfill's role as the final resting place of remnants from the World Trade Center. For WNYC, I'm Amy Eddings.