Activity 10-Freshkills...Fresh Start

Activity 10

Rosedelle A Chery

For this last assignment, I attended a trip with some of my classmates to Freshkills Park, in Staten Island. This was the second assignment that forced me to go into a borough that I told myself I would never go. However, I actually enjoyed this trip, especially since it was a class trip. I don’t know why, but having the class together on this trip made it a lot more fun and interesting. Nonetheless, Freshkills was actually very beautiful and amazing, it was hard to believe that all this land, which seem to be as big and Rockaway, was a land fill just a few years ago. Its really shameful how the land was destroyed and wasted just to put trash in, it makes me really think about all the trash that I produce and contributed to this problem. “In 1999, bowing to political pressure from Staten Island, Rudolph Giuliani announced that he would be closing Fresh Kills landfill and that the city would ship its trash to South Carolina” according to New York Magazine, its hard to believe that people of Staten Island had to literally live with filth and the city would have left it like that had they not been pressured to close it. New York already has such pollution and to leave the landfill would probably have had an even worse impact on the health of New Yorkers.

While reading “Turning Trash Piles Into a Bird-Watcher’s Paradise” I couldn’t help to remember how the thought of seeing birds on this trip and being near them disgusted me, living in the city with all these nasty pigeons and seagulls has lead to an aversion of birds for me. However, when we got there and I actually started to see the birds, I couldn’t deny how beautiful they were flying peacefully around the park. It was exciting to read that native birds, “Upwards of 50,000 great black back gulls,” as stated by Edward Johnson are returning back to the park, taking back there habitat. Its very disappointing though that it would take up to 30 years for the park to be complete and that I wouldn’t to fully enjoy it in ma youth. However, I’m happy to know that by the time I have kids, or my dog, I would be able to enjoy the park with them. Humans have taken so much from the earth and animals through our selfish ways, it’s about time that we started to give back and take steps to bringing the land back to what it once was.

I believe the transformation of Fresh Kills Landfill into Freshkills Park is one of the first steps to creating a more environmental and sustainable world for future generations. Lastly it’s funny that it will even take my computer time to stop referring to Freshkills Park by its old name and stop trying to correct the spelling back to Fresh Kills.