Seneca Meadows, NY’s one stop shop for all its garbage needs
by Michael Schober
Site Description:
Project Description:
Fresh Kills Landfill was opened in 1948 with the purpose of giving New York City’s Trash a home and by 1955 it had become the largest Landfill in the World. Over the next fifty years the landfill would continue to operate, with mounds of trash growing that could be seen from the New York City Skyline. Following outcries from the citizen’s of Long Island and outspoken actvisits regarding the health dangers resulting from the landfill as well as the impact it had on quality of life in the area, in the late 1990s the park finally closed it’s operations opening again for a brief stint to deal with the waste from the horrific attatcks on 9/11. Not only was the landfill closed, but in its place there is currently a multi million dollar recreational park project being put in place for the beenfit of the citizens of Staten Island. While this was seen as an environmental victory on all ends, there remains one question; where did the garbage go? The answer reveals another environmental issue 200 plus miles away in Waterloo New York, home of the Seneca Meadows Landfill. The Seneca Meadows Landfill is one of the many landfills which has taken the place of Fresh Kills Landfill in dealing with the extensive amount of Waste from New York City. While Staten Island began to heal it’s environment, the small town of Waterloo NY which did not have the population size or influence of Staten Island instead became home to a growing landfill resulting in numerous issues for the town both health and business related. Despite New York’s Environmental agenda, this landfill has been allowed to grow as the small town of Waterloo fights to stop it from extending it’s contract with the state. This project holds great significance as it demonstrates an example of where enviornmental victories can unintentionally lead to issues in other areas.
Watch this short video story on this project.
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Primary Sources:
Title: Seneca Meadows Landfill
Link: https://senecameadows.com/solid-waste-management/
Location:Seneca Meadows Landfill
Description: The following source is the site of the Seneca Meadows Landfill, providing details with regards to the landfill’s history as well as the sites current operations and plans. In order to understand the attitudes towards the citizens of Seneca Meadows from the landfill itself, and how operations are carried out with the proximity to Waterloo NY.
Title: Lutz warns Seneca Falls Town Board of lung cancer rates
Link: https://www.fltimes.com/news/lutz-warns-seneca-falls-town-board-of-lung-cancer-rates/article_b515fb1a-1cc2-11ee-b9ae-bbff827022d1.html
Location: Finger Lakes Times
Description: The Following is an article reporting a letter sent to the town board regarding the Seneca Meadows Landfill and its effects on neighboring towns and residents. Specifically his concerns are regarding rates of lung cancer which have risen in the years following the closure of fresh kills. This source represents not only the effects of fresh kills as well as the feelings of citizens towards the landfill giving first hand judgment from Bill Lutz.
Title:
Link: https://earthjustice.org/press/2009/city-budgets-141-million-for-toxic-waste-cleanup-at-staten-island-site
Location: Earth Justice Organization
Description: The following source is reporting on New York Cities Budget in terms of its allocation of 141 million dollars to help with waste cleanup in Staten Island to counter the harmful effects from the fresh kills landfill. This will be used to show the comparison of resources allocation towards cleanup between the two communities.
https://www-jstor-org.libdb.njit.edu:8443/stable/24153338?seq=2
Location: New York Times
Description: This source was written by Robert Sullivan, a reporter on environmental issues who bore witness to the dumps closing and then New York Governor Pataki’s comments regarding the matter, one particular quote being “No more Garbage for the people of Staten Island. This source will be used to emphasize the response and feelings toward the issues posed by Fresh Kills and how the issue was given a one sided approach in regards to which communities were focused for cleanup.
Title:
Link: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans/fkl/fkl.pdf
Location: The City of New York Public Archives
Description: This document outlines the planning process for the Park renovation project which will take the spot of the land where the landfill once stood. This outline goes in depth into the planning and execution of the project and shows the efforts being instituted in Staten Island. Understanding what has happened in place of fresh kills in favor of exporting their garbage to areas such as Waterloo will be important in understanding the layout of the situation.
Secondary Sources:
Source: A Descriptive Study of Cancer and Other Health Outcomes Around the Former Fresh Kills Landfill, Staten Island, January 2020. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/environmental/cancer-and-other-health-outcomes-around-former-fresh-kills-landfill-staten-island.pdf.
Description: This source contains a collection of studies conducted by the NYC Health Department with the purpose of investigating and identifying potential connections between living near the landfill and health issues. The health issues which are the result of toxic waste build up and pollution includes respiratory diseases as well as cancer. Within this study cancer rates as well as other medical markers such as hospitalizations are compared between residents in Staten Island living close to the fresh kill landfill to other citizens in New York with further distance. In order to address the disparate response to pollution and the consequences of the fresh kills landfill, it is important to understand what the pollution was in the first place. This source coupled with data regarding residents of Carteret New Jersey which is just East to the Landfill will give context for the health concerns both areas face due to the landfill. Furthermore, comparing it to more recent data will provide an answer as to how the two areas have improved since the removal of the landfill and what residual effects still remain.
Source: Videras, Julio, and Christopher J. Bordoni. “Ethnic Heterogeneity and the Enforcement of Environmental Regulation.” Review of social economy 64, no. 4 (2006): 539–562.
Description: The following source looks at the relationship between the enforcement of administrative environmental regulations and community characteristics such as ethnic diversity within New York and New Jersey. The source makes a number of important findings regarding how the percentage of a non white population correlates to the strength of administrative penalties imposed on environmental violators. In a statistically significant number of cases fines assessed to violators of environmental regulations in areas of higher minority populations faced far less penalties then violators in white neighborhoods. This study will be very important in showing the larger issue as seen with fresh kills landfill. Staten Island contains a higher caucasian population then neighboring Carteret which holds a significant Hispanic Population. Simultaneously both these communities have had a disparate response to the effects of the fresh kills landfill as I will examine in this paper.
Source: Thompson, Katherine. “The Grim Reality Hidden beneath Freshkills Park’s Bright Facade.” The Grim Reality Hidden Beneath Freshkills Park’s Bright Facade | Writing Program, n.d. https://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-9/thompson/.
Link: https://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-9/thompson/
Description: The following source is a publication on behalf of the Boston University Arts & Sciences Writing Program by Katherine Thompson. In this publication, Thompson comments on the current state of the Fresh Kills Landfill which has since been turned into a park for the residents of Staten Island. She makes note about how urban planning projects such as this, can bury controversial pasts as well as current ongoing issues proving to be more detrimental in the long term escape of this. While the damage that has been done by the landfills remains apparent, a park such as Fresh Kills has a disparate benefit in terms of social and economic benefits to only particular communities affected by the landfill while others still wrestle with the environmental effects of this pollution. This source raises a number of questions in terms of the responsibility held towards repairing environmental harm? What constitutes repairing harm while what else is a band aid? As well as who is owed the reparations from an environmental disaster.
Source: Sullivan, Robert, and Jade Doskow. “How the World’s Largest Garbage Dump Evolved into a Green Oasis.” The New York Times, August 14, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/nyregion/freshkills-garbage-dump-nyc.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare.
Description: This source was written by Robert Sullivan, a reporter on environmental issues who bore witness to the dumps closing and then New York Governor Pataki’s comments regarding the matter, one particular quote being “No more Garbage for the people of Staten Island.” As a reporter around the environmental scene and fresh kills in particular, Sullivan gives analysis on how the political climate within New York and Staten Island in particular around the landfill had an immersive effect on the landfills closure and plans around it. This source will be used to emphasize the response and feelings toward the issues posed by Fresh Kills. More specifically how specific categories of voters and demographics felt regarding the matter. This article also demonstrates how the response to this cleanup was a largely one sided approach in regards to which communities were focused for the cleanup.
Source: Sze, Julie. 2006. Noxious New York. MIT Press. Noxious New York: The Racial Politics of Urban Health and Environmental Justice book summary
Description: The following source is a book written by Julie Sze which delves into the disproportionate impact of urban environmental problems on racial minority and low-income communities, highlighting the concept of environmental justice. This book focuses on environmental justice activism in New York City, and traces the history of activism in response to economic decline and the concentration of harmful facilities like incinerators, waste transfer stations, and power plants. The book explores how local campaigns emerged around issues such as asthma, waste management, and energy systems, framed within the discourse of environmental justice. Sze also examines the historical context of urban planning and public health initiatives in New York City, dating back to the nineteenth century’s sanitation movement. Additionally, she analyzes the influence of race, family, and gender politics on activism, particularly regarding asthma advocacy and responses to garbage privatization and energy deregulation. This source will be helpful in identifying common trends regarding the environmental justice that can be seen following the closure of Fresh Kills Landfill putting the situation in Carteret and Staten Island in context of the larger movement.
Image Analysis:
The following image was published on Popular Science and was drawn by one of their contributors Molika Ashford, a freelance reporter who publishes for a variety of science x political focused websites and publications. Her work typically centers around environmental issues and global warming. This image was published in 2008, the first year in which construction on the previous area making up the Fresh Kills Landfill was started. This was also two years after the New York Department of Sanitation released its waste management plan regarding plans following the closure of fresh kills park. My environmental justice view is that of Waterloo/ Seneca Falls NY which is one of the areas this image alludes to as suffering as a result of the fresh kills closure, as they have had to bear the brunt of the waste from NY which needed a new place to go once fresh kills closed. The image emphasizes one of my overall messages in that the city of New York has chosen a “band aid” cover up for dealing with its waste production.
There is an emphasis in the first couple of images regarding the magnitude of the landfill being the “largest” with a truck overfilling as it enters the Landfills space. On top of that you can see a woman in the second slide struggling to fit garbage bags into the bin outside her residence as the street is overflowing with bags. This imagery is very popular with that of New York asd other big cities as issues with waste management and such a largely dense population can lead to this overflow effect.
Furthermore the negative effects of this waste is demonstrated using darker imagery. The waste in the trucks from the city is black across a cleaner landscape. In the construction of the park, the dark waste is emphasized to be capped off away from the public so as to not disturb the public. Garbage does not disappear as easily as many people might think and don’t recognize that landfills in particular build up over many years to a point where the waste is required.
The image has multiple goals and messages of which it is trying to emphasize along with the magnitude of Fresh Kills and amount of trash New York is producing. The image depicts side by side a beautifully constructed park with bridges and informative signs giving information about the landscape side by side with the image of trucks. This emphasizes the impressive construction of the park and extensive planning to repair the damaged area while simultaneously emphasizing that the trash is now going somewhere else. In the last slide we see a line of garbage trucks overflowing with waste leaving the city’s borders in order to take routes leading upstate and to other states’ landfills all while bearing the emblems of New York City. While the residents of Staten Island watch as a multi million dollar project is undergone to repair the damage their trash once caused, that same trash is conjunctively being shipped off to other landfills in NY as well as other states to cause the same damage and harm as it did in Fresh Kills.
This political cartoon is just one part of the active movement following Fresh Kills closure and New York’s plans with regards to waste. While the plan for Fresh Kills park is a significant environmental project that will help repair the damage once caused, by continuing to use landfills to handle its extensive volume of trash, the city of NY is being negligent to surrounding areas as the problems faced by Fresh Kills are once again shifted.
