Eli Cohen on sustainability and phytoremediation
Eli Cohen gave a terrific talk Monday night on his work, as director of Ayala Water and Ecology, using plants to remove pollutants and contaminants from water, soil and air. We’re grateful to the huge crowd that poured into the Arsenal gallery for the event, to Laura Starr and Yamit Perez for putting us in touch with Eli and, of course, to Eli himself for sharing his work and his thoughts.
One of his bigger themes, telegraphed by the title of the talk, “Sustainability in Practice,” was his strong belief that “Natural Biological Systems”– systems constructed of plants, soil, rocks and other natural materials and supported by forces like gravity and sunlight–are not only just as effective as more expensive, technological solutions to environmental remediation, but also, literally, much more sustainable. He walked through a number of Ayala’s Natural Biological Systems, which filtered and cleaned runoff and sewage from a variety of sites including private residences, a dairy farm, a landfill, a cosmetics plant and an entire city (Hyderabad, India). His full slideshow is available as a PDF (6MB).
You can stream the entire audio of the talk, below, as you page through the slides. You can also download that audio directly as an MP3 (71 minutes, 66MB).
Next Freshkills Park Talk: Monday, December 7th
Part of the Natural Biological System designed by Ayala Water and Ecology for the Hiriya landfill site at Park Ariel Sharon in Tel-Aviv.
We’re excited to restart our Freshkills Park lecture series, Freshkills Park Talks, this coming Monday, December 7th. Eli Cohen of Israel’s Ayala Water & Ecology will be speaking about his work designing naturally-based solutions to help remove contaminants from soil, air, and bodies of water and to rebuild ecosystems’ capacity for self-sustainability. Mr. Cohen has consulted on stream rehabilitation projects, gray water reuse systems, and numerous constructed wetland systems to remove heavy metals, salts, hydrocarbons and pathogens from agricultural, industrial, and landfill sites.
Key within this work has been his involvement in the remediation of the Hiriya landfill in Tel-Aviv, formerly Israel’s largest landfill and soon to become part of Park Ariel Sharon, a 2000-acre park that shares a number of parallels with Freshkills Park. Mr. Cohen will present a variety of innovative projects implemented in Israel and around the world, with emphasis on urban solutions.
December 7th, 6:30-8pm at The Arsenal, 3rd floor Gallery
64th Street and 5th Avenue, Manhattan.
FREE. No RSVP necessary.
Steven Handel on urban restoration ecology
For our Freshkills Park Talk two weeks back, Dr. Steven Handel shared insights into the emerging field of urban restoration ecology, which focuses on the challenge of bringing ecological diversity back to degraded lands like brownfields and landfills. He discussed his research at the Freshkills Park site and others in the region and went on to describe how his expertise has informed the design of Orange County, CA’s Great Park.
Much of his discussion centered around concepts of ecological sustainability. Some key takeaways: At a site as large as Freshkills Park, it would be costly and unsustainable to plant and maintain the type of landscape found in a more traditional park landscape like Central Park. Dr. Handel emphasized the bang-for-buck of planting small, pioneer clusters of trees and shrubs that could attract bees and birds, which act as pollinators and seed spreaders. He also detailed the value of mosaic plant populations, in which some species can thrive while others shrink in response to evolving conditions. In the face of climate change, this adaptability, he said, would be essential for park resilience over time.
The talk covered much more. We’re grateful to Dr. Handel and to the big crowd that came out to hear him speak. Below are a few audio highlights. Each is 3 to 5 minutes long.
Clip 1: The “ecological services” and other benefits provided by green, sustainable landscapes.
Clip 2: On Dr. Handel’s soil restoration work in the New Jersey Meadowlands.
Clip 3: The importance of pollinators and the challenge of aligning engineering goals with ecological goals.
Recent press on upcoming Freshkills Park speakers
One of the panelists at next Tuesday evening’s panel discussion on public art, The Challenges and Channels of Public Art Production, is Mierle Ukeles, who is the Department of Sanitation’s Artist-in-Residence and contributed to the Freshkills Park master planning process as a Percent for Art artist. As the first and premier maintenance artist working today, there’s been a lot written about Mierle’s public artwork over the years, including this most recent article in Public Art Review. She’s also written a chapter called “Forgiveness for the Land–Public Offerings: Made by All Redeemed by All” in the recently published book Considering Forgiveness.
The Christian Science Monitor also just featured Dr. Steven Handel, a pioneer in the field of urban ecology who has been involved in a number of investigations and design projects for land reclamation sites–including numerous studies on the Freshkills Park site. Dr. Handel is the director of the Center for Urban Restoration Ecology (CURE), a joint venture between Rutgers and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He will be this month’s speaker in our Freshkills Park Talks lecture series next Thursday evening at the Staten Island Museum, where he’ll discussing urban ecology, directions for the future and the lessons we can take from Freshkills Park.
Field Operations on Designing Freshkills Park
Our big thanks to Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from Field Operations for last Thursday’s Freshkills Park Talk on designing the park. Jerome delivered a great primer on landscape architecture (including a history in two slides!) and talked about the mandate for new model of practice given the nature of the site and the enormity of the project, both in space and time scale. Grace walked us through the design concepts for three early projects: the Digger signage project, Schmul Park and North Park Phase A, and talked about how these projects—especially North Park—bring into specific play the grander ideas of the Draft Master Plan for the park as a whole. A number of the crowd’s questions dealt with maintenance and operations of the park: how it will be staffed, how its cleanliness will be ensured. This was a good opportunity to clarify the separate roles of the designers and the city: we at the Parks Department are responsible for the park and, jointly with the Department of Sanitation, will be in charge of its day-to-day operation.
A PDF of Jerome and Grace’s presentation is available here (it’s a 10MB download). Below are a couple of choice audio clips, each between 3 and 5 minutes long, from the talk. It’s useful to follow along with the PDF while they talk, since they refer to images a lot; each clip indicates the first slide it references.
Clip 1: A brief history of landscape architecture. Starts on Slide 12, “Context.”
Clip 2: Time, space and what makes Freshkills Park so unique. Starts on Slide 18, “2011 / 2016 / 2036.”
Clip 3: A walk through the Field Operations design for Schmul Park. Starts on Slide 42, “Schmul Park.”
Next month’s talk, “Urban Ecology at Fresh Kills,” will be given by Dr. Steven Handel from Rutgers University, who has conducted ecological research at Fresh Kills since the early 1990s. Dr. Handel will be talking about what we can learn from Fresh Kills in developing strategies for restoring ecology in our cities. As always, this event is free of charge.
June 25th, 7:30 pm at the Staten Island Museum.
Tonight! Freshkills Park Talk
Just a reminder about this evening’s talk at the Staten Island Museum. Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from landscape architecture and urban design firm Field Operations will be discussing the ideas behind the design of Freshkills Park and their work on upcoming projects. Should be a good one.
Freshkills Park Talks: Designing Freshkills Park
May 28th @ 7:30 pm at the Staten Island Museum,
75 Stuyvesant Place (a short walk from the St. George Ferry Terminal)
Next Freshkills Park talk: Designing Freshkills Park, Thursday May 28
A Field Operations rendering of the southwestern view of the North Park Founder Seed farm from the deck of a bird observation tower at water's edge.
The Freshkills Park Talks series continues this month with Jerome Chou and Grace Tang from landscape architecture and urban design firm Field Operations. They’ll be discussing the ideas behind the Freshkills Park design and the process of transforming a landfill into a 21st century park, including their work on projects scheduled for construction over the next two years.
Freshkills Park Talks: Designing Freshkills Park
May 28th @ 7:30 pm at the Staten Island Museum,
75 Stuyvesant Place (a short walk from the St. George Ferry Terminal)
Ed Toth on native plants and NYC ecology
Last Thursday’s installment of the Freshkills Park Talks lecture series was terrific. Ed Toth, Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), discussed the importance of floral biodiversity in urban settings, the GNPC’s history and operations–it’s one of the only municipal native plant providers in the country, if not the only one–and several citywide initiatives it’s taken on recently, including the Great Pollinator Project. Ed also outlined two GNPC projects that will be part of the North Park section of Freshkills Park: a founder seed farm and a pot-in-pot tree nursery. The audio clips below offer some choice segments of his talk. They’re each 4-5 minutes long. An audio-less PDF of his full presentation is available here.
Clip 1: The need for sustainable ecosystems and the value of natively adapted, genetically diverse species.
Clip 2: The GNPC’s founder seed operation and the push to supply regionally native seed.
Clip 3: The GNPC’s role at North Park, actively and visibly initiating a process to heal the landscape.
Next month’s talk, “Designing Freshkills Park,” will be given by Jerome Chou and Grace Tang, landscape architects at Field Operations, who will discuss the ideas behind the Freshkills Park design and their work on the first park projects, including North Park.
Next Freshkills Park Talk: Thursday, April 23rd
The Freshkills Park Talks series continues this Thursday with a talk by Ed Toth, Director of the Parks Department’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center. The GNPC’s mission is to supply New York City’s natural areas with native plants and seeds from local plant populations. Ed will be discussing the value of locally appropriate planting and detail the Center’s current and future roles in special conservation and reclamation projects.
Key among the GNPC’s upcoming projects will be an 800-tree pot-in-pot nursery and a seven-acre Founder Seed farm in the first section of North Park, to be developed at Freshkills Park within the next two years. See images of North Park here.
Freshkills Park Talks: Employing Native Plants in Conservation and Reclamation, Thursday, April 23rd @ 7:30 pm at the Staten Island Museum, 75 Stuyvesant Place (a short walk from the St. George Ferry Terminal)
Dennis Diggins on Fresh Kills Landfill operations
Thanks to everyone who came out to last Thursday’s talk on the history of operations at Fresh Kills. Dennis Diggins’ fascinating and wide-ranging overview touched on the history of sanitary landfills and the city’s solid waste management system, the evolution of equipment used for transporting, compacting and containing waste, Dennis’ own personal anecdotes about working at Fresh Kills from 1991-2006 (including the sage advice: “Don’t walk with your hands in your pockets in a landfill,” because if you trip and fall your hands are the only things keeping you from falling head first into the trash) and the Department of Sanitation’s tremendous role in the clean-up and investigation of the World Trade Center attack in the days and months following 9/11.
Even working on the Freshkills Park project every day, the details of Dennis’ talk – this latter part especially – were mostly unfamiliar and totally amazing to us. Sanitation provided lighting, fuel, dust suppression and 50% of the material trucking from Ground Zero. 1000 Sanitation workers cleaned up Wall Street the weekend after 9/11 to allow business to resume. Dennis was clearly proud of his staff’s work – he called it “awe inspiring.” More than one person remarked afterward that we need an oral history project like StoryCorps to interview the Sanitation workers involved in Fresh Kills operations and in the 9/11 recovery effort to record their stories for posterity. We think so too.
Next month’s talk will be given by Ed Toth, Director of the Greenbelt Native Plant Center, who will discuss the value of locally appropriate planting and detail the Center’s role in special conservation and reclamation projects around the city, including Freshkills Park. April 23rd, 7:30 pm at the Staten Island Museum, just a short walk from the St. George Ferry Terminal.
