Snow-capped hills

We’ve uploaded a new flickr photo set of the Freshkills Park site in the glorious aftermath of the weekend’s snowstorm.  In most parts of New York City, snowfall is beautiful for the first hour and then gets plowed and turns gray and hangs around for two months, but, for the most part, it stays pretty pristine here on top of the mounds.  Images like this make us itch for the chance to open up the park for snowshoeing, cross-country skiing and sledding.  All in due time.

Carbon capture in US forests

A new study by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) is underway to assess the role US forests and soils can play in limiting emissions through carbon capture. The first phase of the study found that forests in the lower 48 states currently store about 90 billion metric tons of carbon and continue to capture about 30% of the country’s fossil fuel emissions each year. The study also posits that if properly managed, our forested public land has the potential to capture an additional three to seven billion metric tons of carbon.  Citing the study, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has called for further research into how carbon sequestration works and how land-management can be improved.

New York City’s MillionTreesNYC project is a step toward increasing the City’s current capacity for carbon sequestration through increased forestation throughout the city, including plantings at the Freshkills Park site.  The City’s trees currently store 1.35 million metric tons of carbon at a rate of 42,000 metric tons of carbon each year.

(via The New York Times)

James Corner at Cooper Union, tonight

James Corner, founder and director of landscape architecture and urban design firm Field Operations, will speak about the firm’s current projects this evening at Cooper Union, hosted by the Architectural League of New York.  In addition to designing the Freshkills Park master plan and first phase projects, Field Operations continues to tackle a number of diverse and high-profile projects including The High Line and the 4,500-acre Shelby Farms Park in Memphis.  Should be an inspiring talk.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009
7pm @ The Great Hall, The Cooper Union
7 East 7th Street in Manhattan
Free for Architectural League of New York members; $10 for non-members.

Discussion following the lecture with Corner and landscape architects Kate Orff and Ken Smith.

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.

Autumn beauty

Photographer Nathan Kensinger has posted a set of terrific photos and his impressions of the Freshkills Park site, collected during our photographers’ tour last month.  We’ve been doing these tours every few months; if you’re a professional photographer interested in participating in future photo tours, feel free to be in touch.

Freshkills Park team member profiled

New York Times feature Entry Level profiles Freshkills Park’s Programming and Grants Manager, Raj Kottamasu.  In addition to being part of the planning and implementation team for the project, Raj works with artists to develop onsite projects, initiates and organizes programs and events, manages and seeks grants for park projects and edits and designs our publications.

First launch into the water

Last week, the Parks Department’s Freshkills Park team and Staten Island Urban Park Rangers took a canoe trip through the site’s creeks and wetlands.  We put in at “The Point,” near the Isle of Meadows, and headed east through Fresh Kills Creek to Main Creek, where we got up close and personal with the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge.  This was our first brush with waterborne recreation at the site, and it afforded some awesome perspective of its scale and beauty.  Our thanks to the Department of Sanitation for granting us access and sending us off!  We hope to be able to offer public canoe tours in the near future, but for now, be sure to check out some of the photos from our afternoon on our flickr page.

We’ve also put up an album of new photos of the site looking its autumn prettiest.

New tour giveaway: native seed!

We’re excited to present a new giveaway we’ve started distributing on our free, public bus tours of the Freshkills Park site: packets of native meadow seed!  This seed was wild-collected in the New York metro area by the Greenbelt Native Plant Center, which will be operating a seven-acre founder seed farm in our first phase of North Park development.  That farm will be used to cultivate even more seed, including the species contained in these packets, and that seed will, in turn, be used in restoration efforts throughout the Freshkills Park site.  So planting these seeds at home, in gardens and pots, will offer a preview of the park to come.

These packets were printed through the generous support of the New York Department of State’s Office of Coastal, Local Government and Community Sustainability, under Title 11 of the Environmental Protection Fund.

UPDATE: Our public bus tours are booked through the end of the tour season in late November!  We’ll still be holding our bi-monthly birdwatching tours through the winter, though, and will look forward to restarting the public tour season in April.

Open House New York this weekend

The Greenbelt Native Plant Center is one of many sites open to the public this weekend.

This Saturday and Sunday, October 10th and 11th, is Open House New York weekend.  OHNY’s 7th annual offerings include building tours and site visits of unique locations across the five boroughs.  Staten Island is represented by its array of historic buildings as well as two Parks-related listings: Freshkills Park and the Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC).  Visiting the GNPC is a great opportunity to check out their greenhouses, containerized nurseries and seed bank.  We’ve also opened four Freshkills Park site tours this weekend, but they have already filled up!  If you’re interested in coming on the public bus tour, we’ve just opened registration for our November tour dates.

“Songs About Packaging” recap

Randy Ludacer’s performance at the Freshkills Park site last Saturday was terrific.  An eager audience poured out of our Parks bus at North Mound to hear Randy serenede them (and the millions of tons of discarded packaging buried underfoot) with the new album of songs he’d recorded for the event, including “The Prettiest Package” and “This Landfill is Your Landfill.”  Thanks to Randy, and to the folks at COAHSI for funding his project.  This was a really fun event, and we’re hoping it’s the forerunner of many more musical performances at the site.  (We have a set of guidelines for anyone interested in putting together a proposal for an event or performance.)

The crowd for this performance was full of photographers, videographers and bloggers.  We’ve just uploaded a set of photos from the event to our flickr page.  Artist Tattfoo Tan has posted a short video clip.  Marijke from Landfill Diaries has posted her impressions.  If you’ve got a photo set to share, please let us know, and we’ll link to it here.

UPDATED: Andrew Gardner has posted a nice flickr photo set of the event.