On the evening of September 12, 2001 Fresh Kills was re-opened and made a crime scene.
Truck loads of steel and rubble from the World Trade Centre attacks began to arrive. Over the next ten months 1.7 million tonnes of debris and the remains of victims would pour into Fresh Kills.
Forensic investigators identified 4,257 human remains, about 4,000 personal photos, about USD80,000 in loose currency, the remains of a bronze Rodin statue and a sad long list of personal remains.
Building debris was sold off to scrap dealers. And the Fresh Kill's west mound grew higher and higher. In 2002, when Fresh Kills received its final load of 9/11 debris, the west mound covered about 200 hectares and was 70 metres high; taller than the Statue of Liberty.
Fresh Kills is now a parkland and a memorial to the 9/11 victims.
Opened in the 1940s Fresh Kills holds nine square kilometres of refuse. During it's peak of operations, 26,000 tonnes of rubbish were shipped in daily to the landfill.
At the foot of the Statue of Liberty, engraved in copper, rests Emma Lazarus's famous poetic dedication to Lady Liberty. Lazarus, a Sephardic Jew, sympathetically likened Eastern Europe's poor and persecuted to waste:
"...Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teaming shore." The New Colossus, 1883
As it happens, across the river from Lady Liberty is Fresh Kills, the world's largest landfill. Located on Staten Island, Fresh Kills is home to nine square kilometres of refuse. At its peak 26,000 tonnes of rubbish were shipped in daily (about 9.5 million tonnes every year.)
Despite its name Fresh Kills has nothing to do with fresh meat (It does however have quite a lot to do with the mafia). Kills is a Dutch word meaning brook or stream.
The landfill was the master plan of bridge and housing developer Robert Moses, a shaper and planner of twentieth century New York. In the 1940s Moses decided to link the rural Staten Island to Brooklyn with a bridge. So Fresh Kills' estuaries were filled with New York's garbage and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge was built.
Developers poured into Staten Island. Suburbia moved in and with it, Italian-Americans. Staten Island has the highest percentage of Italian-Americans in the US. Don Corleone's home in The Godfather was filmed in Emerson Hill, Staten Island. The borough gained a reputation as a mafia enclave and the landfill a source of mafia employment and revenue.
The landfill grew bigger and bigger. The odor became so foul that it was frequently sprayed with pine deodorant. But the landfill remained and when it could spread no further out, it went up. Four hills emerged and were sensibly named the North, South, East and West Mounds. As the hills grew so too did the complaints of local residents. Until finally in March 2001, the World's largest landfill closed. Well...for a while.