Singing For A Cause -- Fresh Kills Landfill/Soon-To-Be-Park

What a sight this is.  Infinite mounds of stuff that we no longer want, compacted and churned under the ground countless times until there's barely any soil left to cover it with.

This is just one of perhaps hundreds of photographs of Staten Island's "Fresh Kills" landfill -- a monumental graveyard of New York City's waste which stands on the former site of a stream and freshwater estuary (hence its name "fresh kills" or "river bed" in Dutch).

Filled with roughly 150 million tons of waste and spanning 2200 acres, this leviathon of garbage was officially closed back in 2001 but once the 9/11 tragedy happened, it was reopened to receive all of the construction rubble.

It's hard to imagine that something good could come out of such a horrible pox on our environment, but one plus is that the landfill site is mined for 10,000 square cubic feet of gas a day via National Grid, ultimately earning NYC $10 million annually.

Another unusual twist is that James Corner, the landscape architect best known in New York as the designer of the High Line, intends to transform Fresh Kills landfill into Fresh Kills Park, complete with 2,315 acres of open space including trails, bodies of resuscitated water, restored maritime forests and rolling hills covered with grasses rather than garbage.

One can't help but wonder how they're going to pull that off considering the fact that garbage continues to decompose, releasing 312 gallons of liquid dump excretions per minute, but I suppose we should leave that to the park planning masterminds.

In the meantime, musician Randy Ludacer plans to perform a solo set of tunes that focus on our culture's obsession with packaged goods while standing on top of Fresh Kills Landfill on Saturday afternoon, September 26, 2009. 

I wonder if people are really going to comprehend the connection between the musician's songs and the fact that they will be standing on decades of discarded packaging that they themselves were probably responsible for chucking.

Ludacer's CD, entitled "Songs About Packaging," boasts such tracks as:

• "The Prettiest Package"
• "Can Of Worms"
• "This Landfill Is Your Landfill"
• "Pop Top Ring"
• "Expiration Date"

Ludacer intends to distribute a free 7-song CD of his music to all attendees encased in a handmade sleeve made from all of the cardboard packaging he could harvest from his own recycling bin.

If you are interested in checking out Randy Ludacer's performance and taking in the entire mindnumbing landfill scene, just sign up on the NYC Parks Department website (www.nycgovparks.org/parks/freshkillspark/events/173712).

Are you planning on attending? If so, please report back to everyone in the Greenwala community!