Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York City

Abstract

Fresh Kills is far more than a history of America's largest landfill, located on the western shore of Staten Island. It is also a detailed investigation of New York City's waste policies and politics over the last century and a half, a chronicle of the island's development, and a meticulous dissection of urban politics. By tracing the evolution of the city's disposal practices, Martin V. Melosi provides useful insights into national developments. New York helped shape national trends. It pioneered the use of trash as fill to increase its land area, a strategy imitated by other cities. Its longtime practice of dumping waste at sea antagonized New Jersey and led to a Supreme Court ruling banning the practice in 1934. Much of the book focuses on the balance between incinerators and landfilling. Almost from the landfill's inception, sanitation commissioners and mayors promised to build more incinerators to curb the volume of waste deposited at Fresh Kills. But rhetoric did not match reality. Instead of building more incinerators, the city closed existing ones, sending more waste to Fresh Kills.