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New York City's Landfill Closes Ahead of Schedule
By Mayor Rudy Giuliani

In 1996, Governor George Pataki, Staten Island Borough President Guy Molinari, and I made a solemn vow to all New Yorkers that we would close the Fresh Kills landfill by the end of 2001. Last week, we fulfilled that promise well ahead of schedule. The closing of Fresh Kills will have a lasting impact not only upon Staten Island, but also upon the city and entire region.

On Thursday, March 22, I joined the Governor and the Borough President at a ceremony marking the arrival of the last garbage barge to the Fresh Kills landfill. It was a truly historic moment, the result of many people's efforts over many years: Governor Pataki, Borough President Molinari, Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota, Sanitation Commissioner Kevin Farrell, and the residents of Staten Island, who have been patiently living with the daily burden of Fresh Kills, which was not only an eyesore but an environmental disaster.

Since 1948, more than 400,000 barges have sailed to Staten Island to dump the city's trash at the Fresh Kills landfill. While the establishment of the landfill was an improvement on the previous practice of dumping garbage in the ocean, this solution created a new and very serious problem for the people of Staten Island.

We can take pride in the fact that the water in New York Harbor is now cleaner than at any time in the past 70 years, in large part because trash is no longer discarded in it. But the quality of life in New York City's fastest-growing borough has been choked by the presence of one of the world's largest waste disposal facilities.

A decade ago, many people did not believe that Fresh Kills would ever close. It had been promised so many times that promises ceased to have any meaning for Staten Island residents. After all, Fresh Kills had initially been opened with the promise that it would remain operational for just five years.
Yet it continued to operate after all other landfills in the city closed. By the late 1980s, it was receiving as much as 29,000 tons of garbage each day. Stopping that steady stream of refuse seemed like a dream that could never happen. But that dream is now a reality.

By 2005, the Department of Sanitation expects to have a waste export system in place that relies on the use of five existing marine transfer stations to barge roughly half - or approximately 6,500 tons per day - to a private waste transfer station in Linden, New Jersey. The remaining daily tonnage will be exported by rail or barge to out-of-state waste disposal facilities.

In the meantime, the City has contracts with 15 private waste transfer stations to accept and process garbage generated in each of the five boroughs for final export to out-of-state facilities.
The next phase for Fresh Kills occurs on July 4th, when the landfill is set to officially close - and many celebrations are being planned. The closing marks the beginning of a new era in New York City, and the end of Staten Island being home to one of the world's largest landfills.

Over the years, Fresh Kills had grown so large that some claim it is the highest point on the Eastern seaboard. Whether or not that's officially the case, what we do know for sure is that by closing the Fresh Kills landfill, we will greatly enhance the quality of life across an entire borough, city and region well into the future.