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It has long been believed that the largest entity brought upon the Earth by

humankind is the Pyramid of the Sun, constructed in Mexico around the start

of the Christian era. The mammoth structure commands nearly thirty million

cubic feet of space. In contrast, however, is the Durham Road Landfill,

outside San Francisco, which occupies over seventy million cubic feet of the

biosphere. It is a sad monument, indeed, to the excesses of modern society

[Gore 151]. One might assume such a monstrous mound of garbage is the

largest thing ever produced by human hands. Unhappily, this is not the case.

The Fresh Kills Landfill, located on Staten Island, is the largest landfill

in the world. It sports an elevation of 155 feet, an estimated mass of 100

million tons, and a volume of 2.9 billion cubic feet. In total acreage, it

is equal to 16,000 baseball diamonds [Miller 526]. By the year 2005, when

the landfill is projected to close, its elevation will reach 505 feet above

sea level, making it the highest point along the Eastern Seaboard, Florida

to Maine. At that height, the mound will constitute a hazard to air traffic

at Newark airport [Rathje 3-4].

Fresh Kills (Kills is from the Dutch word for creek) was originally a tidal

marsh. In 1948, New York City planner Robert Moses developed a highly

praised project to deposit municipal garbage in the swamp until the level of

the land was above sea level. A study of the area predicted the marsh would

be filled by the year 1968. He then planned to develop the area, building

houses and attracting light industry. Mayor Impelliteri issued a report

titled "The Fresh Kills Landfill Project" in 1951. The report stated, in

part,...