When You Put It That Way, It Really Does Seem Like An Alpine Meadow

The Parks Department is planning to begin bus tours of the Fresh Kills landfill:

Forget the liquid ooze from New York City’s garbage, slowly seeping downward, five years after the last load of trash arrived at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. Don’t mind the methane gas, which is slowly percolating underground and which the city hopes to harness someday to create electricity, and revenue.

The city’s Department of Parks and Recreation will offer monthly bus tours, starting at the end of this month, as part of the effort to transform Fresh Kills, once the world’s largest landfill, into a vast park with picnic grounds, athletic fields and a giant earthen monument to the Sept. 11 victims.

“This is a great way for New Yorkers to understand the spectacular potential of Fresh Kills to become the great park of the 21st century,” the parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, said yesterday. “Being on top of any of the mounds gives you a view unparalleled anywhere in New York City. You have the feeling of being on an alpine meadow.”