Would You Play in a Park that Used to Be a Landfill?

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capped landfulls

I have no problem and I was reading w/ your Chem/Physics background if you might have any info about a local landfill. The case is that our HOH (wells) is all very hard and sulfur like in odor. Now about 2 miles away we have a BFI landfill that was capped/closed because it supposedly did not have a proper shell beneath it. I often wonder if our water situation is from the sludge leaching out of the landfill there somewhere like a 3 mile line from my house. Others say that our wells are like this b/c this area used to be saturated w/ coal mines and it's the water that has backfilled into the mines and is leaching back out into the water table. The landfill was a BFI landfill in Deerfield, Ohio if that is of any help.

Heather of OH @ Dec 09, 2008 23:00:37 PM

A landfill can become a garden, so why not a park

Hi,

I just found your blog via the Huffington Post and read this article.

I wouldn't mind going into such a park after having visited in France a beautiful garden that once was a landfill.

Keep up the good work !

Edouard Stenger, France @ Dec 05, 2008 11:59:06 AM

Yep

Thanks Ali, for reminding me to mention - this is not the first park made out of a landfill, by any means. I it will be the largest, though, and will serve a much larger population than the rest of the landfill-turned-parks.

Maura Judkis of DC @ Dec 04, 2008 11:01:53 AM

Has already been done successfully in many places.

How many parks have been built on landfills? The following information is from The Trust For Public Land website (http://www.tpl.org). According to the Center for City Park Excellence, "No one has tabulated all the parks and public recreational sites created on old landfills. The Center for City Park Excellence found at least 250, including Flushing Meadow in New York City, Millenium Park in Boston, Mt. Trashmore in Virginia Beach, Virg. and Cesar Chavez Park in Berkeley, California. In "From Dumps to Destinations," the Center for City Park Excellence reviews the history and issues of converting of landfills to parks."

The Lyon Township Community and Riverview parks in Michigan have both been built on landfills.

There are numerous examples here and abroad.

Ali La of PA @ Dec 03, 2008 18:38:16 PM

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Maura Judkis is a producer at U.S. News. She writes about the green movement and looks for ways to be an ecofriendly consumer without breaking the bank. Send her your green tips.

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