|
Parks
<br />& Recreation
<br />Landfills Become Landscapes:
<br />The American Park Revolution
<br />As a greater number of landfills are closed, American cities and
<br />counties are looking more seriously at converting the space into
<br />park and recreation areas.
<br />ack in the 1960s and 1970s, the
<br />Chicago suburb of Evanston,
<br />Ill., had a difficult problem:
<br />finding badly needed space to
<br />locate park and recreation facilities in
<br />the densely populated area bordering
<br />Lake Michigan. Land values in the city
<br />are high, and because of the large pop-
<br />ulation, tracts of land big enough to ac-
<br />commodate parks never became avail-
<br />able.
<br />To solve this dilemma, Evanston used
<br />a resource usually regarded as a liabil-
<br />ity: the municipal landfill. To date, the
<br />city, whose 75,000 residents reside on
<br />nine square miles, has built three parks
<br />on top of closed landfills. This practice
<br />not only saved the city the cost of ac-
<br />quiring land (which, in Evanston, is not
<br />available in any case), but also con-
<br />verted an eyesore into an attractive and
<br />functional landscape.
<br />Evanston, however, is not the only
<br />municipality that has faced this prob-
<br />lem. Cities and counties across the na-
<br />tion are being challenged by a growing
<br />demand for parks and recreational fa-
<br />cilities, coupled with little or no fund-
<br />ing to acquire land for them. Most large
<br />wooded areas are located too far from
<br />heavily populated areas to be of use to
<br />urban residents, yet few urban environ-
<br />ments, such as Evanston, have enough
<br />land to build new parks in convenient
<br />locations.
<br />This dilemma is being accompanied
<br />48
<br />By Dan Treadaway, Associate Editor
<br />by another difficult problem for local
<br />governments: the closing of a large
<br />number of landfills. The U.S. Environ-
<br />mental Protection Agency (EPA) esti-
<br />mates that 6,000 landfills will reach
<br />their capacity and close by 1992.
<br />While both these situations are caus-
<br />ing plenty of headaches for local lead-
<br />ers, they also present an opportunity to
<br />devise creative solutions. Converting
<br />closed landfills into park and recrea-
<br />tional areas is one solution cities and
<br />counties have been using at an increas-
<br />ing rate during the past several years.
<br />While local governments have been
<br />turning landfills into parks for the past
<br />15 to 20 years, only in the past few
<br />years have a significant number turned
<br />to this option. Because the individual
<br />states are responsible for issuing landfill
<br />permits, federal agencies such as the
<br />EPA have no precise data on how many
<br />local parks in the United States origi-
<br />nally were landfills. However, many
<br />parks and recreation and solid waste
<br />disposal experts agree that the number
<br />has been large enough in recent years to
<br />make landfill -to -park conversion a sig-
<br />nificant trend.
<br />Converting landfills to parks "has
<br />become a very common practice," says
<br />Lanny Hickman, executive director of
<br />the Government Refuse Collection and
<br />Disposal Association. "It's one of the
<br />features that will help sell a landfill" to
<br />nearby residents who might oppose it.
<br />"As a nation, we are producing an
<br />ever-increasing amount of solid waste,
<br />while at the same time, there is a de-
<br />creasing number of sites available for
<br />creation of new parks," says Barry Tin-
<br />dall, director of public policy for the
<br />National Recreation and Park Associa-
<br />tion. "Inasmuch as these are trends,
<br />secondary uses, such as conversion to
<br />parks, follow as parallel trends. I keep
<br />hearing enough references made to
<br />landfills being converted to parks that.
<br />if it is not a trend, it is certainly a highly
<br />popular, techAically feasible land use."
<br />Don Wirth, Evanston's director of
<br />Parks, Recreation and Forestry, says a
<br />35 -acre park in the city is the result of a
<br />decision made in the 1960s when the
<br />landfill under it was opened. The $'
<br />million park, built in the late 1970s anc
<br />the third in Evanston to be converter
<br />from a landfill, features small hills for
<br />sledding and tobogganing, a soccer
<br />field, basketball and tennis courts,
<br />playground, a small shelter with rest -
<br />rooms, and a 28 -space parking lot.
<br />Wirth says a two -foot clay barrie:
<br />was placed on top of the landfill's gar
<br />bage to create an impenetrable surface
<br />The park's only shelter also is well ven
<br />tilated to prevent concentrations o
<br />methane gas from forming, a situation
<br />that can lead to an explosion.
<br />"It would have been impossible fo
<br />us to site new parks and acquire th
<br />land," says Wirth. "Converting th
<br />American City & County/March 198,
<br />
|