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fill is closed with a cap that is not im- permeable, tree roots can penetrate the cap. "The trees tend to die when meth- ane gas suffocates their roots," he says. —, During construction of the second ;vanston park, trees were planted di- rectly into landfill material. "This caused many of them to experience ex- tremely slow or stunted growth, while others remained in generally poor health, or simply died," Wirth says. During construction of its next park over a landfill, extra soil and plant ma- terials were added to protect the trees, which did grow properly. Perhaps the most disturbing potential hazard with landfill -to -park conversion is the possibility that hazardous or toxic wastes were placed in the landfill before it was closed. Ed Repa, deputy director of waste disposal programs for the Na- tional Solid Waste Management Asso- ciation, says that before the 1979 Re- source Conservation and Recovery Act, a lot of hazardous waste was co -min- gled with municipal solid waste, making the transformation of such sites into parks more difficult and expensive. "New engineering technologies have been able to turn hazardous sites into parks and even housing developments," says Repa. "It can be done, but at what cost?" The problem of hazardous wastes is much more significant with older landfills than with those opened Ifter 1979. "With some of the older, poorly run landfills, the end use was not as important a consideration as simply finding a suitable landfill site," he says. "The main thing you have to worry about is what's been put into (the land- fill) before," says Tindall. "Some sites are quite old and pre -date the modern, stricter controls over toxics." He says there are some state parks where as much as six inches of soil has had to be added to the existing cover because of hazardous waste concerns. "There have been some places where recreational uses have been encouraged that are risky," says Tindall. "There are probably public recreation areas and parks that shouldn't be on those (for- mer landfill) sites, but they just aren't jumping out at us as a problem." Public pefeepticns The possibility of hazardous wastes having been buried under the park may be the landfill -to -park issue that con- cerns the public the most. "There is far more public concern (connected with landfill -to -park conversion) over illegal i "The public is happy to see what would otherwise be wasted space put to good use." toxic dumping than any other related issue," Tindall says. He adds there should be broadly understood public assurances that a landfill site is safe for park conversion well before construc- tion. Repa does not believe the guarantee . of a park as an end use for a proposed landfill can mitigate long-standing pub- lic opposition to them. "The NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) syndrome is so strong, and people have become so anti any waste facility, that nothing you do will help overcome that, no matter what the proposed end use," he says. Levin says, however, that citizens usually welcome the idea of building a park over a landfill. "This works beau- tifully with the public," he says. "They are happy to see what would otherwise be wasted space put to good use." "These parks have been used just as much as we had expected," says Wirth, "just as any other park in Evanston would have been used. I have seen no documented evidence, nor have I heard any comments about public reluctance to use the parks because they were built on landfills. One reason for that prob- ably was our work with the Illinois EPA, which monitored the parks for a number of years and reviewed all our plans and specifications." A golf course built over a landfill in Phoenix has 110,000 rounds of golf per year played on it. Larson says that fig- ure surpasses that of a private golf course in the city, rated as one of the top in the country. "We've had no problem with public opposition to our park sites built on landfills," says Stewart. "It's not really a cause for public concern anymore be- cause better laws make it harder for landfills to be used. There are strict cri- teria for governments to follow, such as constant checks on groundwater sup- plies." - Stewart says that while the vast ma- jority of landfill -to -park projects are successful and he believes even more projects will be constructed in the fu- ture, great care should be taken when evaluating a landfill with eventual park construction in mind. "By no means should we convert every landfill into a park. Every site should be checked thoroughly on an individual basis. We're not going out and promoting this to communities, but where it does make sense, it should be strongly considered because there will always be a need for park space. "I hope what will eventually happen is that the maximum number of (land- fill) sites possible will be examined for their recreation potential," Stewart says. "The fust test of this potential is whether the present demand is there, or whether local officials are able to pre- dict future demand." "There are some parks out there whose designers didn't plan for meth- ane gas collection," says Hickman. "There are some who had no under- standing of settling. But if they plan ahead, there really shouldn't be a prob- lem with these issues." A combination of rising land values and a growing population and their need for recreational activities, may force more local governments to turn an unpopular necessity into an attractive asset. As stricter regulations and new technology make landfill -to -park con- version more feasible and popular, planning ahead, as Evanston did in the 1960s, is one way cities and counties are participating in the American park revolution. ❑