Staten Island Reopens Hated Dump to Rubble From World Trade Center

Residents of the southernmost borough of New York City already have made one small but poignant sacrifice in the days after the World Trade Center catastrophe. They have reopened their landfill.

To understand what that means in Staten Island, consider that people here have spent generations fighting to close the oddly named Fresh Kills landfill, the largest dump in the world.

They sued the city. They tried to secede. And this year, they finally prevailed. Last March, in an islandwide celebration, they gave a ceremonial send-off to the last garbage barge.

But now the trucks and barges of debris from the World Trade Center arrive continually, to be sifted by detectives and FBI agents, then interred. A final decision has not been made, but it seems certain that the Fresh Kills landfill is a likely grave for the remains of the World Trade Center.

And in a scenario that would have been unimaginable 10 days ago, homeowners have raised barely a murmur. Some of them even have been to the landfill to volunteer. The borough president, whose father and daughter also have led the fight against the landfill, assented immediately. The congressman who made closing it a priority didn’t give it a second’s thought.

“Everyone wants to contribute in some way, and this is a fitting way to do it,” said Dan Delehanty, deputy director of Staten Island Economic Development Corp.

“It’s not even a sacrifice,” said Greg Auditore, 34, a civil service employee on the island. “You can’t even think that.”

Considered the most Republican of the boroughs, Staten Island is a predominantly working-class place where people care deeply about quality of life and real estate values. They tend to see themselves at odds with a distant, bureaucratic New York City government, much the same way San Fernando Valley residents view Los Angeles government.

Now, island residents say all that seems trivial. It is also a community of firefighters and police officers, a traditional civil service enclave. Sons and fathers here are missing. One rescue company has lost nearly every member.

Suburban concerns that seemed so pressing--the typical preoccupations of upwardly mobile Americans everywhere--no longer seem applicable.

“We share in the loss, we share in the sacrifice,” said borough President Guy Molinari, taking a break between funerals.

Staten Island, lying to the south of Manhattan, is the most isolated borough, and the greenest. It has called itself the stepchild of New York, the forgotten borough.

“People say, ‘Oh, there’s five boroughs?’ ” said Vinnie Macri, 36, a musician.

The Fresh Kills dump was opened in the 1940s. Over the years it became the largest landfill in New York City, unwilling recipient of the rest of New York’s garbage. Staten Island became known as the home of the dump. Barges loaded with trash pulled up by the tens of thousands.

Islanders are fond of reciting the landfill’s staggering dimensions: the largest in the world, 3,000 acres mounded so high that civic leaders once talked of making it a ski area with artificial snow.

It leached pollutants, and it stank. On hot days, it was so pungent that parents wouldn’t let their children outside. There were cancer rumors.

Beatrice Shali-Ogli, an aide to Molinari, remembers driving down the expressway past the landfill one day and seeing “these white, billowing things in the trees. I thought they were birds. But they were garbage bags.”

Closing the landfill became the biggest issue on Staten Island. Even children were steeped in the issue.

“You’d ask kids here in school what are the issues,” recalled U.S. Rep. Vito Fossella, a Republican who represents the area. “Universally, they would say, ‘When are you gonna close the garbage dump?’ ”

The campaign seemed endless. There were hearings, protests, more hearings. Finally, Staten Islanders threw up their hands. In 1993, they voted overwhelming to secede from New York City, only to be thwarted by the state legislature. Only when Rudolph W. Giuliani made closing the dump a mayoral campaign promise did Staten Island politicians see their opportunity. Staten Islanders gave Giuliani a landslide that some believe helped carry him to victory. The mayor beat his promised deadline for closing the dump by several months.

Real estate values have surged in the meantime. New businesses, such as the Hilton, are moving in. There has been excited talk of making the dump into a park or a winter sports complex.

“Everybody was ecstatic,” Fossella said. “It was one of those issues that affected everyone.”

But since the attack, all that seems long ago. People say it seems nearly everyone has lost someone--or knows someone who has.

“It was born here,” island resident Bill Castello, 44, said of the World Trade Center. “It should lie to rest here.”

Macri, the musician, went further: “Let them make [the dump] a memorial. It would be fitting.”