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It has long been believed that the largest entity brought upon the Earth by adult male is the Pyramid of the Sun, constructed in Mexico around the startof the Christian era. The mammoth construction commands nearly thirty million cubelike feet of space. In contrast, however, is the Durham course Landfill,outside San Francisco, which occupies over seventy million cubic feet of thebiosphere. It is a drab monument, indeed, to the excesses of modern societyGore 151. One might assume such a monstrous mound of garbage is thelargest thing ever produced by tender hands. Unhappily, this is not the case.The Fresh Kills Landfill, located on Staten Island, is the largest landfillin the world. It sports an elevation of one hundred fifty-five feet, an estimated mass of 100million tons, and a volume of 2.9 billion cubic feet. In total acreage, itis equal to 16,000 baseball diamonds Miller 526. By the year 2005, whenthe landfill is communicate to close, its elevation will reach 505 feet above sea level, making it the highest power point along the Eastern Seaboard, Floridato Maine. At that height, the mound will constitute a hazard to air trafficat Newark airport Rathje 3-4.Fresh Kills (Kills is from the Dutch word for creek) was originally a tidalmarsh. In 1948, New York metropolis planner Robert Moses developed a highlypraised project to deposit municipal garbage in the swamp until the level ofthe land was above sea level. A study of the area predicted the marsh wouldbe filled by the year 1968. He then planned to develop the area, buildinghouses and attracting wanton industry. Mayor Impelliteri issued a reporttitled "The Fresh Kills Landfill Project" in 1951. The report stated, inpart, that the enterprise "cannot fail to affect constructively a wide areaaround it." The report ended by stating, "It is at once practical andidealistic" Rathje 4. One must appreciate the caustic remark in the fact thatRobert Moses was, in his day, considered a lead ing conservationist. Hismajor accomplishments entangle asphalt parking lots throughout the New Yorkmetro area, pave roads in and out of city parks, and development of JonesBeach, now the close polluted, dirty, overcrowded piece of shoreline in theNortheast. In Stewart Udalls book The Quiet Crisis, the former secretaire ofthe Interior lavishes praise on Moses. The JFK cabinet member calls JonesBeach "an visionary solution ... (the) supreme answer to the ever-presentproblems of overcrowding" Udall 163-4. JFKs introduction to the bookprovides this expectancy passage "Each generation must deal anew with theraiders, with the spit out to use public resources for private profit, and