It covers more than twenty thousand acres, taking up over ten percent of Staten Island’s total area. For nearly fifty years, all the household waste from all five boroughs of New York City was deposited at Fresh Kills. Back when I was in high school that was three hundred thousand tons a day. It’s the largest garbage dump on the planet, and one of only three man-made objects, along with the Egyptian Pyramids and the Great Wall of China, visible from outer space. The Dump, we call it. That’s how we do on Staten Island. Staten Island Rapid Transit System? It’s the Train. The Staten Island Ferry? It’s the Boat. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge? You got it, the Bridge. Imaginative bunch, Staten Islanders. I’m just as guilty. I didn’t go to Monsignor Farrell Catholic High School for Boys. I went to Farrell. C’mon. The rest of the boroughs? The Bronx has Yankee Stadium; Manhattan has Harlem, Wall Street, Central Park, and Madison Square Garden, among a thousand other things. Queens has Shea Stadium and two international airports.
