The Meadowlands

What colonists saw in the New Jersey Meadowlands was a troublesome obstacle. Later it was seen as a mosquito-infested wasteland, a hole that needed filling. For decades it suffered neglect. 

They dammed the Hackensack River at Oradell in 1923 to create a reservoir and supply drinking water.  With less fresh water diluting the tidal estuary below, the downstream ecosystem became more brackish. More injustices followed. The Meadows were ditched, diked, and cut up with railroads and highways and fill. There were no conservationists crying foul. No wetland biologists helping to defend it. Deemed essentially worthless as they were, the towns and landowners set out to "reclaim" the Meadows. The hillsides crept outward with illegal fill. But with bedrock far below, the marshy soils capped by debris was unstable and unsuitable for anything but the simplest of structures. So the towns leased them as garbage dumps. By 1970, the Meadows had become the central dumping ground for New York City and northern New Jersey. Thousands of trucks were coming every day, packed with garbage, disgorging their loads into the marshlands.

In 1969, the state legislature established the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission with a mandate to "protect the delicate balance of nature." 

In time, the work of the Commission stopped the landfills from expanding their footprints, and so the garbage got stacked in layers. Almost at once, the garbage problem, once hidden, became ever more visible. Questions were raised. "How much garbage are we talking about, really?" 

Giants Stadium was new then, and to many, was a shining example of what was possible in this wasteland. Suddenly the Meadows were looked on as something worth saving. But how to stop the scourge of garbage blighting the landscape? How do we tell the story? Inspiration struck. Someone did some math. 

"The garbage coming into the Meadows fills Giants Stadium to the brim in just six weeks."

That got some attention. 

The last dump in the Meadowlands basin, the Keegan landfill in Kearny, closed in 2019.