Carleton Farms Landfill
Over the past decade, we have witnessed an unprecedented re-organization of the municipal solid waste industry in the Mid-Atlantic Region as a result of the closure of the world’s largest landfill, Fresh Kills Landfill in New York City, and from the tightening of environmental controls by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. While the number of landfills has actually decreased throughout the United States and Canada, the rate of landfilling has dramatically increased during the past 10 years, resulting in the creation of megasize landfills whose operations are essentially aimed at achieving greater economies of scale. At the centre of this extraordinary trans-formation is the State of Michigan, the third largest importer of trash in the U.S. (next to Pennsylvania and Virginia) and home to the two largest waste disposal sites in the Great Lakes Region, the Carleton Farms and Pine Tree Acres Landfills. Heightened by the cross-border movements of solid waste between Canada and the United States, the shier magnitude of their operations is staggering. Receiving approximately one trailer truck every three minutes, these two landfills alone will cover an equivalent area of two square miles under a 300-foot mountain of garbage by 2025. With a specific focus on the geo-economic relationship that currently exists between the State of Michigan and the Province of Ontario, this project examines the effects of the growing centralization of the landfilling industry in the Great Lakes Region to propose a series of contemporary landscape strategies for the immediate diversion of waste and the reclamation of landfills as future public spaces. The end goal targets the decentralization of the solid waste industry in the future through the ecological recovery of waste materials and the creation of new economic synergies for the twenty first century.
Project Description: Operative Earthworks & Post-Closure Reclamation
Site Location: 1 square mile site located in Sumpter Township (South East Michigan)
Client/Agency: Republic Services Inc.
Date: 2005-2006