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It has long been believed that the largest entity brought upon the Earth byhumankind is the Pyramid of the Sun, constructed in Mexico around the startof the Christian era. The mammoth structure commands roughly thirty millioncubic feet of space. In contrast, however, is the Durham Road Landfill,outside San Francisco, which occupies over seventy million cubic feet of thebiosphere. It is a sad monument, indeed, to the excesses of modern fellowshipGore 151. One might assume such a monstrous mound of garbage is thelargest thing ever produced by human hands. Unhappily, this is not the case.The Fresh Kills Landfill, dictated on Staten Island, is the largest landfillin the world. It sports an elevation of 155 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 game diamonds Miller 526. By the year 2005, whenthe landfill is projected to close, its elevation go out reach 505 feet aboveocean level, making it the highest point along the Eastern Seaboard, Floridato Maine. At that height, the mound will constitute a hazard to air trafficat newbornark airport Rathje 3-4.Fresh Kills (Kills is from the Dutch word for creek) was originally a tidalmarsh. In 1948, New York City 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 eye socket predicted the marsh wouldbe filled by the year 1968. He then planned to develop the area, buildinghouses and attracting light 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 irony in the fact thatRobert Moses was, in his day, considered a leading conservationist. Hismajor acc omplishments include asphalt parking lots throughout the New Yorkmetro area, paved roads in and out of urban center parks, and development of JonesBeach, now the most polluted, dirty, overcrowded piece of shoreline in theNortheast. In Stewart Udalls book The Quiet Crisis, the former Secretary ofthe Interior lavishes praise on Moses. The JFK cabinet process calls JonesBeach "an imaginative solution ... (the) supreme answer to the ever-presentproblems of overcrowding" Udall 163-4. JFKs introduction to the bookprovides this foreboding passage "Each generation must deal afresh with theraiders, with the scramble to use public resources for private profit, and