Dump to be turned into Ariel Sharon recycling park

Archiv – From the top of the reeking Hiriya landfill one can spot the Tel Aviv hospital where former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon lies crippled by a devastating stroke.Israel | From the top of the reeking Hiriya landfill one can spot the Tel Aviv hospital where former Israeli leader Ariel Sharon lies crippled by a devastating stroke. Recently, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Shimon Peres, Sharon’s sons Omri and Gilad and hundreds of other officials and friends gathered at the monumental eyesore to dedicate the Ariel Sharon Park.
’This is the first time in history that a prime minister and president of a sovereign nation are hosting a top a garbage dump,’ says Martin Weyl, who was a main force in turning the dump, which will account for 10% of the park, into a recreational site.
There was a method to the seeming madness. Sharon, known worldwide as a hawkish general turned would-be peacemaker, had a strong, but lesser-known connection to the land. Born on a farm, he came to own the largest private ranch in all of Israel. And he played an instrumental role in blocking developers who had sought to build apartment buildings on the 2,000-acre site that now bears his name. Under his premiership, and with his personal intervention, the Israeli government approved the US$250 million project in 2005. Sharon suffered a massive stroke in January 2006 and has been in a coma ever since.
The landfill, which served as a dumping ground for the Tel Aviv region for 46 years, grew into a yard high pile of waste that attracted huge flocks of scavenging birds that would get caught in the engines of planes flying in and out of Israel’s nearby international airport. Travelers on some of Israel’s busiest highways could see it – and smell it – until authorities decided to do something about the colossal, seething mass of waste and greenhouse gases.
They shut it down in 1998, and decided to transform it into a model of environmental rectitude, complete with recycling plants and a theme park on recycling. New waste is being transferred to the Negev desert in Israel’s south, and 63 wells have been dug into the hill to suck out 1 million cubic feet of gases a day, most of it methane and carbon dioxide, says Danny Sternberg, the park’s Director.
The gases are being transferred to power a nearby textile plant, Sternberg says. The plan is to cap the landfill with plastic, but the mound will remain as an icon, he said. The park, which project officials say will be 2 1/2 times the size of New York’s Central Park, will take 10 to 20 more years to complete. But parts are already open to the public, offering walking and biking paths along the Ayalon River, with a vantage point of the Mediterranean coast.