Calif. Garbage Dump
Ripe With History
Earlier this year, we had fun with the Golden State's power problems, when they learned the hard way that if you don't want to sully your landscape with ugly power plants, you'd best stock up on batteries.
Then came Gary Condit's heart-wrenching confession before Connie Chung, God and all decent people that he had, indeed, been married 34 years.
And now, California can lay claim to (drumroll, please!) ...
... America's first Official National Historic Garbage Dump.
Let's go to the wire:
"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- " ... The United States Interior Department designated the Fresno Sanitary Landfill in California a National Historic Landmark on Monday [Aug. 27], adding it to a list of 2,350 distinctive and historic sites ranging from Boston's Fanueil Hall to Chicago's Wrigley Field ...
... "One of 15 sites named historic landmarks by Interior Secretary Gale Norton Monday, the Fresno landfill operated from 1937 to the late 1980s. The landfill passed the sniff test with Interior officials, archaeologists and local preservationists for its 'national significance in American history and culture,' according to an Interior Department press release.
"No mere monument to waste, the Fresno site is singled out for pioneering sanitary landfill designs still followed today.
"'It is the first landfill to employ the trench method of disposal, and the first to utilize compaction. At the Fresno site, the layering of refuse and dirt in trenches to minimize rodent and debris problems' was the first of its kind, the Interior Department said."
Well.
It's nice to see that this historic repository of a half-century's worth of Californians' coffee grounds, melon rinds, and outdated sushi will be forever protected from unsympathetic and inappropriate commercial development.
And a hard-won battle it was, pitting preservationists motivated by the almost palpable scent of history at the Fresno landfill against real-estate moguls interested only in erecting yet more strip malls and cookie-cutter tract houses atop the steaming, reeking mound.
"Who can even guess at what treasures this place holds," said one preservationist spokesman, who would only identify himself with an Internet screen name of "GrnLantrn4312."
"My mom tossed out all my comic books before I moved back home from college," he said. "And I know they're in there somewhere.
"This site needs to be preserved and professionally excavated -- who knows how many Silver Surfers and X-men are entombed here?" he said, reverently. "Not to mention my complete Howard the Duck collection!"
"Yeah, dude, this place is, like, sacred," added a balding-but-ponytailed man in a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt. He held up a "Wake of the Flood" 8-track cassette he said had bubbled up right at his feet from a fissure in the landfill's clay cap. "It was, like, a message from Jerry himself. Awesome."
On the other side of the debate, developer Snavely Sharkskin bemoaned the loss of potentially lucrative income-generating real estate. "It's a dump," Sharkskin, who claimed he had optioned a tract at the Fresno landfill to a national fried-chicken franchise. "I mean, it's a REAL dump -- as in, you're already here, no Dumpster permits, no cartage contracts. You finish eating, you just toss the bones over your shoulder. Kinda like a medieval thing goin' on -- because IT'S A FREAKIN' DUMP!"
The Fresno landfill now joins an august fellowship of National Historic Landmarks, including Lincoln's Tomb in Springfield, Ill. and the Library of Congress and Blair House in Washington, D.C. -- as well as a somewhat less-distinguished company of abandoned chemical plants and hazardous waste dumps on the federal Superfund cleanup list, because the plot is, of course, contaminated by a 50-year-old soup of toxic and hazardous refuse.
And so, history is made in a methane-seeping California garbage dump.
It's enough to bring a tear to anyone's eyes.
One way or another.
(URGENT UPDATE!! Apparently, the Interior Department has no appreciation for the ironic: One day after celebrating the Fresno landfill as a National Historic Landmark, they revoked the designation, because of the site's Superfund "scarlet letter." Undaunted, local preservationists are appealing the decision, urging the department to return their ripe-with-history city dump to its honored landmark status.)
