It has long been believed that the largest entity brought to Earth by humanity was the Pyramid of the Sun, built in Mexico at the beginning of the Christian era. The gigantic structure dominates nearly thirty million cubic feet of space. In contrast, however, there is the Durham Road landfill outside San Francisco, which occupies over seventy million cubic feet of biosphere. It is in fact a sad monument to the excesses of modern society[Gore 151]. One might assume that such a monstrous pile of rubbish is the largest thing ever produced by human hands. Unfortunately this is not the case. The Fresh Kills Landfill, located on Staten Island, is the largest landfill in the world. It has an altitude of 155 feet, an estimated mass of 100 million tons, and a volume of 2.9 billion cubic feet. The total surface area is equivalent to 16,000 baseball diamonds [Miller 526]. By 2005, when the landfill is expected to close, its height will reach 505 feet above sea level, becoming the highest point along the East Coast from Florida to Maine. At that height, the mound will pose a hazard to air traffic at Newark Airport [Rathje 3-4]. Fresh Kills (Kills comes from the Dutch word for stream) was originally a tidal marsh. In 1948, New York city planner Robert Moses developed a highly regarded plan to deposit municipal waste in the swamp until the ground level was above sea level. A study of the area predicted that the swamp would be filled in by 1968. He then planned to develop the area, building homes and attracting light industry. Mayor Impelliteri released a report in 1951 entitled "The Fresh Kills Landfill Project." The report stated, in part, that the venture "cannot fail to constructively impact a large surrounding area." The report concluded by stating, “It is both practical and idealistic” [Rathje 4]. One must appreciate the irony in the fact that Robert Moses was, in his day, considered a prominent environmentalist. His major successes include asphalt parking lots throughout the New York metropolitan area, asphalt roads in and out of city parks, and the development of JonesBeach, now the most polluted, dirtiest, and most overcrowded stretch of coast in the Northeast. In Stewart Udall's book The Quiet Crisis, the former Home Secretary praises Moses. JFK's cabinet member calls JonesBeach "an imaginative solution... (the) supreme answer to the ever-present problems of overcrowding" [Udall 163-4]. JFK's introduction to the book provides this disturbing passage: "Each generation must again face the marauders, with the rush to use public resources for private profit, and