Evaluation of Waste Compressibility Due to Preloading at the Fresh Kills Landfill

The former Fresh Kills Landfill located on Staten Island, New York is being re-developed as a recreational park. As part of this re-development project, new roadways are to be constructed over historic landfilling areas. This paper presents an evaluation of waste compression at the Fresh Kills site due to preloading on proposed roadway foundation materials, which include historic layers of waste dating from mid 1960s to the late 1990s. Settlement data were collected from an approximately 6.1 m high pre-loading embankment constructed for ground improvement purposes. Prior to pre-loading embankment construction, waste compression underneath the embankment was evaluated using a range of waste compressibility properties inferred from observations of surface settlement obtained from annual historic topographic surveys of the site carried out between 1994 and 2007. Predicted settlement underneath the embankment, using different waste compressibility properties, ranged from 0.15 to 1.83 m. Initial measurements show up to 0.5 m of settlement has occurred during the initial six weeks following completion of the embankment. A comparison between measured and predicted settlements from the embankment loading is presented and conclusions are drawn regarding waste compression properties at the Fresh Kills Landfill.