Chandler's only landfill closer to becoming city park

by Kerry Fehr-Snyder - Jan. 23, 2009 10:15 AM
The Arizona Republic

Chandler's first and only landfill is getting closer to becoming the Valley's first municipal park reclaimed from a city dump.

The Paseo Vista Recreation Area at the northwest corner of McQueen and Ocotillo roads is starting to look less like a giant mound of mud and more like a rolling park, at least from the top.

Chandler has added 300,000 cubic yards of dirt to the top of the landfill as a cap on the decommissioned landfill, which was closed in 2005 after 24 years.

"That was a major accomplishment to get that much dirt moved to the site," said Don Tolle, park planning superintendent.

The park required so much extra dirt that the city had to close McQueen Road from Queen Creek to Appleby roads for a month late last year.

Workers added two feet of dirt to the towering, 40-foot-high mound, which locals jokingly call Mount Chandler or Mud Mountain.

"There needs to be a buffer between the landfill and the recreation amenities," Tolle said. "We don't want it (the landfill) settling to allow the trash that's in the landfill to come through."

The contractor is adding decomposed granite on the dirt and installing wire mesh baskets to control erosion. After that, they will lay a concrete border to the outside of the walking paths and build concrete roadways and parking lots at its summit.

"It's starting to take shape," Tolle said.

Seeing that from the road is virtually impossible as the site is ringed by a barbed-wire fence and much of the work is occurring on the top of the park.

Eventually, the contractor will create a dog park, a disc-golf course and an archery range.

The park is expected to be finished by August or September, Tolle said.

Converting closed landfills into city parks is common in other parts of the country, where open land is in short supply. Among the 250 old landfills that have been transformed from a dump to a park are Flushing Meadows in New York, home to the U.S. Open, and the site of an annual hot-air balloon festival in Albuquerque and an international kite festival in Berkeley, Calif.

The Paseo Vista Recreation Area sits on 2.2 million tons of compacted trash that will continue to decompose and shift imperceptibly, preventing workers from adding basketball courts or any other concrete surface on top.