De-Mining Tomkins Cove transforms a defunct quarry into a site for soil reconstruction and remediation. This proposal draws from research into the geological history of the site, a landscape where human activity in the past century has cut into 460 million years of limestone strata. Responding to a proposed plan by the site’s owner to dump construction and demolition (C&D) waste into the quarry, I quantified and visualized that waste as new strata. This plan to turn the quarry first into a C&D dump and later into a green space raises environmental concerns and has been criticized by Riverkeeper as “a landfill masquerading as a park.
My project instead explores new ways of thinking about waste disposal by using materials such as C&D wood waste, waste soils, and gypsum to create new soil mixtures. Waste concretes and aggregates form new pathways around the site and retaining walls that hold back the soil. Different zones have been identified across the site to test different soil mixtures and remediation methods, such as using fungi and plants to filter toxins from the soil, and existing site infrastructure is adapted to move people and materials around the site.
