Human Impact
Before European settlement, the area consisted of several diverse eco-systems based on fresh-, brackish-, and saltwater environments. Large areas were covered by forests. Considered by residents of the area through the centuries as "wastelands," the Meadowlands were systematically subject to various kinds of human intervention. The four major categories are:
- Extraction of natural resources (including fish and game). Farmers also harvested salt hay for feed. Over time, the resources were either depleted or contaminated by pollution.
- Alteration of water flow
- Reclamation, land making, and development. In addition to landfill from garbage, landmass generated from dredging was also used to create new land. Many material from the landfill came from the World Trade Center.
- Pollution by sewage, refuse, and hazardous waste: various types of waste have been dumped legally and illegally in the Meadowlands. During World War II, refuse generated by the military during the war was dumped in the Meadowlands, including rubble from London created by the Battle of Britain used as ballast in returning ships. After the war, the Meadowlands continued to be used for civilian waste disposal, as the marshes were seen simply as wastelands that were not good for anything else. The opening of the New Jersey Turnpike in January 1952 only amplified the continuing environmental decline of the Meadowlands, as both spurs of the Turnpike travel through the region from the Passaic River to just past North Bergen.
The Meadowlands Sports Complex with stadia and a race track is also in the Meadowlands.
Read more about this topic: New Jersey Meadowlands
Famous quotes containing the words human and/or impact:
“I believe that a man is converted when first he hears the low, vast murmur of life, of human life, troubling his hitherto unconscious self.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)