MOUNT TRASHMORE: THE (BIGGER) SEQUEL

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 3, 1993                   TAG: 9301030133
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-4   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                                LENGTH: Medium
MOUNT TRASHMORE: THE (BIGGER) SEQUEL
Mount Trashmore, a city park atop a landfill, was an urban planning success that brought Virginia Beach considerable national attention.
Now Virginia Beach is beginning work on a sequel using the city's current landfill. Mount Trashmore II will be far larger than the original and hold an estimated 11 million tons of garbage.
Virginia Beach again is gathering a huge mountain of garbage and recycling it into a park, just as it did by creating Mount Trashmore along the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway 20 years ago.
Mount Trashmore is 68 feet high and holds about 650,000 tons of garbage. It was built after the city closed its old landfill and as officials were looking for ways to rehabilitate the land.
But this time planners aren't waiting for the city landfill to close before they start building the new park near the Chesapeake city line.
The plans mean that the first phase of Mount Trashmore II Park won't actually have a mound of trash beneath it. Instead, when the park opens in 1994 or 1995, visitors will see a fairly ordinary layout of playing fields, picnic shelters and playground equipment on 48 acres dotted with trees and marches.
The current landfill is expected to close in 2015. Until then, the city park and the landfill will coexist. The landfill will slowly expand to encompass the park. When complete, the park will be 325 acres.
At first, the only hint of the park's unusual next-door neighbor will be some gulls, city planners say. The birds feed on garbage.
Landfill operators say there will be little odor, because the landfill will stop processing household garbage this year. After that, the landfill will be used only for discarded furniture, construction materials and other debris.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB