It is fascinating to read the opening paragraphs of Jon Jeter’s 2001 article on Johannesburg confronting an unprecedented environmental crisis as tons of refuse bloated landfills and clogged streets.
He writes: “Come nightfall, downtown Johannesburg is overrun with garbage, coating the pavement with a greasy paste. Buffeted by the wind, empty cartons, crumpled paper, bottles, and cans roam the streets like herds of wild animals, and the end of a bustling workday leaves alleyways and corners cluttered with mountains of overflowing trash bags.
Mavis Landu’s Sisyphean task is to clean these filthy streets. In the darkness, she pushes her broom with an Olympian’s stroke, fast and furious.”
Jeter’s poetic prose stands in sharp contrast to the smelly issue under his verbal microscope.
Much has improved in Johannesburg since then as it has Israel’s major metropolis, Tel Aviv, which too had such problems in dealing with trash.
Nothing more graphically reveals Tel Aviv’s journey than “Mt. Hiriya” on the city’s outskirts, which from been transformed from a smelly giant eyesore into a popular tourist attraction.
Garbage Goes Green
Once a massive blight on the landscape on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, the Hiriya garbage dump has been transformed into a national treasure. Israel has joined the front pack of nations with the environment high on its agenda.
Rising over the flat landscape east of Tel Aviv, a hulking mountain of accumulated garbage – over half a century’s worth – is being transformed into a vast mega-ecological public park. The transformation could not be more spectacular.
Once a grim monument to environmental neglect, the stench from the dump carried for miles. Kids in cars passing by would joke:
“Hold your nose.”
Transforming Landscapes. Mt. Hiriya with Tel Aviv to the west.
Apart from posing a serious health hazard, the dump presented another more terrifying danger. Attracting birds in their thousands looking for scraps of food, they hovered in the direct flight path of Ben-Gurion Airport. It was an accident waiting to happen.
Now the Hiriya dump, closed some fifteen years after operating since 1952, is the centerpiece of a project described as “one of the worlds most dramatic eco-friendly initiatives.”
The 8000 dunams or 2000-acre Ariel Sharon Park will be two-and a half times the size of New York’s Central Park. Originally named the Ayalon Park – the Ayalon River runs through it – it has since been renamed to honor the former Prime Minister who was such a powerful force in supporting the project. It will encompass Hiriya, the Mikveh Yisrael agricultural school, the existing Darom Park and local farmland. A large part of the area is to be transformed into a valley that will serve as a reservoir, and feature greenhouses and orchids, environmental education centers, a zoo, sports facilities, hiking and cycling paths and picnic areas. The project is a “true indicator of Israel’s efforts to put itself on a par with some of the most environmentally conscious countries in the world,” said Danny Sternberg, the CEO of the government company managing the project. “From being Tel Aviv’s ugly backyard that people either flew over or drove past, Hiriya will emerge as Israel’s front door attracting millions of visitors both local and from abroad.”
“Metropolitan parks elsewhere in the world of this magnitude have not been built in a hundred years,” says Sternberg. This mammoth venture which will take many years to complete and is part of a broader battle in Israel to save rapidly vanishing open areas from development. It is a pressing issue in a small country smaller than South Africa’s Kruger National Park and reflects the concerns of a new generation of Israelis sensitive to the protection of the environment.
Eyesore to Cultural Icon
Artist’s impression of the Sharon Park when complete with Mt Hiriya in the background.
Rehabilitating the Hiriya dump was the brainchild of Dr. Martin Weyl, a former director of the Israel Museum, who in 1999 organized an exhibition of proposals by twenty renowned artists and architects. The exhibit, shown at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, was sponsored by the philanthropic Beracha Foundation, which Weyl heads. “As a citizen, I was always concerned by this ecological eyesore so centrally situated, which I felt dishonored our country,” said Weyl. “I believed we could change the symbolism of the place and turn it into a cultural icon.”
Hiriya stood out as a giant relic of the past; a testimony to the early priorities of nation building. “Israel was built quickly. Our founders and pioneers had to rapidly create facts on the ground absorbing mass immigration and building an economy. The natural environment was hardly at that time a high priority,” said Tzipi Iser-Itkik, CEO, Adam Teva Vadim – The Israeli Association for the Protection of the Environment and a board member of the park company. “We are now correcting the mistakes of the past. This place is an example of modern Zionism, developing Israel in a sustainable way.”
Weyl, described by his collogues as “a visionary”, adds that “Mount Hiriya will emerge iconic in another fundamental way.” If birds had been preying on the dump for decades, since its closure, the unused site had attracted a new species of predator – the property developer!
The Battle of the Bulge
The real estate developers were determined as were some local municipalities “to have their piece of the pie; for them it was business,” says Weyl. They were less sensitive to the unique value of the area as described by Sternberg as “the last green lung in a very densely populated area.”
At the other end of the battlefield, says Weyl “were the environmental organizations in Israel, who felt that if this battle could be won, it will create a momentum and other environmental battles would also be won. Much depended on our success. It would set a new direction for the future.”
The Man Who Made It Happen. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the top of Mt. Hiriya.
Fortunately for ‘that future’, the battalions of developers and their lawyers were up against the formidable then Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon who backed the project to the hilt. Today, the government is a co-sponsor of the Park with the Beracha Foundation. It was no wonder that the park was re-named honoring the former Prime Minister.
In 2005, the Sharon government approved the creation of the park and in the same year an international landscape planning competition was held for rehabilitating the garbage mountain. The winning entry was drawn by Peter Latz, a German landscape architect, who envisioned the 120-acre mountain covered with trees, grass and walking paths. Conversion of the mountain and surrounding area into parkland is being done in stages, using strategies of sustainable development.
There will also be a 50,000-seat amphitheater in the northern section of the park. According to Sternberg, “It’s an opportunity to plan from scratch a large open-air theater with an entire infrastructure. Promoters will be able to charge less for tickets, because they won’t need to set up the stage and barriers and lay all the cables each time.”
To facilitate environmentally responsible transportation to the amphitheater, a train station is to be built nearby. Although there will be a large parking facility to accommodate thousands of vehicles, the hope is that in keeping with the ethos of the park, people going to performances in the amphitheater will choose public transportation.
A Park for All Seasons
There will be nothing idle and passive about this park. Apart from looking good, it will have a job to do. The basin of the Ayalon River which runs through the park from east to west extends from the slopes of Jerusalem to the Shomron. Consequently, in winter when the water level rises dramatically, one of the Park’s more important roles will be to manage the river basin and potential flooding.
Its water system will be influenced by changes within the cycle of nature – from the sparse water level in the summer months to the drastic floods during the winter months that occurs every couple of years. Groves, lakes, and rivers – the Ayalon and Shappirim – will be used for irrigating the area and will create wild fields with varieties of plants, trees, and lush wild vegetation. Self-sustaining, the park’s wild life will live off the vegetation.
Danger No More. Birds flocking at the old Hiriya waste dump.
While some of Hiriya’s exposed slopes are dry in some places, other areas will be capable of nurturing fields of abundant wild bush and flowers with varieties of wild life. In the more wet areas of Hiriya, which include the look-out point, the seasonal pools, the swamps and rivers, various other species will thrive, creating their own space in the eco-system.
Already there is a reversal of environmental damage. On the Park’s website they proudly reveal where “Once garbage trucks arrived daily carrying thousands of tons of garbage for burial in the ground without any sanitary measures, today, waste is brought to the site at Hiriya where it is sorted and recycled.” And where once “garbage used to fester and rot causing environmental damage, today the methane gases emitted from Hiriya are harnessed and converted into energy that will be used for building and maintaining the Park.”
No less satisfying has been the public enthusiasm to embrace this project. Where once “Hiriya was an abandoned lot attended only by staff workers, today, thousands of visitors from Israel and abroad, including school children and youth, have started to return visiting Hiriya for leisure, sport and education.”
“Let there be Light”
Educating Future Generations. Schoolkids at Mt. Hiriya learning about recycling.
Like any project involving social change, success is dependent upon education. Wehl is determined that the Park will not be a ‘cover up’. “Sure, it’s going to look green and beautiful, but for the generations to come, people must know what lurked beneath the surface and understand the true narrative of their ‘Beautiful Park’.” And so, at the Visitor’s Center, people will learn about the Park’s history and its many facets, including Hiriya (the former garbage dump) and its innovative recycling center. The two primary target groups will be:
– adults interested in duplicating the Park’s recycling methods
– the youth, who will carry the Park’s values into the future.
At night, Hiriya is illuminated by 80 rays of light. The electricity is provided by alternate energy derived of recycled household waste generated by a recycling plant. So instead of as in the past of commuters along the nearby major highways purposely looking away, they can now enjoy a spectacular view of a brightly illuminated ‘Mt. Hiriya’. This park, whose high dump in the past was a ‘monument to neglect’, will in the future, be a beacon for conservation.
City on the Move. Lookout at the top of Tel Aviv’s Mt. Hiriya
Like Jon Jeter, Weyl too becomes quite poetic in describing Mt. Heria. “Its shape and size conjures up an image of a tel,” the pre-historic settlement mounds characteristic of the flatter lands in many parts of Israel. Places like Megiddo, Hazor and Beersheba resonate with tels that contain the remains of cities with biblical connections. “Hiriya has no such illustrious history, but in years to come it too will enjoy a proud legacy as a defining epoch in reshaping our future.”
Switched On
At the ceremony when the lights were officially turned on, Park board member Tzipi Iser-Itkik, said:
“This is a festive day for the State of Israel in general and especially for environmentalists. We are illuminating too the victory of civil society, which has proven that through public debate, attempts to undermine our values and harm our landscape and heritage can be overcome. This park has begun a process that will continue for years to come.”
Gaping in awe at the changing face of Mt. Hiriya and imagining the green parkland slowly but assuredly taking shape, one is reminded of the passage in Shakespeare’s ‘As you Like it’ (Act II, Scene I):
“And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
Illuminating. Mt. Hiriya lit up at night.
