A Trash-To-Park Story

"The Hackensack Meadowlands, once among the nation's best known trash heaps and a mosquito-infested symbol of environmental degradation, is poised to become something that once would have seemed unimaginable: a watery ecological preserve that would become the region's largest urban park.Three months after developers agreed to abandon plans for a shopping center in the heart of the tidal basin that stretches for miles in either direction here, an unlikely coalition of business executives, environmental advocates and mayors has tentatively agreed to back a plan that would turn 8,400 acres of swamp, sewage and orphaned landfills into a sprawling green space 10 times the size of Central Park."