In 1998, Israel closed the Hiriya landfill after decades of waste had formed a 60-metre mound; years later, methane wells, trees and trails helped transform the site into the centrepiece of a 2,000-acre park

In August 1998, Israel closed the Hiriya landfill after almost five decades of receiving waste from the Dan Region. By then, the site had grown into a garbage hill of roughly 60 metres high. This huge landfill footprint accounted for an estimated 25 million tons of accumulated waste, a figure supported by a 2006 peer-reviewed study that calculated the physical volume of the buried material at approximately 16 million cubic metres. The landfill’s closure, however, did not remove the mountain; instead, it began a long process of engineering, gas management and landscape rehabilitation that eventually led to the former dump becoming the centrepiece of Ariel Sharon Park, a planned metropolitan park covering about 2,000 acres.

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