"D.U.M.P.": U.VA. LANDSCAPE STUDENTS TO OFFER VISIONS FOR 
IVY LANDFILL DEC. 17

        CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Dec. 10 -- With the growing
environmental problems presented by landfills, a University of
Virginia graduate landscape architecture class has spent this semester
focusing not on such traditional subjects as gardens, parks or yards
but on ways to find a positive future for how we deal with trash.
Using as their main text the Charlottesville/Albemarle area's troubled
Ivy Landfill, which will close to new garbage-dumping after this year,
the students tackled concerns that have been a topic of public debate
around the country.
        The class, "D.U.M.P." (Design Understanding Many Perspectives),
taught by assistant professor Julie Bargmann, will present the students'
ideas for what could transform the landfill at 5 p.m. Dec. 17, in room 158,
Campbell Hall.  Residents of the Ivy community, representatives of the
Rivanna Solid Waste Authority and local officials have been invited to
attend.  [Reporters are welcome.] Models and drawings of the students' work
will be on display in the second floor lobby.  A reception will follow the
presentation.
	"Ultimately, the students think there should be no such things
as landfills," said Bargmann.  "They are challenging the whole notion
of waste from the get-go." 
	Landfills are smelly and unsightly and leak toxic runoff into
the soil and groundwater.  With the mounting hills of trash and with
some states even trucking their garbage to landfills in other states,
Bargmann's class has tried to come up with solutions to an
ever-growing problem. 
	The "DUMPsters," as the students are affectionately known,
dealt with the past, present and future of the Ivy site.  Their
proposals offer ways to reclaim the site through variousinfrastructures
and then suggest a wide range of future activities, some looking out as
far as 50 to 60 years.  It will take at least 30 years for the site to
be fully "clean," Bargmann said.
	The students' proposals look at ways to put systems in place
so that the site can decompose and the landscape be designed to meet
the needs of the community.  In arriving at them, the students have
come to see that only a small percentage of trash needs to be placed
in landfills, she said.  They challenge the notion of the "giant
baggie"-in-the-ground approach which leaves landfills leaking toxic
leachate and methane gases. 
	According to Bargmann, it is vitally important for students to
look at these industrial landscapes.  The students are studying how
the process of treating the hills of waste and by products can be seen
as an opportunity for industrial landscape reclamation and
environmental education.  It is a mission of U.Va.'s School of
Architecture to deal with real local issues and explore solutions to
current and complex questions in the community.
	The class spent the first five weeks of the studio on an
intense introduction to landfills and waste management.  Along with
visits to the project site they met with local consultants and
representatives of the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, the County Board
of Supervisors and the Ivy Steering Committee.  They viewed the site
from the neighbors' properties, climbed up and down mountains of trash
and visited other area garbage and re-cycling operations.
	They also traveled to the Richmond area to see another
county-operated facility and a privately-run landfill.  Three full
days in New Jersey and New York included a tour of the reclaimed
landfills and operating facilities at the Hackensack Meadowlands, the
enormous scale of operations at the Manhattan 59th Street Transfer
Station, and at Fresh Kills landfill.
	Amidst this onslaught of complicated information and complex
issues, the students formulated their suggestions for the future of
the Ivy Landfill.  Exposed to multiple perspectives, changing
regulations and emerging technologies, students struggled with their
own points of view and their role as designers, said Bargmann. 
	One student proposal calls for an infrastructure to deal with
the toxic waste now and later develops the site as a sewage treatment
facility to serve the growing Ivy community.  The ultimate use would
be a fairground for the community.  
	Another student proposal looks at mining the site to produce
soil after an extensive system reclaims the site through energy
conversion.  Other student ideas are equally innovative.
 	"We hope that we will raise questions to help frame the
primary issues and open up the possibilities for the future of this
landfill site and perhaps others," said Bargmann.  The projects are
works-in-progress to provide some constructive ideas aimed at finding
some "inclusive, visionary and 'right' way to proceed," she said.
	The D.U.M.P. Studio Web site is
http://cti.itc.virginia.edu/~arc-dump/.  
                                ###
                                                        Dec. 9, 1997
	For more information, contact Jane Ford at U.Va. News
Services, (804) 924-4298, mvf3m@virginia.edu.  Julie Bargmann can be
reached at (804) 924-6465 or julieb@virginia.edu. Television news
reporters, contact our TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.  Information
about what's happening at the University of Virginia is available at
U.Va.'s Top News site: http://www.virginia.edu/topnews/.