"There is this poetic idea that there is something dead, and through this process it becomes alive again." - Mel Chin

site type Former dump site of sewage

project name “Revival Fields”

location Pig's Eye: landfill in St Paul, Minnesota, near the Walker Art Center

year 1990-1993

client Joint Art/Science Project

designers/researchers Artist : Mel Chin Botanist: Rufus Chaney

the problem Toxic levels of cadmium and zinc in the soil

the solution Mel Chin was inspired to find a way to combine art and science to bring a “dead” site back to life with Phytoremediation This site was contaminated with the waste from incinerated sewage sludge containing cadmium and zinc until the 1970s. Chin designed and built a site which he hoped would eventually be seen. With research assistance from Rufus Chaney Chin planted maize, Merlin red fescue, bladder campion, alpine pennycress and lettuce to reduce the toxic levels of cadmium and zinc.

At the time of the construction it was actually illegal for anyone to be on the site because the toxin levels were so high. For three years the project team dug up and replanted the plants hoping to diminish the toxic levels. The plants were analyzed for metal content stored in the cellular structure. “Chaney calculated that pennycress could absorb the metal at an annual rate of 125 kilograms per hectare if the soil was acidified to a pH of 5 or 6. So a typical contaminated site might take 16 years to clean. Chaney believes that with the right strain of pennycress, or some genetic tinkering, this could be reduced to four years.” (New Scientist, 1997, home.earthlink.net/~adamsamy/PDFs/Thousand_flowers.pdf

The success of this site led to a second project in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, on a site heavily contaminated by similar pollutants from a zinc smelting plant. Chin designed a fan-shaped garden which he let grow for three full years. Chin found that uptake and absorption of zinc and cadmium actually increased during each successional year that the plant grew.