Whose bright idea was it to take everything to a landfill, anyway?
Yeah, dunno. I think it was a all hands on deck situation, ad hoc and that was the best ‘place’. Some of it, I thought went to China, inc.
I'm not sure if you have ever been to lower Manhattan, but there's not really anyplace to store such volume of debris. And, the debris had to be removed to look for survivors/victims. Given the traffic on the island, it was apparently more logistically feasible to load the debris onto barges, and move it to the landfill in question.