he city has lurched between hasty schemes to incinerate solid waste or export it. Now comes the idea of reopening Fresh Kills. Here's why it is ill advised.

• Landfilling is the worst environmental alternative. Fresh Kills, unlike modern landfills, has no protective liner under it, which is why it annually contaminated ground water and wetlands with 1.5 billion gallons of toxic runoff and emitted more than 15 billion cubic feet of greenhouse and carcinogenic gases. Reopening it would require multiple liners, water and air quality controls and numerous permits and environmental reviews. Increasing the dump's height atop slippery liners could make it unstable.

• Reduction of waste at the source, along with reuse, recycling and composting are the solutions favored by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and the city's official citizens' advisory boards. The city has pursued these ideas halfheartedly, continually cutting important programs. Ten years ago, the city came close to building its own recycling plants and was developing local markets for the materials. But it awarded the opportunity to sort and market recyclable items to multinational conglomerates. The city could save tens of millions of dollars with approaches like setting up buy-back centers for recyclables in low-income areas, leaving grass clippings on lawns and offering economic incentives to encourage recycling and reduction of garbage.

• Landfilling is a step backward. While the city wasted time and money on ill-conceived plans to export garbage, other cities achieved 50 percent recycling rates without breaking the bank. They collect and market recyclables efficiently. They buy products made of their recyclables. Cities like San Francisco compost food waste, which represents 15 percent of New York's garbage.

• New Yorkers want to recycle. Even though the Mayor has proposed ending the city's container recycling program, a recent poll by Channel 11 showed that 84 percent of New Yorkers want the program to continue.

• Staten Islanders pushed for the 1996 state law that mandated the closing of Fresh Kills, and they haven't changed their minds. Their feelings are understandable. For the city as a whole, instead of resorting to failed policies of the past, we should create a forward-looking system that is under our own control.

Marjorie Clarke is scientist in residence at Lehman College, the author of many articles on waste management and vice chairwoman of the Citywide Recycling Advisory Board.