The City began landfill operations on Tallapoosa Point in Pelham Bay Park in 1963. Plans to expand the landfills in Pelham Bay Park in 1966, which would have created the City's second-largest refuse disposal site next to Fresh Kills in Staten Island, were met with widespread community opposition. The landfill expansion was seen as a way to alleviate the city's accumulations of waste, and Tallapoosa was seen as the only suitable location to put the landfill. The preservation effort was headed by Dr. Theodore Kazimiroff, a Bronx historian and head of the Bronx Historical Society. It suffered setbacks in August 1967 when the New York City Board of Estimate voted against an initial effort to create to protected area in the proposed landfill expansion site. However, the state and federal governments did not favor the landfill being located at Tallapoosa. On October 11, 1967, Mayor John Lindsay signed a law authorizing in the creation of two wildlife refuges, the Thomas Pell Wildlife Sanctuary and the Hunter Island Marine Zoology and Geology Sanctuary, on the site where the landfill was planned to be expanded. Tallapoosa West continued to be used as a landfill until May 1968, when the landfill permit was revoked. In November of that year, Tallapoosa West was made a part of the Pell refuge. The dump was still operating as late as 1975, when the garbage there was described as being ten stories high. The landfill closed in 1978. However, a report published in 1983 claimed that the Tallapoosa landfill, as well as five others throughout the city, was heavily contaminated with "toxic wastes" dumped from 1964 to 1979. The waste from the landfill reportedly led to health problems for residents of nearby communities such as Country Club. The Tallapoosa landfill at Pelham Bay Park was designated a hazardous-waste site in 1988, and cleanup began in 1989.