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Borough President James Oddo's Office has redesigned the Staten Island seal, top right, because he thinks the current flag, bottom right, looks too much like the former Fresh Kills Landfill, at left in 1993. (Advance composite)

CITY HALL -- Borough President James Oddo wants to dump Staten Island's flag for looking like the former Fresh Kills Landfill.

Staten Island doesn't technically have an official flag or emblem, but the borough is often represented by a banner flown locally for decades and a matching seal. It's also on display sometimes in City Hall.

"We always thought it, but we said it out loud: It looks like the Fresh Kills Landfill," Oddo said during an editorial board meeting with the Advance at Borough Hall recently. "The bird looks like a seagull, the mountain looks like a garbage pile."

Oddo's office has moved to replace the flag.

The unofficial banner has a white background with a seal featuring blue for the skyline, two white seagulls, green for the countryside and more white showing residential areas on the borough. The words "STATEN ISLAND" are in gold below the depiction, with wavy blue lines representing water around the borough. The scene is outlined in gold.

The two unofficial Staten Island seals.

Staten Island is also sometimes symbolized by an older seal featuring an allegoric female figure standing on the borough and looking out onto the Narrows, where Henry Hudson's ship "The Half Moon" and a smaller boat sail.

"We took it on as a design project to unify and redesign, refresh the seal," said Emil Micha, a senior adviser to the borough president. He and graphic designer Michelle Cocozza make up Borough Hall's design department.

Teaming up with an unpaid outside illustrator and the Historical Society at Historic Richmond Town, they came up with a new emblem that could adorn a flag representing the borough.

THE 'FRESH' SEAL

The new seal has the same elements as the older one, but updated in a four-tone sketched style.

The female figure is in yellow and represents the city, holding a sword pointed down and a green shield with two turtle doves, both symbols of peace.

She's looking out from Staten Island at a blue Narrows, which shows Hudson's ship and a boat with three figures harvesting oysters in green. One of them using wooden tongs, the others could represent a visiting Dutch sailor and a native Islander in a sign of cooperation. A starry green sky features a moon and two clouds in green and white.

Around this is "STATEN ISLAND" and "CITY of NEW YORK" in yellow on green with the year Hudson discovered the borough, 1609, and the year of consolidation, 1898.

"We're paying allegiance to the original imagery, the allegorical imagery, but now we're fresh, contemporary, professional looking," Micha said. "I think it's a perfect time to look at ourselves and realize that we're on a level with every other borough and we're competing in so many different ways -- culturally, commercially -- and so we want to look at ourselves and feel that pride."

THE UNOFFICIAL 'LANDFILL' FLAG

The Bronx and Brooklyn are the only boroughs with official flags right now.

Then-Councilman James Oddo speaks at City Hall in front of Staten Island's unofficial flag, far right, in 2013.

Former Assemblyman Robert Straniere shows off the unofficial Staten Island flag to students at PS 54 in 2001.

Earlier pushes by borough lawmakers to designate the "landfill" design fell flat in Albany during the 1990s and 2000s. Oddo doesn't know if they'll try to make the redesign official.

The "garbage pile" emblem that Borough Hall wants to replace is the result of a 1971 design contest held by then-Borough President Robert Connor. Brother Edward Donaher of the Society of St. Paul/Alba House in Meiers Corners, a graphic artist, won and is essentially the creator of the commonly-used unofficial flag.

Donaher said that he never considered that the landscape in his design might resemble the borough's notorious dump.

"Staten Island has the highest point on the eastern seaboard," Donaher said, noting he was somewhat surprised that his design was still being used for anything at all.

"It sounds good to me," Donaher said after the Advance described the new emblem. "I would like to see what they came up with."