All At Sea Over Attempt At Rubbish Disposal

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday July 20, 2002

SOURCE: The Guardian

A shipload of unwanted ash is back home after a voyage lasting 16 years, Matthew Engel reports from Washington.

After the longest and least glamorous cruise in maritime history, the world's best-travelled rubbish has finally come home.

Sixteen years after it left the United States on a journey that reached South-East Asia, 2500 tonnes of incinerator ash is being dumped once and for all 150 kilometres from its starting point: the dustbins of Philadelphia. En route, the rubbish touched at least 14 countries, causing several confrontations at gunpoint. No-one wanted it. Finally the state of Pennsylvania, with a weary sigh, has taken it back.

The ash, 15,000 tonnes of it to begin with, was shipped out in 1986 because Philadelphia had run out of landfill space. The plan was to take it to an island in the Bahamas, owned by the shipping company. However, the Bahamian government, apparently tipped off by Greenpeace, vetoed the idea, so the Khian Sea, the cargo ship carrying the ash, was forced to set sail and find somewhere, anywhere, that was willing to take the stuff. No-one was.

Rumours spread that the consignment was toxic. Pennsylvania hotly denied this, but governments from Honduras to the Philippines decided not to take the chance.

Most of the cargo was dumped illegally at sea, which led to two shipping company officials receiving jail sentences. But a portion of the ash was left on a beach in Haiti until protesters forced its removal.

This is the ash that has now come home. It arrived in Florida two years ago, with wild flowers and three-metre-high pine trees growing out of it. Six US states followed the example of the rest of the world, until Pennsylvania which now has extra landfill sites agreed to do its duty.

Truckloads of the ash are being carried to the site, in rolling countryside, after travelling north by train.

Still, there is no happy ending. Local villagers are unimpressed with having Philadelphia's rubbish historic or not dumped on them. They call the site Mount Trashmore.

It is unclear who will pay the final bill. Florida officials say that Pennsylvania may be hearing from their lawyers shortly.

© 2002 Sydney Morning Herald

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