Wandering Ash Finally Dumped In Pennsylvania

Date: June 27, 2002

Source: News Room

Shunned by ports and dumps around the hemisphere for 16 years, a wandering load of 2,500 tons of incinerator ash has begun at a rural Pennsylvania landfill. The ash had languished on a barge in Florida the past two years until Pennsylvania agreed to take it back. In 1985, the ash totaled about 14,800 tons when it was generated in Philadelphia. The city's landfill had run out of space. The next year, a city subcontractor found space in the Bahamas and a cargo ship called the Khian Sea set sail. But the Bahamian government refused to let the ship dock, and for a year the ship sailed the Caribbean searching for a willing dump. The ship was turned away by the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guinea-Bissau and the Netherlands Antilles. Some of the ash was dumped in Haiti and later reclaimed; the rest was dumped in the ocean.

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