On August 31, 1986, the cargo barge Khian Sea, registered in Liberia, was loaded with more than 14,000 tons of toxic ash from waste incinerators in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The city had previously sent the waste to New Jersey, but that state refused to accept any more after 1984.
The companies handling the waste (Joseph Paolino and Sons, Amalgamated Shipping and Coastal Carrier) intended to dump the ash onto a man-made island in the Bahamas. However, the Bahamian government turned the barge away, and Philadelphia withheld payment to the companies because the waste was not disposed of.
Over the next 16 months, Khian Sea searched all over the Atlantic for a place to dump its cargo. Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Bermuda, Guinea Bissau and the Dutch Antilles refused. Return to Philadelphia failed as well. In January 1988, the crew finally dumped 4,000 tons of the waste near Gonaïves in Haiti as "topsoil fertilizer" (when it was too poisonous to be used that way). When Greenpeace warned the Haitian government of the true nature of the waste, Haitian commerce minister ordered the crew to reload the ash but the ship slipped away. The Haitian government banned all waste imports. Local clean up crews later buried some of the waste in a bunker inland.
Next the crew of Khian Sea tried to unload the rest of the cargo in Senegal, Morocco, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka and Singapore. After repairs in Yugoslavia, the ship's name changed to Felicia, registered in Honduras. Later it was renamed Pelicano. Changes failed to hide the ship's original identity.
The rest of the ash disappeared en route from Singapore to Sri Lanka in November 1988. The crew had no comment but eventually the ship's captain admitted that they had dumped the remaining waste - more than 10,000 tons - into the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. In 1993, two owners of the Coastal Carrier were charged with perjury, accused of ordering the dumping.
Over the years, various attempts to return the ash dumped in Haiti failed.
In 1997, New York City Trade Waste Commission investigated Eastern Environmental Services whose owner was part of Joseph Paolino and Sons. They agreed to give the company a license to operate in New York City in condition that it would contribute to the cleanup in Haiti. EES agreed to take the waste back. Greenpeace and Haitian environmental groups launched a "Project Return to Sender" to lobby for funds. City of Philadelphia contributed $50,000.
In April 2000, Waste Management Inc. loaded 2,500 tons of ash and contaminated soil to barge Santa Lucia and shipped it to Florida, where the barge was docked in the St. Lucie Canal. There it stayed for two years until in June 2002 when it was moved to Mountain View Reclamation Landfill, in Franklin County, Pennsylvania near Antrim Township, after several government agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, had found the contents to be nonhazardous.
The case contributed to the creation of the Basel Convention about disposal of hazardous waste.
Famous quotes containing the words sea, waste, disposal and/or incident:
“And one rose in a tent of sea and gave
A darkening shudder; water fell away;
The whale stood shining, and then sank in spray.”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)
“Flushed with new life, the crowd flows back again:
And all is tangled talk and mazy motion—
Much like a waving field of golden grain,
Or a tempestuous ocean.
And thus they give the time, that Nature meant
For peaceful sleep and meditative snores,
To ceaseless din and mindless merriment
And waste of shoes and floors.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Young people everywhere have been allowed to choose between love and a garbage disposal unit. Everywhere they have chosen the garbage disposal unit.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“I teazed him with fanciful apprehensions of unhappiness. A moth having fluttered round the candle, and burnt itself, he laid hold of this little incident to admonish me; saying, with a sly look, and in a solemn but quiet tone, “That creature was its own tormentor, and I believe its name was BOSWELL.””
—James Boswell (1740–1795)