12348: Wandering ash: the final word? (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

   By GEORGE STRAWLEY

   HARRISBURG, Pa., June 14 (AP) -- Some 3,000 tons of incinerated ash that
has been on a 16-year worldwide odyssey will get a final resting place back
in Pennsylvania if state officials get their way.
   The Department of Environmental Protection wants the waste hauled to a
landfill 50 miles southwest of Harrisburg by the end of the month.
Officials are finishing up a plan to ship the ash from Florida, where it is
sitting on a rusted barge near Palm City.
   "This being Philadelphia ash to begin with, Pennsylvania stepped forward
and said it should come back here," agency spokeswoman Sandra Roderick said
Thursday.
   More than 14,000 tons of ash was produced by an incinerator in
Philadelphia in 1985 and loaded on the cargo ship Khian Sea to be taken to
a disposal site.
   The ship sailed the Caribbean searching for a dump site for more than
two years, vainly searching for a port. In 1987, the crew unloaded about
3,000 tons on a Haitian beach before the ship was ordered to leave. The
rest of the ash was apparently dumped in the Indian Ocean.
   The ash in Haiti was later taken to Florida, which has been trying to
get rid of it. A plan to dump it at a Pennsylvania landfill failed in 1998
for lack of money.
   Pennsylvania and Florida environmental officials and trash-hauler Waste
Management Inc. are finishing a plan to move the ash here by rail and
truck. Waste Management owns the landfill and inherited the ash in a
business deal.
   The ash would be loaded onto containers, three to a flatbed rail car,
and shipped to Hagerstown, Md., where trucks would haul the containers to
the landfill. The waste would be shipped without any cost to taxpayers,
Roderick said.
   Roderick said nothing stood in the way of the agency's consent.
   "There's not really any issue on our part with the ash itself," Roderick
said. "It's been tested. It's no different than any incinerator ash that we
landfill every day."
   Public agencies and private consultants have tested the ash over the
years, according to the DEP. Heavy metals such as lead and cadmium are in
the ash, but not in hazardous concentrations.
   Neighbors learned of the plan this week in a newspaper, hours after
local landfill inspectors heard about it state officials.
   "It's scary," landfill neighbor Tom Zomak said of the ash. "It was
turned away from 11 countries, four continents and all of a sudden it's OK
for Pennsylvania, in our backyard?"
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   On the Net:
   Department of Environmental Protection: http://www.dep.state.pa.us/