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By Tom Avril, Philadelphia Inquirer

GREENCASTLE, Pennsylvania, 28 June 2002 -- GREENCASTLE, Pa. The 20-ton load of black muck dumped into a landfill here Thursday was no different than numerous loads before it, except for one thing: This was black muck with an international pedigree.

It was the first load of what remains from the cargo of the ill-fated Khian Sea, a ship that began traveling the globe 16 years ago with 15,000 tons of garbage incinerator ash from Philadelphia, rejected by at least 11 countries, five states and one Indian reservation along the way.

Most of the ash was illegally dumped in the Atlantic and Indian oceans leading to the imprisonment of two shipping executives from a city subcontractor while about 2,500 tons were left on a beach in Haiti for 12 years until publicp ressure forced its return to the United States.

It is that remaining ash turned into black muck by heavy rains during its most recent port of call, in Florida that is now coming home to Pennsylvania.

Over the next two to three weeks, trucks will carry the ash from a rail station in Hagerstown, Md., to its final resting place at Mountain View Reclamation Landfill, located in southcentral Pennsylvania in Franklin County.

The first load 20.64 tons, to be exact was deposited Thursday shortly before 2 p.m., watched by a small crowd of media and officials from Waste Management, the landfill owner. A second load followed two hours later, tipping the scales at 18.93 tons.

Paul Schulze, a member of the truck crew from Modern Transportation Services, from Portersville, Pa., was mystified by the attention.

"I can't see what it's all about," he said. "Just another day at the landfill."

State and federal agencies have tested and retested the ash and declared it nonhazardous. It has trace amounts of toxic heavy metals such as cadmium and lead, as do most loads of municipal garbage, but well below the levels that EPA considers hazardous.

That information was of small comfort to Sue Eckstine, owner of the Shangri-La mobile home park in Greencastle. She noted that the ash sparked an international furor, with environmental groups such as Greenpeace accusing Philadelphia of not taking care of its garbage-disposal problem.

"Nobody wanted this trash for ... years," she said, gazing at the mountain of grass-covered garbage that locals have dubbed Mount Trashmore. "I just feel there has to be something wrong with it. I don't know why it has to come here."

Eckstine supplies well water to 50 families at Shangri-La, and she worries that the landfill, though protected by a state-of-the-art double liner, might leak someday into the groundwater and taint her tenants' drinking water.

Not to worry, said officials from Waste Management, which chose the Mountain View site because it was within easy reach of a rail station. There are 15 monitoring wells on the 516-acre landfill site, and none has shown evidence of contamination, company officials said.

Lee Zimmerman, community relations coordinator for the landfill, said he had lived on nearby Rabbit Road for seven years with his family and had no problem with bathing in the water from his well, although a naturally high concentration of iron in the water leads him to purchase bottled water for drinking.

"I have no qualms whatsoever about this ash," Zimmerman said.

The ash spilled out the back of a gray shipping container when the truck crew lifted the front end with a hydraulic lift. It was pushed by bulldozer into the waiting embrace of two trash compactors, 50-ton machines that spread out the muck and pack it in an even layer.

Thursday night, the ash was to be covered by a six-inch layer of dirt, along with the rest of the day's haul of garbage at Mountain View. When it is all delivered, the Philadelphia ash will amount to little more than what the landfill accepts in a typical day.

Mountain View is permitted to accept an average of 1,500 tons of garbage or ash a day, up to a maximum of 1,850 tons, and typically accepts 450,000 tons a year.

Pennsylvania and Philadelphia officials said they were happy with the resolution of the 16-year saga, saying it made sense for Pennsylvania ash to return to Pennsylvania. A subcontractor hired by Joseph Paolino & Sons, the company that had the city contract to dispose of incinerator ash, first tried to dump it in the Bahamas in 1986. The ship was turned away again and again, and Philadelphia taxpayers never had to pay the $630,000 tab because the contract required the ash to be disposed of legally.

At Greenpeace's urging, the city later pledged $50,000 toward the effort to get the ash from Haiti to Florida. Once it arrived there in 2000, a contractual dispute led to lawsuits among the various companies involved. Fearing dispersal of the ash during hurricane season, Florida officials finally declared the ash "abandoned," thereby freeing up $620,000 in state funds to ship it back to Pennsylvania.

Waste Management inherited a piece of the dispute through a corporate acquisition, but officials maintained they had no legal obligation to accept the ash, and that they were doing it as good corporate citizens.

Frank Keel, a spokesman for Philadelphia Mayor John Street, called the ash's return to Pennsylvania a "good resolution."

Asked about the concerns of Franklin County residents, which had all the earmarks of a typical Philadelphia-vs.-the-rest-the-state-dispute, he said Franklin County residents shouldn't be concerned because the ash is not hazardous.

"We've given them the gift of scrapple, soft pretzels and cheesesteaks, so the balance is still in their favor," Keel joked.

Officials at Greenpeace, who kept the Khian Sea issue on the front burner for so many years, were less amused by the situation, but said they were glad it had been resolved.

"There is no happy ending to the story," said Lisa Finaldi, national coordinator of the group's toxics campaign. "Hopefully there was a lesson learned from this and we can do better at managing household waste in this country."

(c) 2002, The Philadelphia Inquirer.