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By Bruce Geiselman, Waste News

HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania, 24 June 2002 -- Three thousand tons of incinerator ash that sailed around the world in search of a final resting place may be coming home to Pennsylvania after a 16-year odyssey.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection on June 13 issued approval for the Mountain View Reclamation landfill - a Waste Management Inc. site 50 miles southwest of Harrisburg in Franklin County - to accept the ash that came from a Philadelphia municipal incinerator in the 1980s.

In 1986, the city of Philadelphia contracted with a company to ship the ash overseas for disposal because Pennsylvania had a shortage of landfill space at the time. The ash left the United States aboard a cargo ship, the Khian Sea, and the ship began sailing from nation to nation in search a place that would accept the cargo. The ash sat for more than 12 years on a beach in Haiti, but it was shipped back to the United States in 1990 and sits on barges docked in Stuart, Fla.

''Pennsylvania and Florida together are stepping forward to ensure its proper disposal,'' said Michael R. Steiner, south central regional director for the Pennsylvania DEP.

The ash has been inspected and tested by Florida, Pennsylvania and federal environmental agencies as well as the city of Philadelphia and a private company, all of which found it to be nonhazardous, Steiner said.

Florida will pay about $614,000 to ship the ash by rail to Hagerstown, Md., and then truck it to the Waste Management landfill.

The waste has been a serious headache for Florida officials. It has been sitting in an Atlantic Coast port since May 2000, while officials of Florida and Waste Management scoured the country for a disposal site.

''It's considered abandoned waste, and we're trying to do what's environmentally responsible,'' said Willie Puz, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Florida had been talking with at least five other states and an Indian reservation in an effort to find a suitable site for the ash.

Waste Management, which will donate the landfill space and cover the tipping fees, inherited its role through its 1998 acquisition of another waste hauling company that had agreed to assist in the disposal.

''It seems as though this is a good solution because the ash is going back to the state that it originally came from,'' Waste Management spokesman Don Payne said.

Once the shipping begins, the entire operation should be completed in 15 to 20 days.

When the ash started on its journey in 1986, it totaled more than 14,000 tons. It was loaded aboard the Khian Sea, but it sailed for more than a year in search of a port willing to accept the cargo before leaving 4,000 tons of the ash on a beach in Gonaives, Haiti. The Haitian government stopped the dumping before the entire contents could be unloaded. The remainder of the cargo reportedly disappeared while the ship was sailing the Atlantic and Indian oceans.

In April 2000, the ash that had been sitting on the beach in Haiti that had not blown away was shipped to Florida. Since then, separate plans to dispose of the ash in Florida and Georgia have fallen through.

Pennsylvania officials expect the first shipment of ash to arrive either June 27 or June 28.

Contact Waste News government affairs editor Bruce Geiselman at (330) 865-6172 or bgeiselman@crain.com

Copyright 2002 Crain Communications Inc.