By Associated Press

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection is re-evaluating approval given Thursday to Waste Management Inc.'s plan to take 3,000 tons of ash off a barge at Stuart and dispose it in a landfill.

"I've requested that Waste Management not move forward on this plan just yet, to give us the opportunity to review it further," Melissa Meeker, director of the DEP's southeast district, said.

Meeker said tests on the ash by agencies including federal Department of Environmental Protection and Department of Agriculture show the ash is neither hazardous nor infectious.

But environmentalists worry the ash may contain hazardous levels of mercury, lead or other toxins, and residents and city officials said they don't want the ash in their backyard.

"Is it safe? We really don't know," said Pompano Beach Mayor William Griffin.

"I think politically it's been kicking around for a number of years from this country to that country. Let them take it back to Philadelphia where they got it."

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.

For more than two years, the ship sailed the Caribbean searching for a dump site. Crew members reported being turned away from ports at gunpoint and being threatened with attack by environmentalists.

On New Year's Eve 1987, the ship anchored off Gonaives, Haiti, and the crew started unloading the ash. A few weeks later, permits were revoked and the Khian Sea was ordered to leave.

The ship left with about 10,000 tons and sailed through the Panama Canal. By the time it reached Singapore its holds were empty; authorities believed the ash was dumped in the Indian Ocean.

The 3,000 tons on the barge at Stuart is part of what had been left in Haiti.

Deerfield Beach and Pompano Beach scheduled city commission meetings Monday to discuss possible court injunctions against the ash disposal. The Broward County Commission agreed to consider the matter Tuesday.

Waste Management hadn't planned to move the ash immediately, company spokesman Don Payne said Friday. "In the interim, of course, we'll work with the Broward officials and answer whatever questions they may have."