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by RAMONA SMITH, Philadelphia Daily News

Ten years after it was ditched on a beach in Haiti by the infamous freighter Khian Sea, thousands of tons of Philly incinerator ash is now stacked on a wharf in the Caribbean nation. It could be loaded onto a ship headed back to the city, if a city councilman has his way.

"I think we ought to take the stuff back and dispose of it," Councilman David Cohen said of the ash laced with toxic metals from the old Roxborough incinerator. Cohen, in a resolution to be introduced in Council today, says the city should either take back the ash or find a destination.

But the Rendell administration wants no part of it. "We don't want it back. We have no obligation to get rid of it -- either legal, moral, or other," mayoral spokesman Kevin Feeley said. The city is putting up $50,000 toward landfilling and "has no intention of having the number go higher," he said.

True to the curse of the Khian Sea, nobody wants even this 2,000- to 4,000-ton remnant of the cargo that left Philly in August 1986 and wandered the globe for two years looking for a dump.

The ship left the ash in Haiti in 1988 and dumped the rest in the Atlantic and Indian oceans before turning up empty in Singapore.

The ash was recently excavated from two spots in Haiti and has been turned down by landfills in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Prospects looked good in South Carolina until the ash's reputation caught up with it.

"After examining it, we realized it was not popular," said a manager at the Oakridge landfill near Charleston.

The ash isn't classified as hazardous and can be put in a landfill licensed to take other ash.

But activists from Greenpeace and other organizations, in a "Return to Sender" campaign, say it's unfair for the impoverished Caribbean nation to be stuck with Philly's toxics -- or with the cost of disposing of the city's ash.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.