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The Palm Beach Post

FLORIDA, USA 2 October 2001  -- Add the Cherokee Nation to the list of those who do not want 3,000 tons of well-traveled ash that for the past 17 months has been heaped on a barge on the St. Lucie Canal, awaiting a disposal site. The Cherokee Nation had been talking with Waste Management Inc., the firm responsible for the ash, and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection about taking the ash into an Oklahoma landfill the Nation owns. The plan was to combine the ash, produced in a Philadelphia garbage incinerator in 1986, with equal parts of soil and spread the mixture on the landfill. But a former employee of the environmental group Greenpeace, who lives near the Nation's Oklahoma headquarters, said accepting the ash would violate the Nation's environmental policies. In April, the Martin County Commission told DEP officials to order Waste Management to dispose of the ash responsibly before hurricane season started. Hurricane season ends next month, and still the ash sits on the barge. The DEP has been understanding and helpful to Waste Management, but that hasn't worked. The agency should have imposed fines months ago. Waste Management, which has trash-hauling contracts with several South Florida counties and cities, acquired the ash when the firm bought another company. The ash, once considered an environmental hazard, no longer contains any harmful chemicals, but its checkered past makes it a public relations nightmare for officials seeking a disposal site.

It has been hauled around the world while its handlers searched for a place to dump it. After lying on a Haitian beach for 10 years, the elements stripped it of any remaining hazards. But with its image problem, no government or quasi- government wants it. Waste Management has tried to ditch it in Okeechobee, Martin and Broward counties. Even though recent tests show the ash is safe, politicians are afraid to accept it. While at first it was possible to sympathize with the problems of the waste firm and the state agency in charge of enforcing environmental rules, too much time has passed with no action. The overloaded barge, tied up in a canal that empties into the St. Lucie River, tempts fate. Even a mild hurricane could wash the ash overboard, where it would become taxpayers' responsibility to scoop it up. Environmental regulators are out of excuses. DEP Secretary David Struhs should lean on Waste Management until the ash moves.