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By Margaret Williams, Newsweek

PENNSYLVANIA, 22 July 2002 -- Sixteen years after exporting 14,000 tons of burnt ash, 3,000 tons of it returns to be buried in a Pennsylvania state landfill.

After a 16-year odyssey, 3,000 tons of burnt trash is finally going home. In 1986 Pennsylvania needed to dispose of 14,000 tons of ash piled up at a Philadelphia incinerator. State officials hoped to dump it in the Bahamas, but before the ash-laden Khian Sea made it to port, the Bahamas said no. So the barge set off around the Caribbean in search of a place willing to take the ash for cash: Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Bermuda, the Netherlands Antilles, Honduras and as far as Guinea-Bissau on the western coast of Africa.

In January 1988, Haiti finally agreed, but only because officials were led to believe it was soil fertilizer. As soon as they learned of the deception, they demanded the 4,000 tons of ash dumped on the beach be reloaded, but the barge took off overnight. Later that year it reappeared in Singapore, under a new name and without any ash. The captain admitted to dumping the remaining 10,000 tons in the Indian Ocean. Now the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is transporting what remains of the ash back to a state landfill for burial. Meanwhile the New York City Sanitation Commission recently said it was considering sending trash to a Caribbean island. "It's deja vu all over again," says Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network, a group that monitors illegal waste exportation. Still, this case shows that sometimes what goes around comes around.