Khian Sea

The Khian Sea, illegally flying the Liberian flag and still carrying its cargo of Philadelphia incinerator ash, is in a small port on the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. "We have been informed that the ship is in for repairs," said Wendy Grieder, a specialist in the EPA's Office of International Affairs. She said there was no indication whether the ash was to be unloaded in Europe. Grieder said the Liberian government informed the EPA of the ship's whereabouts.

The incinerator ash on the Khian Sea is not hazardous and can be sent to a solid-waste landfill, according to state and federal environmental agencies. The Philadelphia incinerator ash aboard the ship, which is anchored in Delaware Bay, was tested last week by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Resources. "The test results were remarkably close, and they both show that there is not enough lead or cadmium in the material to call it hazardous," DER spokesman Thomas Fornwalt said.

For 25 months, the cargo vessel Khian Sea was unwelcome at port after port, continent after continent. This week, the Port of Houston in Texas said welcome. Waiting with open arms were the U.S. Attorney's Office and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Young in Houston said the ship is under investigation and is being detained at the port. He would not comment on the nature of the investigation. If there were an America's Most Wanted List for ships gone astray, the Khian Sea would be on it. After leaving Philadelphia on Sept.

A federal judge has ordered the operators of the wandering ash ship Khian Sea not to unload any of her cargo - anywhere - without notifying a Philadelphia company that paid them to sail away with 15,000 tons of city incinerator ash in 1986. "We sought the order because the Khian Sea, without notice and in violation of all the representations that they had made to the Coast Guard and to us . . . weighed anchor in the middle of the night and left," said Bruce Phillips, an attorney for local ash-hauler Joseph Paolino & Sons.

The much-traveled ash aboard the Khian Sea has passed new tests and will qualify for shipment to an ordinary landfill, a Department of Environmental Resources official said today. "The stuff is well within non-hazardous waste guidelines," said the source, who asked not to be identified. The good test results mean that the DER can approve the ash for shipment to a regular landfill, rather than a special facility for hazardous waste, the DER official said. That should make it easier for ash-hauler Joseph Paolino & Sons to unload the 10,000 tons of ash that made the return trip to the Delaware Bay three weeks ago after an 18-month voyage in search of a dump.

Meet Felicia. There she is, all 9,800 tons of her, heading back through the Mediterranean on her way to Gibraltar. But despite a new name and a new paint job, the ash-toting Felicia is not a happy ship. She is still - mast to keel - the hapless Khian Sea. In her most recent misadventure, the ship, laden with incinerator ash from Philadelphia, has been escorted out of Yugoslavia by that nation's navy. That was Monday - after the Khian Sea had been sold, renamed, repaired and registered with a new country.

It's coming baaack. After 17 months of wandering, the Khian Sea is headed back up the Atlantic Coast toward Philadelphia with her unwanted cargo of ash. But the Coast Guard says it may stop the vessel before she ever passes Cape May on her way into the Delaware River. The ship's papers have expired. The dock in Philadelphia needs a new permit. And the Coast Guard says the Khian Sea has become technically a ship without a country. It's not clear what plans the ship's operators have for the 13,000 or so tons of municipal incinerator ash believed to be still on board after the vessel's long odyssey through the Atlantic and the Caribbean in search of a suitable dump.

They never said it would be easy. There she was, waiting down the Delaware with a load of Philadelphia ash stamped "Return to Sender. " Little remained to stop the Khian Sea from returning to the city in defeat except some unsigned agreements and a smoldering pier. But then the landfill that routinely buries Philadelphia's incinerator ash said yesterday it wants no part of the stuff that is coming back home from an 18-month odyssey in the hold of the Khian Sea. Chris White, president of the Fairfield Sanitary Landfill, in Lancaster, Ohio, has let it be known that he will not accept the Khian's ash. "He ( White )

The search goes on. And on. The load of municipal-incinerator ash that left Philadelphia in 1988 and then spent 12 years sitting on a Haitian beach is still seeking its final resting place. At the moment, the nearly 2,000 tons of cinders and grit - which was dumped in Haiti by the freighter Khian Sea and retrieved last month - are sitting in a large hopper barge in Stuart, Fla. Waste Management Inc., which inherited the problem, has agreed to bury it in one of its landfills.

The Khian Sea must notify the local contractor who gave the ship its cargo of Philadelphia incinerator ash before unloading the refuse, under an injunction issued yesterday by a federal judge. The order by U.S. District Judge Donald W. VanArtsdalen requires that Joseph Paolino & Sons Inc. be notified of where and when the 10,000 tons of ash are going to be deposited. Paolino sought the injunction last week after the Khian Sea left its anchorage in Delaware Bay. The ship's captain told the Coast Guard that the vessel would return in six days.

Old cheesesteak wrappers? Eagles ticket stubs? Campaign flyers from the Rendell-Casey primary, 1986 edition? We'll never know what was in a pile of 16-year-old burned garbage from Philadelphia, but at least now we know how much it weighed. Yesterday, the 128th and final shipment of incinerator ash was dumped at Mountain View Reclamation landfill in south-central Pennsylvania. When the truck rumbled across the scale shortly after noon, the last cargo measured 17.27 tons, for a total haul of 2,344.

Garbage. Twenty-five hundred tons of garbage. Piled on a boat, rising with the swells, sinking with the troughs. This is the story of a bunch of garbage no one wanted. It ends happily for the protagonist - tons of Philly's best - but scarily for the human race, chucking chicken bones, used diapers, busted TV sets and couches over the shoulder. Garbage has to go somewhere. Once it's here, it's here. You can smoosh it into little cubettes. But the cubettes remain, only smaller and denser.

The 20-ton load of black muck dumped into a landfill here yesterday was no different than numerous loads before it, except for one thing: This was black muck with an international pedigree. It was the first load of what remains from the cargo of the ill-fated Khian Sea, a ship that began traveling the globe 16 years ago with about 15,000 tons of garbage-incinerator ash from Philadelphia, rejected by at least 11 countries, five states, and the Cherokee nation of Oklahoma along the way. Most of the ash was illegally dumped in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans - leading to the imprisonment of two shipping executives from a city subcontractor - while about 2,500 tons was left on a beach in Haiti for 12 years until public pressure forced its return to the United States.

The ash is coming back. Sixteen years after a pile of Philadelphia's garbage was burned, put on the barge Khian Sea, and sent on a fruitless international quest for a final resting place, some of it is coming home to Pennsylvania. The 2,500 tons of ash sitting on a barge in Florida are expected by mid-July at the Mountain View Reclamation Landfill in south-central Pennsylvania, near the Maryland border. State officials said the ash was not hazardous, and that it made sense to accept it here because it was created here.

Remember the Khian Sea and its cargo of unwanted Philadelphia incinerator ash, which sailed the world like the Flying Dutchman for years? The bizarre, 15-year odyssey of that cursed and accursed ship finally appeared over in January, when Florida approved reburning and burying the ash at an incinerator near Pompano Beach. That's where we last left the story - and that appeared to put a lid on it. But this is one big stink that just won't go away. When they got a whiff of whose ash this was (by now, its infamous reputation precedes it)

The search goes on. And on. The load of municipal-incinerator ash that left Philadelphia in 1988 and then spent 12 years sitting on a Haitian beach is still seeking its final resting place. At the moment, the nearly 2,000 tons of cinders and grit - which was dumped in Haiti by the freighter Khian Sea and retrieved last month - are sitting in a large hopper barge in Stuart, Fla. Waste Management Inc., which inherited the problem, has agreed to bury it in one of its landfills.

Two thousand tons of ash from a Philadelphia waste incinerator that have been searching for a final resting place for 14 years - yes, 14 years - have left Haiti and are now causing consternation in Florida. Waste Management Inc. says the ash, which gained international notoriety as cargo of the Khian Sea in the 1980s, is bound for a facility in Lake Charles, La. In the meantime, local leaders and officials of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection are keeping a wary eye on five barges loaded with the stuff.

The ash heap with no place to go may be coming back to Philadelphia. 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.

It's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it. Her name is Elena Marie. And in a few short weeks, this cargo ship will be lugging tons of Philadelphia incinerator ash across the Caribbean. She'll sail for - well, nobody's quite sure where she's bound. And if that all sounds eerily familiar, that's because this is the latest - and hopefully the last - chapter in the infamous tale of the voyage of the Khian Sea. Starting today, Haitian workers will begin digging up 2,000 or more tons of the hated Philly ash from two spots near that island country's port of Gonaives.

The Philadelphia ash dumped in Haiti 10 years ago by the rogue freighter Khian Sea will be hauled back to the United States next month - but apparently not to the city where its long journey started. The 4,000 tons of ash, still leaching toxic metals onto a Haitian beach and hillside, is the last grungy remnant of the infamous ship's two-year odyssey in search of a place to dump. And people in the impoverished port city of Gonaives will be happy to see it go. "This is like a miracle," said Ehrl Lafontant, of the Haiti Communications Project, one of several international groups that have pressed for years to return the ash. Some Haitians fear the ash is a threat to the environment and the health of families living nearby.