After 4 Months and 6,000 Miles, Islip’s Trash to Be Buried--by Islip

The 3,186 tons of rotting garbage marooned aboard a barge for nearly four months will be burned and buried on Long Island, ending its 6,000-mile search for a home that stretched from New York to the Bahamas and back, officials said Friday.

The town supervisor of Islip, where the garbage first set out on its hunt for a dump on March 22, said officials agreed that the trash will be burned at a Brooklyn incinerator and the ash buried at the Islip town landfill on Long Island.

The garbage, anchored in Gravesend Bay off Brooklyn, was turned away from five states and three nations during its Atlantic Ocean odyssey. It returned to its roots May 16 to face lawsuits and political bickering over its fate.

The solution to the problem of the unwanted garbage barge was reached during a six-hour meeting Friday among Islip, New York City and state officials.

The solid waste is expected to arrive at the southwest Brooklyn incinerator on Gravesend Bay by the middle of next week. Vito Turso, a New York City Sanitation Department spokesman, said it would probably take about 10 days to burn the garbage, which will yield about 400 tons of ash. Then the ash will be delivered in covered trucks to Islip.