Homeless for 16 Years, Barge of Garbage Returns to Pa.

Sixteen years after its global wanderings began, a load of nearly 2,345 tons of burned garbage has returned home.

The ash originated in Philadelphia and was part of a 15,000-ton cargo that roamed the globe in search of a suitable final resting site.

On Friday, the 128th and final shipment was deposited in the Mountain View Reclamation landfill.

It was then promptly topped off with half a foot of dirt.

“It was routine for us,” community relations coordinator Lee Zimmerman said.

“We’re just kind of happy it’s all done.”

Most of the original cargo of ash was dumped in the Atlantic Ocean and also in the Indian Ocean--a decision that spelled prison terms for two executives of the shipping company.

The rest of the rejected ash spent a dozen years on a beach in Haiti, and the last two years it languished on a rusting barge in Florida.

“They should’ve kept it in Philadelphia,” said A.J. Carbaugh, 61, who lives a mile from the Mountain View landfill in south-central Pennsylvania.

The ash was orphaned in 1985 because Philadelphia’s landfill had no space left.

The next year, a city subcontractor sent the burned garbage aboard the Khian Sea to the Bahamas, where the government refused to allow the ship to dock.

For a year, the ship sailed the Caribbean but was turned away by a series of countries--sometimes at gunpoint, according to crew members.

Environmental groups had warned that the ash might contain toxic materials, though U.S. and state regulators said it had only minute amounts of toxic metals such as lead.

The New York City Trade Waste Commission eventually brokered a deal to bring the ash from Haiti to Florida; the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection finally agreed to dispose of the material.

Traveling the last leg of its long journey by train and truck, the first load returned to Pennsylvania on June 27.