Voyage of the damned comes full-circle

After a 16 year odyssey to four continents, a shipload of burned household waste is being dumped in the US state that produced it.

The epic voyage began in 1986 when Philadelphia, faced with overflowing rubbish dumps, decided to export the incinerated garbage.

In 1986, the Khian Sea left with 14,855 tons of ash for a dump on a man-made island in the Bahamas. But while it was en route, the Caribbean country changed its mind and denied it permission to dock.

It was the start of a ‘‘voyage of the damned’’, reported the Washington Post today, as Greenpeace and other environmental groups drew attention to the ship and at least 11 countries refused to allow it to dock.

The notorious cargo was rejected by Bermuda, Cape Verde, the Dominican Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Honduras, Indonesia, the Netherlands Antilles, the Philippines, Senegal and Sri Lanka.

In late 1987, the crew managed to unload about 4,000 tons of the notorious black muck as ‘‘fertiliser’’ on a Haiti beach before local protests forced it to leave with the remaining cargo.

Over the next year, the ship was sold, twice renamed and twice turned away from ports at gunpoint.

When it arrived in Singapore in November 1988, the ash was gone, dumped into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans - a crime that earned two shipping company officials prison terms.

By 2000, US and Haitiian authorities agreed to remove the remaining ash from the tropical beach. It was shipped to Florida, where it remained in a barge for more than a decade.

Several US states refused to take it. Finally, this year, Pennsylvania and Florida agreed that the remaining 2,500 tons should return home.

’’It was generated by Pennsylvanians, and we feel it’s only proper that it should be disposed of in Pennsylvania,’’ said Dennis Buterbaugh of the state’s Department of Environmental Protection.