Solid Waste Case Studies

Environmental 1-2

But what if no one wants it?• On August 31, 1986, the cargo barge Khian Sea,

was loaded with more than 14,000 tons of toxic ash from waste incinerators in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

• The city had previously sent the waste to New Jersey, but that state refused to accept any more after 1984.

• The companies handling the waste then headed to a man-made island in the Bahamas.

• The Bahamian government turned the barge away, and Philadelphia withheld payment to the companies because the waste was not disposed of.

The plight of the Khian Sea• Over the next 16 months, Khian

Sea searched all over the Atlantic for a place to dump its cargo.

• It went to the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Panama, Bermuda, Guinea Bissau and the Dutch Antilles refused.

• So it returned to Philadelphia but the city would not take it back.

• In January 1988, the crew finally dumped 4,000 tons of the waste near Haiti as "topsoil fertilizer" (when it was too poisonous to be used that way).

A new name• When Greenpeace warned the

Haitian government of the true nature of the waste, Haitian commerce minister ordered the crew to reload the ash but the ship slipped away.

• The Haitian government banned all waste imports. Local clean up crews later buried some of the waste in a bunker inland.

• Next the crew of Khian Sea tried to unload the rest of the cargo in Senegal, Morocco, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka and Singapore.

• After repairs in Yugoslavia, the ship's name changed to Felicia and then the Pelicano.

• Changes failed to hide the ship's original identity.

The Paolino family is held accountable• The rest of the ash disappeared en route from Singapore

to Sri Lanka in November 1988. • The crew had no comment but eventually the ship's

captain admitted that they had dumped the remaining waste - more than 10,000 tons - into the Atlantic and Indian Ocean.

• Over the years, various attempts to return the ash dumped in Haiti failed.

• In 1997, New York City Trade Waste Commission investigated Eastern Environmental Services (The originating company). They agreed to give the company a license to operate in New York City in condition that it would contribute to the cleanup in Haiti.

• EES agreed to take the waste back. Greenpeace and Haitian environmental groups launched "Project Return to Sender" to lobby for funds. City of Philadelphia contributed $50,000.

New International Treaty Results• In April 2000, Waste

Management Inc. loaded 2,500 tons of ash and contaminated soil to barge Santa Lucia and shipped it to Florida, where the barge was docked in the St. Lucie Canal.

• There it stayed for two years until in June 2002 when it was moved to Mountain View Reclamation Landfill, in Pennsylvania after the EPA had determined the contents to be nonhazardous.

• The case contributed to the creation of the Basel Convention about disposal of hazardous waste.

Love Canal

• “It is a cruel irony that Love Canal was originally meant to be a dream community. That vision belonged to the man for whom the three-block tract of land on the eastern edge of Niagara Falls, New York, was named--William T. Love.”-The Love Canal Tragedy

• by Eckardt C. Beck [EPA Journal - January 1979]

Love Canal

• 1910 that dream was shattered.

• All that was left to commemorate Love's hope was a partial ditch.

• In the 1920s the canal was turned into a municipal and industrial chemical dumpsite.

Love Canal Continued

• In 1953, the Hooker Chemical Company, then the owners and operators of the property, covered the canal with earth and sold it to the city for one dollar.

• Then 100 homes and a school were built at the site.

Love Canal Part 1

Love Canal Part 2

New York Times, 1978

• NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y.--Twenty five years after the Hooker Chemical Company stopped using the Love Canal here as an industrial dump, 82 different compounds, 11 of them suspected carcinogens, have been percolating upward through the soil, their drum containers rotting and leaching their contents into the backyards and basements of 100 homes and a public school built on the banks of the canal.

When the Unthinkable HappensFreshkills Landfill

The Environmental Impact of the World Trade Center Attack

Left to deal with:

• In a single day, more than 1.2 million tons of building materials lay in ruin.

• The wreckage was 100 to 150 feet high in some places and extended seven stories underground.

• Large chunks of debris were strewn as far as three blocks away from the World Trade Center site and areas up to 10 blocks away were covered with thick dust.

• The composition of the debris was extremely diverse and often toxic, including, among other things, vast amounts of asbestos-contaminated construction waste, tens of thousands of pieces of electrical equipment and as much as 130,000 gallons of PCB-contaminated oils

A new use for a landfill

• Fresh Kills was the city’s last active landfill• After the terrorist attacks, the landfill was

immediately chosen as the place to inspect, sort and bury World Trade Center debris.

• Under an executive order signed by Governor George Pataki, the city was permitted to dispose of World Trade Center wastes after January 1, 2002, after the landfill had already been officially closed.

Still in debate-

• Should “Ground Zero” be considered a Superfund Site?

• Should Fresh Kills Landfill also get that same designation?

• Hazardous Material was deposited in Fresh Kills, although it was a municipal landfill, not hazardous.

Cadaver Dogs