Don't Be a Litterbarge

By Jacob V. Lamar Jr.

Ancient mariners told of the Flying Dutchman, a phantom ship eternally doomed to sail the waters around the Cape of Good Hope, never making port. In the Gulf of Mexico last week the real-life vessel Mobro 4,000 seemed as damned as the Dutchman as it searched in vain for a friendly harbor. Southern ports had good reason for turning away the bereft barge: it was loaded with 3,168 tons of rancid, fly-infested trash from New York.

The Mobro's ill-starred journey resulted from a deal made by Alabama Entrepreneur Lowell Harrelson, founder of National Waste Contractors, Inc., to haul away a massive batch of refuse from Islip, N.Y., and other townships. After being freighted with the garbage -- which was mashed into some 2,200 untidy bundles by a giant compactor -- Harrelson's leased barge was hitched to the tugboat Break of Dawn and set sail on March 22.

Harrelson had a destination in mind. After he convinced the commissioners of Jones County, N.C., that they could make a fortune by extracting methane gas from the trash, they agreed to let him dump 100,000 cu. yds. of rubbish into their local landfills. But when the barge with its festering cargo pulled into Morehead City, Harrelson found that the deal was off. "We told him to get the boat the hell out of North Carolina waters," said Stephen Reid of the state's solid and hazardous waste management bureau. "We have enough garbage of our own. We didn't need New York's."

The stinking scow then headed for a dump site just outside New Orleans. When the Mobro arrived at the Delta town of Venice, Louisiana's department of environmental quality sent inspectors to examine the gunk. Although the bales consisted primarily of paper, investigators discovered hospital items -- syringes, bedpans -- that could pose a health hazard. The bales were also beginning to ooze, and inspectors feared the scum would leak into the river. Governor Edwin Edwards half jokingly threatened to deploy National Guardsmen on the levees with orders to shoot if the barge tried to dock. As the vessel meandered about the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana Attorney General William Guste trashed federal authorities. "The Environmental Protection Agency was not watching it at all," he said. "If that barge tips or runs into a storm, the garbage could end up on our shores."

Goaded into action, EPA officials commandeered a Coast Guard cutter last week and were en route to a rendezvous with the barge when they got word that the Mobro was headed for Mexico. But there too it was turned away; the Mexican navy even went on alert to repel the Yanqui rubbish.

The controversy underscored the growing dilemma of waste disposal in the U.S. In Islip and hundreds of other towns across the country, landfills teeming with accumulated trash are leaching their wastes deep into the ground, threatening to contaminate underground water supplies. Big cities such as New York, Detroit, Miami and Chicago have begun burning part of their garbage, thus saving the water but running the risk of polluting the air.

In New Jersey last week, Governor Thomas Kean signed a law requiring the separation from other trash of reusable material so it can be recycled. The new law could reduce by 25% the 10 million tons of refuse dumped annually in the state's landfills. "Without further action," said Kean, "New Jersey could actually choke on its own garbage." Unless other governments take similar innovative steps, the country can expect more big stinks like the voyage of the Mobro.

With reporting by Joseph J. Kane/Atlanta and Susan Kinsley/New York