Haitian citizens struggle with removal of incinerator trash (1988-2000)

In 1988, after being rejected by many landfill sites and governments across the United States and Caribbean, a ship carrying thousands of tons of incinerator ash from Philadelphia dumped half of its contents on a beach in Haiti. This sparked a twelve year campaign, led by the environmental advocacy organization of Greenpeace and a coalition that included multiple Haitian advocacy organizations. This coalition asked the city of Philadelphia and other United States organizations to ensure the ash was removed from Haiti and delivered back to the United States. The campaigners successfully advocated for the company Waste Management Incorporated to finance and supply transport of the ash back to the U.S., with some little help from the city of Philadelphia, in late 1999. A ship brought the ash back to the United States in April 2000. 

Beginning in the 1970s, the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the U.S. burned most of its trash in an incinerator, and then sent a majority of the resulting incinerator ash to the Kinsley landfill across the Delaware River in New Jersey. In 1984, the owners of the Kinsley landfill learned that the ash contained levels of toxins high enough for the ash to be considered hazardous waste, and the owners of the landfill stopped accepting the ash from Philadelphia. After being rejected by additional landfills in New Jersey, the Philadelphia City government attempted to send the ash to landfills across six other states, including Ohio, North Carolina and South Carolina, but these sites also refused to accept the landfill ash. Most of these sites were concerned about the toxic properties of the ash.

Following these rejections, the City of Philadelphia made a deal with the company Joseph Paolino & Sons in 1986, agreeing to a $6 million contract to dispose of 15,000 tons of incinerator ash from Philadelphia. Paolino made a contract with Amalgamated Shipping of the Bahamas to transport the ash out of the United States. Amalgamated used the firm Coastal Carriers to get the cargo ship Khian Sea to transport 14,000 tons of the ash from Philadelphia. On 5 September 1986, Khian Sea finally transported the ash to the Bahamas. The Bahamian government refused to accept the ash, and the Khian Sea traveled around the Caribbean in search of a place to unload the ash. The Haitian government eventually granted the Khian Sea a permit to land and unload on 26 October 1987. The permit described the ash as “top soil fertilizer,” and was signed by brothers of Col. Jean-Claude Paul, a leader in Haiti’s Presidential Guard. The Khian Sea arrived in Gonaïves, Haiti on 31 December 1987, and from 20-31 January 1988, unloaded by one hundred laborers onto a beach across from Gonaïves. On 2 February 1988, the Haitian government reversed the permit, with the Minister of Commerce asking that the ash be reloaded and the boat to be dealt with “according to law.” Before the ash was reloaded, the Khian Sea left Gonaïves. Around 3,700 tons of waste were left behind on Gonaïves’ beach. 

Soon after the Khian Sea left Haiti, on 17-21 February 1988, a team from Greenpeace documented the existence of the ash pile in Gonaïves, took samples of the ash, and met with the Prime Minister of Haiti Martial Célestin, as well as authorities in Gonaïves and Port-au-Prince. Greenpeace is an international network of environmental justice organizations that use nonviolent tactics to reach their goals. After meeting with Greenpeace, on 19 February 1988, Haitian Prime Minister Célestin announced an immediate and total ban on waste imports into Haiti. 

After dropping some of its load on Gonaïves, the Khian Sea still had thousands of tons of ash in its load. On 26 February 1988, the Khian Sea attempted to return to and dock in Philadelphia. Three days later, on 29 February, the Khian Sea anchored in the Delaware River. Meanwhile, Greenpeace representatives delivered bottles of ash from Gonaïves to the deputy mayor of Philadelphia and the Washington Office on Haiti. Greenpeace and local representatives began protesting dumping at Pier 2, where Khian Sea was scheduled to dock. Soon after, at 3:00 a.m. on 1 March, Pier 2 was destroyed by a fire, but authorities never lodged any charges of arson. 

The workers of the Khian Sea anchored the ship in the middle of the Delaware river at the orders of the United States Coast Guard. A few months later on 22 May, the crew drove the ship out to sea against the orders of the U.S. Coast Guard, citing “engine trials” as the reason for departure. The crew then drove the Khian Sea to Europe, and proceeded towards Asia through the Suez Canal. Government officials began to recognize the name of the Khian Sea as the ship that had toxic ash in its cargo, so the crew changed the name of the boat  two times along its journey, eventually naming it the Pelicano. 

Everywhere the crew stopped the ship, it was refused landing by each country’s government, who prohibited the crew from unloading its over 10,000 tons of toxic waste. In November 1988, the crew eventually landed the Pelicano in Singapore, but the ship was missing its cargo. Between the Suez Canal and Singapore, the crew of the Pelicano had dumped its contents at sea. This dumping incident was investigated by the U.S. federal grand jury in Wilmington, Delaware in January 1990. The United States federal government was trying to find whether the Khian Sea violated Title 33 Section 1411 U.S. Code, which prohibits transportation of material from the United States for the purpose of dumping it in the ocean. In the investigation, William P. Reilly and John Patrick Dowd, leaders of Coastal Carriers Inc. were both called by the federal grand jury to testify, and both were subsequently indicted by the grand jury for making false statements under oath in front of the grand jury. In June 1993, Dowd and Reillly were then both separately tried for perjury, the crime of lying under oath. By October 1993, both had been convicted by their respective judges. The men were convicted of ocean dumping without a permit, lying to a Federal grand jury and lying to a Federal judge. Reilly was sentenced to 37 months in prison and fined $7,000, while Dowd faced five months in prison, five months in detention, and was sentenced $20,000.

As these investigations and trials were being held, activists attempted to remove the ash from Gonaïves. In December 1990, the American organizations Friends of Nature and the Haiti Communications Project, along with Gonaïves residents, mailed around 250 small envelopes of ash to Philadelphia’s Mayor Goode and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly (not to be confused with William P. Reilly of Coastal Carriers Inc). The letters to Mayor Goode were demanding that the government of Philadelphia do its part in financially contributing to the removal of the ash from Haiti. The letters to Reilly focused on asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help to contribute to the removal of the ash as well. Even though Reilly (of Coastal Carriers Inc.) and Dowd were convicted, neither of their judges ordered a cleanup for the ash pile left in Haiti. Groups from Greenpeace, Haiti Communications Project, the Haitian Collective for the Protection of the Environment and Alternative Development (COHPEDA), Essential Action, and Peace and Justice, all revisited the ash piles in December 1994 and took further samples. These groups also requested that the U.S. military assist the transportation of the ash back to the U.S., since the U.S. military had already been stationed in Haiti by the U.S. government to support a restoration of power to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide after a coup attempt to remove him. The U.S. military refused to help. During this time, the Haitian Minister for Environment and Mayors of Port-au-Prince and Gonaïves also called for the ash to be returned to Philadelphia. Evans Paul, the mayor of Port-au-Prince, even traveled to Washington D.C. in May 1992 in an attempt to gain congressional and public support for the ash being removed. 

As activists and officials continued to advocate for the removal of the ash from Gonaïves, shifting structures of waste management in New York City opened up a new opportunity for a solution. In 1996, New York City created the Trade Waste Commission with the plan to use it to revamp the city’s waste hauling practices. Soon after its creation, in August 1996, Eastern Services Inc. applied for a license to haul commercial trash out of  New York City. In conducting a routine background check on Eastern Services, the Trade Waste Commission found that one of the Eastern Services’ executives was Louis Paolino, a principal of Paolino and Sons, the company that the City of Philadelphia originally hired to ship out the waste that ended up in Haiti. New York City’s Trade Waste Commission agreed to give Eastern Services the license on the condition that they clean up the ash in Gonaïves as a sign of good faith. Since a contract with New York City would be very beneficial to Eastern Services, they agreed to contribute $100,000 towards the cleanup of the ash. The total cleanup cost was estimated at between $150,000 and $250,000, so even after this win, activists still had to look elsewhere for cleanup support. The deal between the Commission and Eastern also stated that the rest of the funds needed to be found by May 1998, or Eastern would be relieved of its financial obligation to the cleanup and given the contract anyway. The Haitian Minister of Environment, Yves Wainright, endorsed the Commission's plan in June 1997. The chairman of the Trade Waste Commission, Edward T. Ferguson wrote to Mayor Rendell of Philadelphia asking him to contribute the “modest sum” of $50,000 to the cleanup effort. Rendell refused on the grounds that the waste had ended up there as a result of poor handling by the private sector, and it was not the responsibility of the city to clean it up. 

As government officials and company higher-ups scrambled to try to put together the funds for cleanup, many activist organizations from both Haiti and the United States began to collaborate in 1998, creating Project Return to Sender. Essential Action, an organization based in Washington D.C., emerged as a coalitional leader of this project. In an effort to try to get officials to pay for the ash removal, they cited Vice President Al Gore’s book that called out the environmental harm caused by the international waste trade, and then asked citizens around the world to write to Al Gore and ask him to bring the ash home to the United States from Haiti. The effort encouraged people to write to Vice President Al Gore, Mayor Rendell of Philadelphia, as well as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to ask each to contribute to the cleanup of Gonaïves. 

In March and April of 1998, representatives of Project Return to Sender from the United States traveled to Port-au-Prince to meet with partner organizations, and held actions in front of the U.S. embassy to demand the return of the ash. The groups Witnesses for Peace and Voices for Haiti both did demonstrations on 13 March and 24 April of that year, and delivered a bag of ash to representatives at the U.S. embassy as a symbolic gesture of returning the ash to the sender. Earlier that year on Valentine's Day, activists had sent two hundred valentines with pink hearts to Philadelphia Mayor Rendell asking him to bring “Philly’s waste home.” Others put up “wanted” posters of Mayor Rendell across the city. 

As organizations based in the United States continued their efforts to get responses from U.S. government officials or corporations, Haiti-based organizations also continued efforts to pressure Haiti officials to comply with environmental justice efforts. The Haitian Collective for Environmental Protection and Alternative Development (COHPEDA) emerged as a leader in the coalition, and also as an important stakeholder in Haiti. In a letter to coalition members, COHPEDA described conversations they had had with Haiti’s Foreign Minister on 19 March 1998. Haitian ministry representatives, as well as representatives from Port Authority and COHPEDA were all present at the meeting, where they set a timeline of activities to start the work of returning the waste, which was scheduled to begin in May 1998. COHPEDA soon after reported that they were meeting weekly with the minister of the Haitian Foreign Office about plans for ash removal. However, COHPEDA was concerned these plans were not moving quickly enough, so they petitioned the Haiti government to take responsibility for the ash, on the basis that it was written into the constitution that they should not take foreign waste. US-based organizations eventually joined in on this call to the Haitian government, although they were hesitant to place any blame on Haiti’s government at first. 

After this effort targeting the Haitian government, more efforts targeting U.S. governments–especially that of the City of Philadelphia–began in earnest. The letter-writing specialist organization of Global Response, which was already a member of Project Return to Sender, began an effort to send letters to Philadelphia Mayor Rendell. The effort resulted in citizens writing hundreds and possibly thousands of letters to Mayor Rendell, all asking the Mayor to finance the return of the ash from Haiti. Mayor Rendell’s office responded to each of the letters with a standard message explaining how the office thought of the matter as a private, legal matter, out of the control of the City government. Upon receiving these response letters, recipients were then instructed by organizers with Project Return to Sender to leave the envelope unopened, and simply write in large letters “RETURN TO SENDER” on the mail. These “returned to sender” letters then reflooded Rendell’s office.

To better coordinate efforts, Project Return to Sender gathered again in Haiti in June 1999. The groups, which included representatives from over sixty activist organizations, passed a resolution asking the United States to take the ash back from Gonaïves, and asking the government of Haiti to ratify the Basel Convention. The Basel Convention was a set of accords adopted by dozens of countries internationally that set controls over the transboundary movements of hazardous waste. Around the same time, activists Ann Leonard, Dana Clark, and Heidie Quante attended a City of Philadelphia event in Washington, DC, and targeted Mayor Rendell and USAID members, asking them to provide financial assistance to return the ash. Many USAID representatives expressed that they were told by higher USAID officials not to give any assistance with the ash in Haiti, because other waste-dumped sites would then expect the United States or USAID to take their waste back as well. Leonard, Clark, and Quante pressed Mayor Rendell in the middle of the event, securing another $50,000 needed to return the ash to the US. Later during the same event, they yelled criticisms at Mayor Rendell as he took the stage. The people of Haiti also held demonstrations, with tens of thousands of Haitians in Gonaïves protesting the long wait for the return of the ash to the United States.

Waste Management Inc. bought Eastern Environmental Services in a merger in late 1998, placing the burden of the ash onto this new company. This new company upheld their end of the deal, and helped to finance a majority of the cost it took to remove the ash from Gonaïves.

The removal process itself took almost a year. The Haitian President’s office contributed some money to the efforts, and also oversaw the whole process. Haiti’s Ministry of Environment ensured that the surrounding environment was protected as the ash was removed, and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) ensured that the ash was properly treated as it was being removed and placed onto the returning boat. The Haitian Public Works Ministry provided the equipment for removal, and a team of over one hundred workers took over five months to finish the removal process. The Saint Lucia, a ship provided by Waste Management Inc., departed with the ash on 5 April 2000. 

While this was all happening, a team of both Haitian and American lawyers attempted to find a place in the United States to take the ash. After negotiations with, but was rejected by the governments of Florida, Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina, and the Cherokee Nation. The ash ended up in the Mountain View Reclamation Landfill, about 120 miles outside of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania.