The Trash Ship That Became a Symbol of America’s Toxic Waste Problem

Summary

Lawless Planet – “The Trash Ship That Became a Symbol of America’s Toxic Waste Problem” Wondery | January 5, 2026
Host: Zach Goldbaum

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Episode Overview

This gripping episode of Lawless Planet unpacks the saga of the Khian Sea—a ship loaded with Philadelphia’s incinerator ash that spent years wandering the globe, searching for a country willing to accept its potentially toxic cargo. Host Zach Goldbaum follows the trash’s journey as it becomes an international incident and a symbol of “garbage imperialism,” exploring how this episode forced the world to reckon with the ethics of hazardous waste disposal and rich countries exporting their pollution to poorer ones.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Philadelphia’s Mounting Trash Crisis (05:10)

• Setting the Scene:
  Philadelphia, overwhelmed by garbage in the 1980s, struggled as local landfills filled up. A sanitation worker strike in 1986 exacerbated the situation, resulting in mountains of rotting trash piled through the city.
• The Short-Term Solution:
  The city turned to burning trash in incinerators around the clock. But this created a new issue: massive quantities of ash laced with heavy metals and toxins, dubbed by news outlets as a "Mount Everest of ash."
• Desperation Breeds Bad Deals:
  Unable to find local disposal options due to toxicity and new ocean-dumping bans, Philadelphia contracted Joseph Paolino and Sons to ship 15,000 tons of ash monthly overseas at just $40/ton (06:55).

“Exporting your toxic trash can be cheaper than disposing of it at home.”
— Zach Goldbaum (06:55)

The Khian Sea’s Odyssey (00:00–09:00)

• Initial Dumping Attempt:
  The Khian Sea set sail in 1986, with the first stop planned for the Bahamas. The plan fell through; rumors suggested either toxicity concerns or failed bribery. The ship was denied entry by destination after destination: Costa Rica, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Bermuda—nobody wanted American ash.
• Desperate Measures:
  Captain Arturo Fuentes Garcia, exhausted and under pressure, continued searching for a sympathetic port. Throughout its odyssey, the ship struggled with exhausted crews, financial pressures, and mounting international scrutiny.
• A PR Nightmare:
  When the ship finally tried unloading in Haiti, day laborers—told the ash was fertilizer—spread it on fields before the Haitian government intervened (01:52).

“His crew was exhausted. The ship still had 10,000 more tons of ash to find a home for. The last thing he wanted was to take back what they’d gotten rid of.”
— Zach Goldbaum (01:52)

• Publicity Stunt Gone Wrong:
  A company rep, desperate to show the ash’s safety, ate a handful in front of cameras. Haitian officials remained unconvinced (01:45–01:52).

“This is how worried I am of its toxicity.”
— Lowell Harrelson, company rep (01:45)

The Mobro 4000: The Other Trash Ship (09:00–15:47)

• Parallel Disaster:
  Lowell Harrelson tried to turn NY’s trash into energy but faced mob control in sanitation (10:34).
• National Attention:
  The Mobro 4000 loaded with Long Island trash was denied by North Carolina (due to rumors of hazardous hospital waste) and then by every other port, chased away by angry crowds, the US, Mexico, Belize, and the Bahamas (12:16–13:48).
• Greenpeace’s Iconic Protest:
  Kenny Bruno and Greenpeace made news with a giant “Next Time, Try Recycling” banner after climbing aboard the stranded barge off Manhattan (14:33).

“We hung a big banner on it that said, next time, try recycling … the Statue of Liberty and the skyline behind this little garbage barge.”
— Kenny Bruno (14:39)

Activism, Fallout, and Global Consequences (15:47–31:20)

• Greenpeace Exposes the Ash in Haiti (15:47):
  After locals discovered the ash was being called “fertilizer,” Kenny Bruno and crew tested the pile—finding cadmium, lead, and dioxins, confirming toxicity (16:48).
• Khian Sea’s Escapes and Crimes (17:00–22:00):
  The ship made a midnight escape from Haiti, returned to the US briefly, then deftly dodged authorities after the suspicious burning of the targeted unloading pier in Delaware Bay (18:04).
• Shadowy Voyage, Final Solution (22:00–25:30):
  Ordered by its operators, the Khian Sea illegally dumped ash into the Atlantic (and later the Indian Ocean), using a bulldozer to push the material overboard along maritime routes. The ship was repeatedly renamed (Felicia, Pellicano), and logs were altered to cover up the crimes.
• Return to Sender—Activists Respond (25:30–26:00):
  Volunteers in Haiti collected and mailed handfuls of ash back to Philadelphia and the EPA administrators, demanding accountability.

“I myself brought a small jar of ash back on the airplane and brought it to Philadelphia and delivered it to the mayor’s office. … Take it back, please, and then go take the rest of it back.”
— Kenny Bruno (25:45)

The Ash’s Final Fate & Regulatory Impact (26:00–31:20)

• No Clear Responsibility:
  Philadelphia denied liability, claiming reliance on a subcontractor. The orphaned ash sat in Haiti for years while residents experienced ailments and blamed the so-called “dech toxique.”
• Political Football:
  It took until 2000 for Waste Management Inc. to collect the ash, fumigate, and attempt to repatriate it to the US. Despite new tests that deemed it nonhazardous, protests and bureaucracy delayed burial for two more years. It finally found a home in a Pennsylvania landfill—just 120 miles from its origin (2002).
• Genesis of ‘Garbage Imperialism’ – The Basel Convention:
  The Khian Sea and Mobro 4000 debacles galvanized the international community. In 1992, the UN adopted the Basel Convention, restricting hazardous waste exports from wealthy to poor countries (29:39).

“A rich country has to deal with its own problem and it’s not going to fly to say … we’re going to dump our trash there.”
— Kenny Bruno (29:00)

• Loopholes and Ongoing E-Waste Crisis:
  Goldbaum notes that exporting e-waste labeled as ‘recyclable’ continues today—a loophole allowing toxic waste shipments under a different pretense (30:09).
• Enduring Lesson:
  The Khian Sea’s journey is now seen as a cautionary tale on the moral imperative to manage one’s own waste.

“The Khian Sea is mostly important as a parable about taking responsibility—or not—and about the persistence needed to get people to take responsibility.”
— Kenny Bruno (31:20)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote / Moment | |-----------|----------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:45 | Lowell Harrelson | “This is how worried I am of its toxicity.” [Eats ash to prove safety—unsuccessfully] | | 07:37 | Kenny Bruno | “It seems crazy that you would think about everything except dealing with the problem yourself …” | | 14:39 | Kenny Bruno | “We hung a big banner on it that said, next time, try recycling … the Statue of Liberty and the skyline …” | | 18:04 | Zach Goldbaum | “…only days later, the pier where the ship was supposed to dock caught fire. … a remarkable coincidence.” | | 25:45 | Kenny Bruno | “I myself brought a small jar of ash back on the airplane and delivered it to the mayor’s office …” | | 29:00 | Kenny Bruno | “…a rich country has to deal with its own problem and it’s not going to fly to say that … we’re going to dump our trash there.” | | 31:20 | Kenny Bruno | “The Khian Sea is mostly important as a parable about taking responsibility …” |

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Philadephia’s Trash Crisis: 05:10–07:57
• Greenpeace: Kenny Bruno’s Introduction: 06:08–07:57
• Khian Sea’s Wandering Begins: 07:57–09:00
• Mobro 4000 and Media Spectacle: 10:24–15:47
• Greenpeace Tests Ash in Haiti: 15:47–16:48
• Midnight Escape and Illegal Dumping: 18:04–22:00, 22:00–25:30
• Symbolic Return of Ash: 25:30–26:04
• Final US Disposal & Policy Reforms: 26:04–31:20

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Conclusion: Lasting Legacy

The story of the Khian Sea—and the Mobro 4000—prompted a reckoning over hazardous waste exports. It spurred the creation of global regulation (Basel Convention), stirred public awareness about the true costs and ethics of waste disposal, and remains a parable on environmental responsibility. Yet as Goldbaum and Kenny Bruno warn, loopholes persist, and “garbage imperialism” continues, especially via e-waste—reminding us that, in the end, the world’s trash remains everyone’s problem.

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Transcript

[Zach Goldbaum]

Wondry subscribers can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now. Join Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. On December 22, 1987, a ship called the Kion Sea anchored at a wharf in the Haitian port city of Gonaive. Using a ramp, a Crane, and about 30 Haitian day workers, the ship began unloading its cargo, a dark powder that workers were told was fertilizer. There was a lot of it to move, about 14,000 tons. As it piled up next to the ship, some farmers began buying up the material and spreading it on their fields. Five weeks later, the job stopped. Still wasn't finished. But on January 31, 1988, the Haitian minister of Commerce issued an order forbidding any more of the ship's cargo to be brought ashore. Not only that, the Cayence Sea also had to take back the 4,000 tons it had already offloaded. The reason for Haiti's change of heart was that the dark powder wasn't fertilizer. It was incinerated trash from Philadelphia. There were rumors that it was toxic. The Chaon Seas operators sent a representative to go naive to try to convince the Haitian government that it was safe. Their man on the ground did his best. Wearing a Ringer T and a red trucker hat, he led an assembled group of reporters and news cameras to the mountain of blackened powder, scooped a handful, and ate it.

[Lowell Harrelson]

This is how worried I am of his toxicity.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Haitian officials weren't convinced. The boat's captain, Arturo Fuentes Garcia, stalled for time, for reasons we'll get into. The Cayence Sea had been sailing for over a year already. His crew was exhausted. The ship still had 10,000 more tons of ash to find a home for. The last thing he wanted was to take back what they'd gotten rid of. So late on the night of February 4, an order was given. Ropes were thrown off, the boat's engines fired up. While Haiti slept, the Chaencee escaped into the Caribbean in search of a new dumping ground for what would become the most well traveled American trash in history. From wondery, I'm zach goldbaum, and this is lawless planet. Each week we tell a new story about the true crimes fueling the climate crisis and the people fighting to save the planet or destroy it.

[Kenny Bruno]

If this had been a beach in France, they would have run to get it in a minute. But because it was Haiti, all the authorities in Philadelphia could just say, no, we're not going to do anything about.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Emirates Premium economy class elevates the flying experience with an entirely new level of comfort and sophistication. Settle into wider cream leather seats with generous legroom and enjoy priority boarding. Savor premium dining with Royal Dalton China paired with Chandon sparkling wine and exclusive business class vintages. The 13.3 inch HD entertainment system offers thousands of options for your journey. This isn't just Premium Economy, it's Emirates Premium Economy. Exceptional service meets unmatched comfort at a smarter price point. To find out more about Emirates premium economy, visit emirates.com us that's emirates.com us. In the 1980s, Philadelphia was up to its neck in trash. The city was producing more garbage than it could get rid of. Landfills the city had long relied on were running out of room. Emergency dumps were set up, but they weren't enough. Sanitation workers were exhausted and overworked. They demanded a wage increase to match the surge in labor needs. They were denied. So on July 1, 1986, 10,000 city workers went on strike. Philadelphia's trash problem became a trash crisis. Mountains of garbage piled up throughout the city. The rat population exploded. The hot summer weather only fermented the stench of garbage, and residents protested these conditions until the city caved and the strike was resolved 20 days later. To reduce the sheer volume of the trash backlog, multiple incinerators burned garbage around the clock. But now Philadelphia was stuck with what news reports called a Mount Everest of ash. It had to go somewhere. But where? Believe it or not, the answer used to be to the bottom of the ocean. Philadelphia, like most Eastern Seaboard cities, dumped their waste into the Atlantic for decades. But that practice was finally outlawed in 1980. The other issue was that the type of trash modern cities were producing was increasingly toxic, thanks to plastics and heavy metals. Fewer towns wanted to risk housing and other cities hazardous waste in their landfills where it might leach into the local water supply. Philadelphia was running out of options. So when city leaders found a contractor who said they could ship the trash overseas, they jumped. But that decision would backfire, thanks to some tenacious activists who were determined not to let the rest of the world become America's dumping ground.

[Kenny Bruno]

I started with Greenpeace back in 1985 as a door to door canvasser. After the Rainbow Warrior was bombed and sunk. I felt this must be an important organization for the French Secret Service to take it that seriously.

[Zach Goldbaum]

That's environmental activist Kenny Bruno. Back in the 80s, he became Greenpeace's point person on what they called their Toxics campaign, working to prevent the unsafe disposal of toxic waste and incinerators and landfills. Proper toxic Waste disposal was expensive, as much as $200 per ton. And some cities like Philadelphia, were going to extreme lengths to save money.

[Kenny Bruno]

We discovered that a lot of toxic waste and hazardous waste was being exported from the US to poorer countries, to.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Developing countries, because it turns out that exporting your toxic trash can be cheaper than disposing of it at home. In Philly's case, a contractor called Joseph Paolino and Sons made a deal with the city to get rid of 15,000 tons of incinerator ash each month for the low, low price of $40 per ton. The first ash shipments destination the Bahamas, where it was slated to be used as ground fill for a man made island. So in September 1986, the Cayence Sea pulled out of Philadelphia's harbor and sailed south to Kenny Bruno. The whole idea of exporting trash even to a relatively developed country like the Bahamas was outrageous.

[Kenny Bruno]

It seems crazy that you would think about everything except dealing with the problem yourself so much as you would put it on a barge and send it to the Caribbean. Anything to avoid taking responsibility yourself. So we developed a project to stop that foreign.

[Zach Goldbaum]

As the Kion Sea sailed south, Bahamian officials suddenly announced that the deal was off. If the ship made any attempt to offload its ashy cargo, it would be turned away. The reasons for the abrupt change of heart were unclear. Maybe the Bahamas had been warned that the ash might be more toxic than they'd been told. Or maybe the shipping company hauling the trash hadn't bribed the right officials. Either way, the Cayenne Sea was now adrift without a destination. The ship's operators scrambled to find a new site. They reached out to Costa Rica, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Chile and Bermuda. Basically an entire Beach Boys song of destinations all declined. Nobody wanted to touch the Cayenne Sea. Its captain, Arturo Fuentes Garcia, was literally treading water. Here he is via radio.

[Lowell Harrelson]

Right now I am at the Caribbean waiting for orders. I don't know what will be my final destination.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Month after month, the Cayence Sea wandered the Caribbean. It docked in Florida for a while, then it went to Jamaica to stock supplies. Later, it stopped in Puerto Rico. After that, the Dutch Antilles. Despite the beautiful locations, this was no pleasure cruise. Time was money and the Cayenne Sea was burning it. Nearly a year after sailing out of Philadelphia, the ship was still adrift and still loaded with 14,000 tons of toxic, incinerated garbage. Until it was disposed of, the city of Philadelphia wouldn't pay a penny. On the bright side, so far the story hadn't attracted Much media attention. But that was about to change, thanks to another shipment of trash setting out from New York. Lowell Harrelson was an entrepreneur from Alabama, always on the hunt for his next business venture. In the 1980s, he heard about someone in Westchester, New York, who figured out how to turn garbage into alternative energy. It was big news at the time that the landfills in New York were running out of room. So Lowell put two and two together. If trash could be recycled and harnessed into energy that could be sold, it would be revolutionary and very profitable. In 2019, NPR's Planet Money interviewed Harrelson about his radical scheme.

[Lowell Harrelson]

Garbage to energy. It looked like a very simple deal. Everybody agreed this had merit. It was a question of putting the pieces together.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The problem was on the east coast, the sanitation business was run by organized crime.

[Lowell Harrelson]

Garbage in New York, that was like a controlled substance. There was a cartel that controlled the flow of garbage, and that's who you had to deal with.

[Zach Goldbaum]

We actually did a whole episode about the mob in New York garbage called Operation Wasteland, if you want to learn more. Anyway, Lowell Harrelson reached out to a guy named Salvatore Avellino, a capo for the Lucchese crime family, who had a lock on New York's trash business. Sal's main job was driving around the boss of the Lucchese family, Antonio Tony Ducks Corallo in a 1982 black Jaguar.

[Lowell Harrelson]

The FBI spoke to me two or three times. You know, what are you up to? I'm hauling garbage. You got any? Throw it on there. And that's when he said, oh, you know you're dealing with a mob. No, I didn't know that. But it doesn't matter.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Lowell offered to buy the mob's garbage separately. He made a deal with a landfill in North Carolina, and his plan was to ship the garbage to the landfill, incinerate it, and convert the trash into methane gas, which he would then sell. Lowell's project launched on March 22, 1987. He chartered a tugboat and a barge called called the Mobro 4000 to load more than 3,000 tons of trash from the Islip landfill on Long Island. Then they sailed south for North Carolina.

[Lowell Harrelson]

Honey, I was watching that like a momma'd watch over her new baby. At that time, my life, my whole life was tied to that thing.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Unlike the Cayenne sea, the Mobra 4000 made news before reaching North Carolina. A rumor spread that its cargo contained biohazardous hospital waste. Local news took notice and sent a helicopter to shoot footage of the barge approaching Moorhead City, a quaint fishing town. Once the story broke, there was a public outcry. It was a bad look for North Carolina, letting Yankees dump their trash on a scenic stretch of southern coastline. Crowds gathered at the harbor in Moorhead City to protest the MO4000's around. It worked. North Carolina officials turned the boat away from there. The Mobra 4000 made news everywhere it went. It sailed down the coast looking for a new home for its trash. Louisiana declined. So did Alabama. Mexico even sent its navy to stop the Mobro 4000 from landing. From there, the ship set sail for Belize and then the Bahamas. Both countries dispatched defense forces until the Mobro 4000 left its waters. Although the trash barge never saw combat, it did smell like active duty. Sorry.

[Lowell Harrelson]

Here at home today, or at least in the neighborhood, the garbage barge almost found a home. Almost, but not quite. The barge, loaded with 31 tons of garbage, was going to dump it as landfill for a developer in the Bahamas. The Bahamian government turned the deal down. The barge sails on.

[Zach Goldbaum]

After two months at sea, the Mobro 4000 returned to New York on May 17, 1987. Even then, officials refused to let the boat dock. It took three more months of court proceedings before the garbage was incinerated and hauled back to the landfill it came from. While the Mobro 4000 sat bobbing in the harbor, awaiting its fate, Kenny, Bruno and other members of Greenpeace were on their way to greet it.

[Kenny Bruno]

So we met up down at the marina in manh on East 23rd street, started driving out toward the barge. The barge was not high, so it was pretty easy to clamber onto the barge from the inflatable.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Once on board the Mobro 4000, Kenny and his colleagues staged an iconic moment of Greenpeace history.

[Kenny Bruno]

We hung a big banner on it that said, next time, try recycling. We had made this banner really big so that it would be visible from the shore, and basically they held it up. And then I drove the Zodiac a little bit away with the photographer so he could get some good shots. We got some really spectacular photos because, you know, you have the Statue of Liberty and the skyline behind this little garbage barge.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Thanks to the Saga of the Mobro 4000, more Americans were now aware of the problem of cities producing more trash than they could dispose of. But the problem hadn't gone away, and soon the Cayenne Sea would make America's trash crisis impossible to ignore. While the mobro 4000 story was winding down, the kayak ion seas was picking up. Here's Kenny Bruno.

[Kenny Bruno]

Greenpeace got A call from a group in Haiti called Friends of the Earth saying they've unloaded all this ash on this beach in Gonaive, Haiti. What is it? What do you know about it? And that's when I went down with a small crew of people to investigate.

[Zach Goldbaum]

By the time Kenney arrived, the Kayance Sea had unloaded nearly 4,000 tons of ashes. Locals had been told it was fertilizer, so they had reportedly begun spreading it on their fields.

[Kenny Bruno]

There was no security. There was nobody around. Nobody asked us anything. We walked straight to the pile of ash, which was big, was like 8ft high, probably at least 4ft wide, and long, like a football field long. And we just walked right up to it and started taking samples so that we'd be able to bring them to the lab and find out what was in it.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Greenpeace had tested other samples of Philadelphia's incinerator ash, so Kenny was pretty sure he knew what they would high levels of multiple toxic substances, including cadmium, lead, and dioxins. Reports by the EPA and the Centers for Disease Control had supported Greenpeace's analysis. When Haitian officials found out about the ash's potentially toxic contents, they ordered the Chaon Sea to stop unloading its cargo. Armed soldiers were dispatched to enforce the command. The Kayaan Sea was given until February 16 to reload its ash and leave Haiti. But on the morning of February 5, 1988, the Chaon Sea was gone, and it had left a parting gift, about 4,000 tons of incinerated ash. Over the following weeks, there were rumors of sightings of the Cayence Sea around the world. But then, in late February of 1988, it showed up in the unlikeliest of places. The mouth of the Delaware river outside Philadelphia. The Kion Sea had come home. The crew had been told by the ship's operators that there was a deal in place for them to return the ash to Joseph Paolino and Sons and go home. But like everything else in the Kayaan Sea story, nothing went as planned. First, activists mobbed the pier to protest the Chaencee's return. Then, only days later, the pier where the ship was supposed to dock caught fire. The timing was suspicious, as was the fact that Joseph Paolino and Sons owned the pier. And now, because it was badly damaged, the Kayance Sea couldn't dock, which meant the shipping company couldn't return the ash. Even an attorney for Paolino and Sons admitted to a reporter that it was, quote, a remarkable coincidence. But nobody could prove who set the fire. In the meantime, the Environmental Protection Agency sent agents in hazmat suits to test the Kayan Sea's cargo. This time they released a report declaring the ash was not toxic. Even so, at this point, the Kion Sea was a political hot potato. One landfill after another rejected the boat's proposals to dump its ash. The Caence Sea was caught in limbo, unable to stay, but also forbidden to leave because the Coast Guard had deemed the ship unseaworthy and its registration had expired. One morning In May of 1988, Captain Fuentes radioed the Coast Guard that the Cayenne Sea would be leaving Delaware Bay for a few hours. He said they needed to dump the ship's bilge water and run some engine tests. But after it left, it never returned. Defying the Coast Guard's orders wasn't the only law that the Cayenne Sea broke. That day, the crew also pulled a maritime dine and dash by bailing on an $8,500 bill owed to a Baltimore provisions company. Their tab was a feast. Dozens of crates of fresh fruit and vegetables, 100 pounds of European cheese and almost 350 pounds of fish, octopus, pork, chicken and spring lamb. Apparently, shuttling toxic ash around the world works up a pretty fierce appetite. Over the next few months, the Cayenne Sea moved like a ghost ship. Rumors of sightings trailed in its wake as it crossed the Atlantic and made its way up the African coast, past the Cape Verde Islands, Senegal and Morocco. It was enough to make the Cayenne Sea seem almost mythic. But for the crew aboard, the years long voyage was grueling with no end in sight. The Kayancy's captain Arturo Fuentes, hit his breaking point in August of 1988 when the ship docked in Yugoslavia for repairs. His trash delivery had turned into a trash odyssey. Fuentes threatened to quit. He wanted his life back. The Cayancy's operators knew they couldn't lose him. Nobody else would take on such a doomed job. So they flew Fuentes wife and infant child from Honduras to Yugoslavia to lift his spirits. And he agreed to stay on. The operators even tried to give Fuentes a clean slate by renaming the ship the Felicia. But the reputation of its cargo was a curse. Week after week, the ship was turned away from one country after another. Greece, the Philippines, Sri Lanka. The boat had officially been at sea for over two years. Years. Then, in November of 1988, a ship resembling the Felicia docked in Singapore. This time it was called the Pellicano. But something else was different too. It had no cargo. Nine months earlier, when the Kayancee fled Haiti. In the middle of the night, Captain Fuentes received a message from the ship's operator telling him to head for the Bahamas and and pick up a bulldozer. Fuentes did as he was told. From there, Fuentes sailed to Florida to meet with his boss from the shipping company. According to Fuentes, the shipping boss offered the Kayance crew a pay increase if they would bulldoze the ash into the Atlantic Ocean illegally. Of course, before they could begin, a last minute deal came in for the Kayance Sea to dump its cargo in a Pennsylvania landfill. When the Cayencee reached the Delaware Bay, that's when the dock suspiciously caught fire and the arrangement fell apart. After that, according to Fuentes, he was ordered to ignore the Coast Guard sail for Africa and shove ash overboard along the way. Once again, he did as he was told. But after two weeks of dumping ash into the Atlantic, the bulldozer broke. There were still thousands of tons left, way too much to move by hand. So Fuentes boss arranged to have the bulldozer repaired in Yugoslavia. This is why the Cayenne Sea went there, not to fix the ship. Once the bulldozer was operational again, Fuentes was told to head for Sri Lanka and then Singapore and dump the rest of the cargo along the way. Like a good captain, he obeyed orders. Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, the rest of Philadelphia's incinerated ash sank and settled at the bottom of the sea. Whether the material was toxic or not, Mother Nature would soon find out. After docking in Singapore, an associate of Fuentes boss boarded the ship, had all of its dumping equipment removed and replaced the boat's logbook with a fake one. The goal was to erase the evidence of the Kayancy's crimes. But years later, in court, Fuentes came clean. His testimony sealed the case. The ship's operators, who until then had denied dumping the ash, were convicted of making false statements to a grand jury. One was also convicted of one count of ocean dumping. The Kayaan Sea was eventually dismantled into scrap metal. The trash ship became trash itself. But the mess it had left behind in Haiti still had to be cleaned up. The saga of Philadelphia's incinerator ash had one final chapter. In the summer of 1991, on a hot afternoon in Go naive Haiti, a group of volunteers sat at folding tables, stuffing envelopes. Half were addressed to Wilson Good, the mayor of Philadelphia. The other half were for William K. Riley, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Inside the envelopes there was a handful of black grainy powder, incinerated ash dumped three years earlier. By the Kayan Sea. They were returning the city's 4,000 tons of ash one postage stamp at a time. Ever since the ash was left in Gonaive, locals noticed fish and livestock dying in suspicious ways. Many residents fell ill or suffered strange symptoms. All of them blamed it on what they called de ch toxique toxic ash. The return to sender campaign was their way of demanding that Philadelphia take responsibility for what it had dumped on Haiti. Kenny Bruno remembers being part of it.

[Kenny Bruno]

I myself brought a small jar of ash back on the airplane and brought it to Philadelphia and delivered it to the mayor's office. This was my, like, symbolic, small scale return to senate. It's just a small jar. Take it back, please, and then go take the rest of it back.

[Zach Goldbaum]

The campaign caught media attention, but Philadelphia officials refused to help. In their view, the city bore no responsibility because the Cayence Sea was operated by a subcontractor. Therefore, the ship's owners and crew were the ones in charge of its cargo. What they did with it was out of the city's control. The dispute dragged on for a decade. Haiti was helpless, and Philadelphia wouldn't budge. Then, In April of 2000, nearly 15 years after the Kayance Sea left on its voyage, someone finally stepped in to clean up the mess. Wm, or waste management, described themselves as North America's leading environmental solutions provider. Which is corporate speak for they're a massive trash company. And back in 2000, they needed some good PR. The SEC was investigating them for a corporate accounting scandal, and they were in the middle of a class action lawsuit with their own shareholders. So they arranged for the ash to be fumigated, then transported from Haiti to Florida. There it was tested for toxicity. This time, the results were unanimous. The waste was considered non hazardous by the EPA standards. In the year 2000, the Kayon Sea's cargo was deemed acceptable for disposal in any US landfill. It was just one catch. The ash had too much history. The legacy of the Kayance Sea was still toxic, even if the ash itself was not. Two years passed, with state after state rejecting the ashes for various reasons. Georgia feared the ash was infected with hog cholera because there had been an outbreak of the disease in Haiti. Louisiana refused because they didn't trust the fact that Philadelphia wouldn't take it back themselves. Florida didn't give a reason, but backed out at the last minute. Waste management even tried to get the Cherokee nation to take it, but they wisely declined. Finally, in June 2002, a compromise was struck. Florida's department of environmental protection offered to cover the $600,000 transport costs if Pennsylvania would take the ash. Pennsylvania agreed. Days later, the ash arrived at what would be its final resting place, the Mountain View Reclamation Landfill In Franklin County, Pennsylvania, only 120 miles from the incinerator where the ash was born. Activists threw it a welcome home party, complete with an ash themed cake. I'm not sure what the cake was actually made of, but presumably no cadmium or dioxin was involved. One of the few silver linings of the sagas of the Kayan sea and the Mobro 4000 was that they brought attention to what some people have called garbage imperialism. Here's Kenny Bruno.

[Kenny Bruno]

What came out of the Cayenne Sea and to some extent the Mountain Mobro garbage barge scandal was an awareness that a rich country has to deal with its own problem and it's not going to fly to say that, oh, Africa doesn't have enough pollution and they can make some money off this, so we're going to dump our trash there. So because of the awareness that those cases brought, the international community and especially the developing nations got together and said, this cannot be your solution.

[Zach Goldbaum]

In 1992, many of those developing nations led the charge in pushing the United nations to adopt an agreement called the Basel Convention, which makes it harder for wealthy countries to dump their hazardous waste on poorer ones.

[Kenny Bruno]

It's interesting that during the negotiations of the Basel Convention, African countries were the strongest in saying, no, we are not going to be dumping grounds, and they insisted on a strong convention to prevent that.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Unfortunately, the Basel Convention has loopholes. The biggest one is that by calling something recyclable rather than waste, you can still ship it pretty much anywhere. For example, the US sends 2,000 shipping containers full of old phones, tablets and computers to Southeast Asia every month to be recycled. In reality, less than a quarter of this e waste gets recycled. The rest gets taken apart by hand by informal workers who resell some parts and burn the rest, exposing themselves and their communities to all sorts of toxins. It is a mess, and it's only getting worse as technology accelerates. Fortunately, countries like Haiti, Panama and the Bahamas have pushed back. But until more efficient and affordable methods of processing and disposing of trash are developed, the temptations of garbage imperialism will always linger. One man's trash is still trash, even if you try to convince someone else that it's treasure. And as we've learned from the story of the Kayancy, in the end, it's still yours to deal with.

[Kenny Bruno]

The kayencee is mostly important as a parable about taking responsibility or not, and about the persistence that is needed to get people to take responsibility. I think the reason that people are still talking about it over 30 years later is the power of the parable Foreign.

[Zach Goldbaum]

On the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short [e-mail] survey. On the next episode of Lawless Planet, Just when a Florida wildlife cop thought he was out, he's pulled back in for one last mission. An undercover sting of an alligator poaching ring.

[Lowell Harrelson]

I reach down to grab that damn.

[Zach Goldbaum]

Thing by its snout and pull him up the embankment and that damn gator.

[Lowell Harrelson]

Comes back to life.

[Zach Goldbaum]

And I'm thinking, holy, holy shit, this thing's gonna kill me out here. For today's episode, we relied heavily on the Toxic Ship by Simone M. Mueller as well as Waste wars by Alexander Clapp, plus the reporting of Greenpeace, NPR's Planet Money, the Philadelphia Enquirer, and the Philadelphia Daily News. Lawless Planet is produced and hosted by me, Zach Goldbaum. This episode was written by British Brown. Our senior producer and senior story editor is Derek John. Senior producer for Wondery is Andy Herman. Our senior managing producer is Lata Pandya. Our managing producer is Jake Kleinberg. Our associate producer is Lexi Pirie. Music and sound design by Kenny Kusiak. Dialogue edit by George Drabing Hicks. Our music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Frison Sync. Fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our legal counsel is Deb Drews. Executive producers are Marshall Louie and Jenny Lauer. Beckman for One Dream. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.