It all started quite ordinary. The tug and barge were hired by a Louisiana businessman named Lowell Harrelson and his New York business partner Salvatore Avellino to transport 3,168 tons of household waste from a pier in Brooklyn to the port of Morehead City in North Carolina. Harrelson tried in this way to launch a pilot project to extract methane from garbage, but Avellino's interests lay in a slightly different plane. He was a caporegime in the Lucchese crime family, where he was in charge of the garbage disposal business throughout Long Island.
His wife was a co-owner of a company with the largest fleet of garbage trucks in the region, and the trucks of competitors trying to enter this market burned down at an enviable frequency.
Illegal dump in New Jersey overlooking the World Trade Center towers, 1973:
At the time of the events described, the United States was faced with a serious waste management problem. Between 1982 and 1987, nearly 3,000 municipal landfills were closed in the country, leading to a crisis in the waste management and recycling industry. The garbage had to be transported further and further, and its disposal became more and more expensive. The problem was especially acute in such densely populated regions as New York. Many landfills in close proximity to cities were overcrowded and closed, and garbage had to be dumped to the north of the state and to neighboring Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Thus, New York solved the problem with waste, and other states made good money on it. The garbage was taken out in large, multi-ton trucks, which was quite an expensive pleasure. This time, it became possible to use water transport for transportation, which, as you know, is the cheapest in terms of moving large volumes of cargo over long distances. In addition, Harrelson had an idea how to make additional money from the garbage by obtaining landfill gas.
On March 22, 1987, Break of Dawn tugged a 230-foot barge, Mobro 4000, loaded to capacity with cubed debris, and sailed slowly south along the New Jersey coast. At the port of Morehead City, the plan was to unload the barge by a local garbage truck and take all the foul-smelling cargo to the Jones County landfill. When the tug and barge approached the shore, local environmentalists made a request to the New York authorities for certificates for the garbage, ensuring that there were no hazardous or contaminated materials among the waste. The problem was that the New York authorities did not know what was on that barge. Only part of the garbage belonged to the city. The rest got on a barge from the town of Islip, which is located on the ocean coast of Long Island. In Aislip itself, the dump was already almost filled to capacity by that time, and the city authorities found the only possible solution to get rid of it.
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The solution was Avellino, who undertook to dispose of the garbage at a price of $ 68 per ton. At this point, Harrelson appeared with his idea for gas production and a ready-made solution with a landfill in North Carolina, which had to pay only $ 5 per ton. Then the scheme could be repeated again and again (since people will never stop producing garbage), while continuing to earn money from utilization and extraction of methane. After such bright prospects, the garbage from Islip was immediately loaded onto a barge and sent to Morehead City, without any unnecessary problems such as certificates and other things. But here environmentalists unexpectedly got into an excellent, as it seemed to everyone, business scheme. Having received no answer, they sounded the alarm and connected journalists from the local TV channel. Those, tired of the endless stories about deer knocked down on the road, felt a sensation and began toin the literal sense of the word, digging in other people's garbage. They made their way to the pier and found a hospital duck and dirty sheets with the name of the hospital stamped on them among the mountains of waste. The story made it to the evening news, where an agitated correspondent expressed her concern on the air that, in addition to dirty sheets, hazardous biomaterials may be on the barge, which must be buried in special burial grounds, and not at an ordinary landfill. This was followed by the reaction of the state authorities, who shared the concern of the correspondent and the voters who watched the plot for which they went to court, where they imposed a ban on accepting suspicious garbage at any of the North Carolina dumps. They made their way to the pier and found a hospital duck and dirty sheets with the name of the hospital stamped on them among the mountains of waste. The story made it to the evening news, where an agitated correspondent expressed her concern on the air that, in addition to dirty sheets, hazardous biomaterials may be on the barge, which must be buried in special burial grounds, and not at an ordinary landfill. This was followed by the reaction of the state authorities, who shared the concern of the correspondent and the voters who watched the plot for which they went to court, where they imposed a ban on accepting suspicious garbage at any of the North Carolina dumps. They made their way to the pier and found a hospital duck and dirty sheets with the name of the hospital stamped on them among the mountains of waste. The story made it to the evening news, where an agitated correspondent expressed her concern on the air that, in addition to dirty sheets, hazardous biomaterials may be on the barge, which must be buried in special burial grounds, and not at an ordinary landfill. This was followed by the reaction of the state authorities, who shared the concern of the correspondent and the voters who watched the plot for which they went to court, where they imposed a ban on accepting suspicious garbage at any of the North Carolina dumps.which are subject to burial in special burial grounds, and not at an ordinary landfill. This was followed by the reaction of the state authorities, who shared the concern of the correspondent and the voters who watched the plot for which they went to court, where they imposed a ban on accepting suspicious garbage at any of the North Carolina dumps.which are subject to burial in special burial grounds, and not at an ordinary landfill. This was followed by the reaction of the state authorities, who shared the concern of the correspondent and the voters who watched the plot for which they went to court, where they imposed a ban on accepting suspicious garbage at any of the North Carolina dumps.
On April 6, Break of Dawn, with an increasingly foul-smelling cargo in tow, left North Carolina and headed for Louisiana. Bypassing Florida, the "stinking flotilla" entered the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and then headed towards New Orleans. The new plan was to get rid of the cargo in the town of Avondale, in the Mississippi Delta, right across from New Orleans. But when the shores of Louisiana appeared on the horizon and the captain began to think that the end of the mission was near, he received a letter from the Department of the Environment of this state, informing them that they were refusing to accept uncertified and potentially dangerous cargo. While the owners were thinking about what to do next, the states of Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, that is, almost the entire coast of the Gulf of Mexico, joined the ban. Florida authorities did not express a ban,but they made it clear that if the barge went in their direction, it would appear very quickly.
By this time, the fate of the garbage had become national news and the whole country began to follow his adventures. The evening talk show hosts competed to see who would go through the funniest on this topic, and Johnny Carson suggested that a tug with a barge cross the Atlantic, go through the Suez Canal and drop the cargo in Iran. All America laughed at the joke, but in it he was not so far from the real problems faced by the owners of the garbage. By that time, they were definitely not laughing. Since in the USA there were no more options to dump the garbage, the tugboat had to once again turn around and go towards Mexico, hoping to get rid of the cargo there. In response, the Mexican government sent two warships to meet, which closely followed the movement of the barge.and their order was to keep New York garbage out of the country's territorial waters. We went to Belize, but the military was also involved there. The last hope was in the Bahamas, but from there a negative answer came.
Unexpectedly, the authorities of Key West, which is located on the southern tip of Florida, expressed their desire to receive garbage. They decided to use free garbage to expand the island's territory. But while the barge was heading in their direction, the news reached the governor of Florida, who brought in his environmentalists, who achieved another injunction. In total, six American states and three foreign states refused to accept New York garbage. The garbage barge began to resemble the Flying Dutchman, who cannot land on the shore and is doomed to plow the seas forever. Only instead of a glowing halo, she was surrounded by a terrible stench, from which the Dutchman would rather become "smelly."In early May, the captain was instructed by the cargo owner to anchor 5 miles from Key West to await the arrival of FEP representatives on board to inspect the cargo. The federal agents on board looked like people who had come to fight the deadly virus: special overalls, masks, thick gloves and a bunch of measuring equipment. The noise in the press took its toll and the agents expected to meet radioactive materials, hazardous biological waste, Jimmy Hoffa's corpse and even traces of alien civilizations. Instead, they found old rags, scraps of carpet, newspapers, magazines, boxes, bags, cans, car tires and other completely ordinary rubbish. There was nothing even a little dangerous on the barge. The worst thing they encountered there was the unbearable stench from the mountains of debris decomposing under the rays of the scorching sun.
After inspection, the garbage finally received the long-awaited certificate, but the story with it smelled so bad that not a single state wanted to lift the ban and the tug from the barge dangling in the wake had to go back to … New York. Avellino's garbage company beautifully shunned responsibility by declaring bankruptcy, effectively shifting the problem onto the shoulders of the Break of Dawn captain. Moreover, many states did not want the barge even to enter their waters. A senator from New Jersey protested sharply when the barge anchored at the George Washington Bridge. “We do not want other people's garbage in our waters,” he said. "And even more so we don't want garbage from New York." The fact whose it was, as it turned out, annoyed everyone even more than the lack of certificates.
On the morning of May 16, a tug with a barge anchored in the waters of the Upper New York Bay, two miles from the Statue of Liberty. At this moment in the Supreme Court of the state there was a decisive struggle between politicians to absolve themselves of responsibility for the fate of the trash. Each of them tried to get rid of the stinking problem in every possible way. In this case, they showed such activity that it began to seem as if the barge was not ordinary garbage, but tons of explosives, which were about to explode and destroy the entire state along with them. Islip's city manager flatly refused to take the barge back, offering to empty its cargo on the lawn in front of the mayor of New York, "so that it decomposes there along with other garbage that comes to the mayor for an appointment." "It's Islip's trash," retorted Ed Koch (then-mayor of New York), "I don't think he should be our problem."So two months passed, during which the barge still dangled in the waters of the bay and adorned the view of the main symbol of freedom and democracy.
On July 10, a judge finally ruled that the trash would be incinerated in the incinerators of an incinerator in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Local residents were never happy about this, but they could not challenge the decision. So that the city of Aislip does not remain aloof from the problem he himself created, the issue of disposal of 400 tons of ash and ash that will remain after burning was hung on it. “One small barge for New York and a huge bale of garbage problems for the whole country,” joked then-head of street cleaning Brendan Sexton after learning of the long-awaited court decision.
On September 1, the unloading of the barge began, and 10 days later, the ash, ash and other remains were transported by trucks to the landfill in Islip, where the whole story finally ended. It cost about $ 1 million to transport trash from New York to New York. The tug with a barge covered about 9500 kilometers during this time. The result of this high-profile story was the adoption in 1990 by the US Congress of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and the beginning of the active development of urban programs for sorting and recycling waste. Since then, the amount of garbage entering landfills has decreased by more than 35 percent.
PS Barge "Mobro 4000" has thundered all over the country due to the fact that 3168 tons of garbage traveled over 9500 km. Today, New York City alone dumps more than 23,000 tons of garbage every day in South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. If you add up the mileage of all the trucks that are involved in this process, you get a daily journey of 700,000 kilometers. In terms of volume, this is 7 barges Mobro 4000 daily, 50 weekly or 26000 every year.
P. З. S. The landfill gas business was even more promising than Harrelson and Avellino had envisioned. Just one former New York dump, Fresh Kills (once the largest in the world) produces enough methane every day to heat 30,000 homes. For the City of New York, this generates an annual profit of $ 12 million. If they then made all the necessary documents for the cargo, they would be millionaires.
And here is the second story
When in 1991 the act finally banned the dumping of waste into the ocean came into force, New York faced a spicy problem - it had nowhere to do with the so-called sludge. It is a dense mud-like mass with an unpleasant odor that remains as a result of one of the stages of sewage treatment and contains many harmful substances.
Up to this point, the problem was solved simply - the sludge was loaded into special tankers that went beyond the 100-mile zone, where the sludge was dumped directly into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It was much cheaper than disposing of the sludge in compliance with all environmental standards and regulations. Pisces, of course, all this was harmful, but they, as you know, do not know how to complain. The ban forced to look for new ways to solve the foul-smelling problem …
This is how special trains appeared, popularly nicknamed “Poo-Poo Choo-Choo Train” (in Russian it will be something like the Ka-ka Tu-tu locomotive). Every day, trains loaded with selected New York shit were sent to the other side of the country, to the town of Sierra Blanca, which is located in Texas, near the border with Mexico. One of the world's largest sludge burial grounds was located there.
Carrying shit far away (almost 3,400 kilometers from New York to Sierra Blanca) was a necessary measure. In New York state, hazardous waste disposal is prohibited by law, and other states have refused to accept hazardous and toxic waste in such amounts. But the business was done by people who know how to make offers from whom you can not get away - the company "Merco" from Long Island, which received a 168 millionth contract with the city, was associated with the Lucchese crime family. As a result, a landfill site was found on the very edge of American soil - in Texas.
Downtown Sierra Blanca:
There, for 4.5 million, a huge plot of land (517 square kilometers) was purchased left over from an unsuccessful development project to build a golf resort. The paperwork was handled by a company owned by a local judge and received a $ 20,000 commission. Immediately after the purchase, business guys from Long Island gave a one and a half million grant to one of the Texas universities for research that proved the safety of hazardous waste.
After they took on the salary of almost all local influential citizens, including the former sheriff and the current auditor of the district. As a result, without any public hearings or other nonsense, a five-year contract was signed for the disposal of New York sludge. They received permission from the state authorities in a record 23 days. And the very next day, freight trains moved southward, leaving behind an unpleasant smell in the air and a pleasant heaviness in someone's pockets. The process of exporting shit in wagons across the country has begun.
Almost every day, 45 railway cars arrived to Sierra Blanca, loaded to capacity with sludge, which, after unloading, was evenly scattered over the vast territory of the burial ground. The process itself, according to the documents, took place not as the disposal of hazardous waste, but as the fertilization of land using "bio-fertilizers". For the economy of a city with a population of just over 500 and almost unchanged since the days of the Wild West, New York shit turned out to be a real gold mine. The locals quickly stopped paying attention to the stench that the wind carried - that's how money smells, they said. The landfill has become the largest employer in the city.
Just a year later, the first environmental problems began. On the part of the local population not involved in business and environmental organizations, attempts were made to close the burial ground more than once, but all of them ended with formal replies or amusing explanations. For example, to one of the complaints about a strong stench on the streets of Sierra Blanca, the state authorities replied that it smelled of the city's sewage treatment plants. And this despite the fact that in Sierra Blanca there was no sewage treatment plant in sight. There's not even a sewage system there. At one of the hearings, the judge (the same one) who made another decision in favor of the utilizers said that the city's economy is much more important than the unpleasant smell and poor health of its residents, and they should be grateful to God for a gift in the form of New York's mountains of shit.
It all ended by itself when New York learned to recycle its own shit. The last train left for Texas in 2001. The sludge is now dried in-situ and the resulting mass is burned or used to make fertilizers. True, not all treatment facilities have the necessary equipment and the sludge has to be transported between stations by the same tankers that used to throw it into the ocean. Not to say that this is the perfect technology, but, in any case, this is the best they could come up with. Plus, don't mess up other states and the environment. And the fish are happy.
When in 2009 they decided to clean up the Hudson of toxic waste that Con Edison had been dumping there for many years, they followed exactly the same scenario: truck-wagon-Texas. And another 700 tons of hazardous waste found their new home on the other side of America, and New York fish were saved again.