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| The Khian Sea really isn't a Sea? |
Dr. Martin Specter was selling human body parts through the mail.
Crazy killers like Gary Heidnik and Joseph Kallinger were titillating the public.
The most astounding killers were an English teacher and the principal of Upper Merion High School.
Negative news was overflowing in Philadelphia during the 1980s and early 1990s.
One negative news story that received international coverage was emblematic of Philadelphia in that era. It involved a ship roaming the globe, seeking a place to dump Philly’s toxic garbage.
The city was burning a lot of its trash during those years, but the process left tons of toxic ash to be disposed. In 1986, just about every landfill on the East Coast refused to accept 15,000 tons of Philadelphia ash.
The contractor hired to get rid of it, finally had it loaded onto an old tub the Khian Sea.
Its first destination was an artificial island in the Bahamas. However, the Bahamas refused the gift.
For almost two years, the Khian Sea traveled to every poor nation it could reach but none would take the toxic cargo. Some of the ash was dumped in Haiti when no one was looking, which the city eventually had to clean up.
Here is a list – we are not sure if its complete – of the Khian Sea’s travels to find a welcome port: Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Morocco, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka and Singapore.
Along the way the ship changed names a couple of times and had a near mutiny of the crew. The problem was solved when the captain dumped the terrible cargo into the sea.
The co-owners of the ship were put on trial, and it cost the city big bucks to clean up the mess in Haiti, ship the ash to Florida and eventual bury it in an upstate Pennsylvania landfill.
An odyssey that started in 1986, finally ended after 16 years in 2002.