Toxic cargo finally dumped

Press, 28 November 1988, Page 8

Toxic cargo finally dumped

NZPA-AP Singapore A ship finally unloaded her cargo of toxic ash after wandering the world’s seas for more than two years in search of a place to dump the waste, a Singapore port official said yesterday. No one disclosed where the Pelicano, a 19-year-old freighter, left the poisonous waste. The environmental group, Greenpeace, earlier charged that it had been dropped somewhere in the Indian Ocean. The ship remained anchored yesterday in international waters off Singapore, police in Singapore said. She arrived in the area earlier last week. A spokesman for the port of Singapore authority said on condition of anonymity that the vessel

had unloaded her cargo but would not be allowed to enter port anyway. The Immigration Department said she wanted to change crews. Reporters who visited the ship on Thursday confirmed that her four holds looked empty. While many ships are involved in carrying poisonous wastes, the epic voyage of the Pelicano has come to symbolise the problems of toxic dumping, particularly in the Third World. The ship, formerly called the Khian Sea, left Philadelphia on August 31, 1986, with 14,000 tonnes of the city’s municipal and industrial incinerator ash. She was renamed the Felicia last July and recast as the Pelicano last week,

according to published reports and shipping sources. At least 11 countries on four continents have spurned the toxic waste. The boat initially wandered the Caribbean for 18 months, reportedly leaving up to 4500 tonnes of ash in Haiti before making an unsuccessful attempt to enter Delaware Bay. Her later travels took her across the Atlantic to West Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean. A report by the United States Environmental Protection Agency said the cargo contained aluminium, arsenic, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, nickel, zinc and toxic dioxins contained in ash from a Philadelphia city incinerator.