The tugboat Break of Dawn was one of hundreds of modest working vessels that plied the waters off the U.S. East Coast during the year 1987, and this was just another job: hauling a 230-foot-long bargeload of 18-foot-high commercial garbage from New York to North Carolina.
Every day, New York City routinely exported 25,000 tons of garbage that its landfills no longer had room for. Most of it was trucked overland hundreds of miles to landfills in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and other places. Whenever costs and location came together to make a sea voyage feasible, the stuff went out on a barge like this one, the Mobro. Skippered by Capt. Duffy St. Pierre, the Break of Dawn left the pier at Long Island City in Queens on March 22.
Down in Morehead City, N.C., trash hauler Lowell Harrelson was waiting to offload the Mobro’s cargo for burial in Jones County.
Then North Carolina’s environmental watchdogs thought to ask the City of New York to certify that this load of trash contained no toxic wastes or other harmful materials.
The truth was that city officials had no idea. Only some of the garbage came from the city itself. Most of it had originated in Islip, L.I., having been turned away from that town’s nearly overflowing landfill. Pressed on the matter, about all that state Environmental Conservation Commissioner Henry Williams could say was that he doubted the load contained anything dangerous. Probably most of it was construction and demolition debris, he said. Probably.
This response did not suit North Carolina, which instructed the Jones County landfill not to accept the load of New York trash. Then officials went to court and got an order prohibiting the Mobro from unloading anywhere in their state at all.
Like a rejected suitor, St. Pierre put out of Morehead City on April 6, bound for well, Louisiana, he thought.
It was 1,400 miles around Florida and across the Gulf of Mexico to Avondale, not far from New Orleans, and even as the Break of Dawn steadily sailed on, the ruckus raised by North Carolina was wafting westward toward the Mississippi River.
Now the Avondale landfill operators got a letter from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, informing them that accepting this load of uncertified and no doubt suspicious New York garbage would constitute a violation of their state operating permit. Mississippi, Alabama and Texas then joined Louisiana in deciding to deny the Break of Dawn entry.
Where was the garbage going to go? Just in case the Break of Dawn figured it could perhaps slip into Mexico, the Mexican government dispatched two naval vessels and a number of aircraft to keep an eye on the tug’s course. The military of the Central American nation of Belize was ordered to put the barge and its cargo under surveillance too. The Bahamas also said no.
Officials in the sleepy Florida resort community of Key West briefly considered accepting the trash for the island’s incinerator. Hearing about that, Florida Gov. Bob Martinez mobilized state agencies to block any such thing.
Suddenly, the New York City Garbage Barge was banned by six states and two foreign nations.
In early may, trashman Harrelson instructed the Break of Dawn to anchor 5 miles off Key West so the barge’s cargo could be inspected by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and he could ponder his next move.
Federal agents in protective suits and breathing gear swarmed aboard the Mobro, swatted aside the flies and began to root through the bales in search of leakage, toxics, corrosives or combustibles. “It’s ordinary garbage,” sighed Break of Dawn first mate David Soto. That’s certainly what it appeared to be, reporters verified: old clothes, carpet scraps, magazines, foam rubber, car tires. “It didn’t smell as bad as our local landfill,” said one Key West scribe.
Certified toxic-free, the garbage barge now headed back north again. But by now nobody wanted it anyway. Even New Jersey wouldn’t take it at this point. “We will not accept the spoiling of a beautiful area or a beautiful river,” Sen. Frank Lautenberg told the Coast Guard after he heard that the Mobro was to be anchored on the Jersey side of the Hudson River. “We don’t want anyone’s garbage, especially New York’s,” said Fort Lee Mayor Nicholas Corbiscello, noting that city trash passed through his community via the George Washington Bridge every day: “Now it’s sneaking up the river.”
The Break of Dawn’s anchorage was shifted to Upper New York Bay about 2 miles from the Statue of Liberty. Tug and barge arrived May 16.
Meanwhile, environmentalists, politicians and bureaucrats squabbled as lawyers tried to hammer out a resolution in Long Island state Supreme Court.
Islip Town Supervisor Frank Jones refused to take any of the trash back. “They can haul the garbage to Gracie Mansion and compost it on the front lawn along with the rest of the garbage that visits,” he said.
“It’s Islip’s garbage,” snapped Mayor Ed Koch. “I don’t think we [in the city] should have to deal with it.”
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And the garbage barge sat anchored for another two months.
Finally, on July 10, newly named Environmental Conservation Commissioner Thomas Jorling announced that the barge’s rotting cargo would be unloaded and burned at the Southwest Incinerator at Bay 41st St. in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.
From there, officials said, the resulting 400 tons of ash would be trucked by private carrier to the Islip municipal landfill in Hauppauge.
With the exception of Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden, who objected to his borough’s becoming a dumping ground, and his Queens counterpart, Claire Shulman, who stll worried that the trash might be toxic, New York City and Islip town officials hailed the compromise.
On Aug. 24, after state Supreme Court Justice Dominic Ladato of Brooklyn cleared the last legal challenge to the state-city-town plan, the Mobro finally docked in Brooklyn.
“That’s one small barge for New York City, one giant bale of garbage for mankind,” said city Sanitation Commissioner Brendan Sexton as he watched the Mobro being towed to the incinerator pier.
The unloading began Sept. 1. Ten days later, the ashes were transported to Hauppauge and buried in the Islip town dump.
Harrelson refused to say how much the Mobro’s 6,000-mile voyage to nowhere had cost him. The price tag was believed to be nearly $1 million.
But the trip of the Mobro did focus America’s attention on the growing national problem of solid waste management, encouraged an expansion of recycling programs and brought pressure on Congress to the pass the 1990 Clean Air/Clean Water Act.
First published on Nov. 25, 1998 as part of the “Big Town” series on old New York. Find more stories about the city’s epic history here.
