Mobro_4000

The Mobro 4000 is a barge made famous in 1987 for hauling the same load of trash along the east coast of North America from New York to Belize and back before a way was found to dispose of the garbage. Chartered by entrepreneur Lowell Harrelson and Long Island mob boss Salvatore Avellino, it set sail on March 22 from Islip, New York, escorted by the tugboat Break of Dawn and carrying 3,168 tons of trash headed for a pilot program in Morehead City, North Carolina, to be turned into methane. Before the barge could reach its destination, a rumor began that it contained medical waste, prompting state officials to rescind Harrelson\'s permit. The barge then proceeded along the coast looking for another place to offload and continuing to meet stiff resistance. The Mexican Navy denied it entrance to their waters. It made it as far south as Belize, again being rejected, before returning to New York. Upon arrival it was met with a temporary restraining order and a heated legal battle preventing it from docking. In October, the trash was finally incinerated in Brooklyn and the resulting ash was buried back where it started, in Islip.

At the time, the Mobro 4000 incident was widely cited by environmentalists and in the media as evidence that the United States was facing a solid waste disposal crisis due to an imminent shortage of landfill space. It triggered much national public discussion about waste disposal, and it may have been a factor in increased recycling rates in the late 1980s.

Later analysis of the situation has shown that there was no landfill crisis. Specifically, an article in The New York Times stated, "A. Clark Wiseman, an economist at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., has calculated that if Americans keep generating garbage at current rates for 1,000 years, and if all their garbage is put in a landfill 100 yards deep, by the year 3000 this national garbage heap will fill a square piece of land 35 miles on each side. This doesn\'t seem a huge imposition in a country the size of America. The garbage would occupy only 5 percent of the area needed for the national array of solar panels proposed by environmentalists. The millennial landfill would fit on one-tenth of 1 percent of the range land now available for grazing in the continental United States. And if it still pains you to think of depriving posterity of that 35-mile square, remember that the loss will be only temporary. Eventually, like previous landfills, the mounds of trash will be covered with grass and become a minuscule addition to the nation\'s 150,000 square miles of parkland." [1]

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Mobro 4000 incident was caused by a combination of poor decision making by local Islip public officials and short-term difficulties triggered by changing environmental regulations.^{[citation needed]}

References

• Brower, Michael, and Warren Leon. 1999. The consumer\'s guide to effective environmental choices: practical advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0-609-80281-X.
• Katz, Jane. 2002. What a waste Regional Review 1. Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia