The Mobro garbage barge floats on near Key West before its journey back to Queens.
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3,000 Tons Of Trash Finally Find A Home
By LIZ GOFF
QUEENS-SEPT. 1, 1987 : Six months after it left Long Island City on its floating odyssey, the 3,186 tons of orphaned garbage on the Mobro Barge met its end in a Brooklyn incinerator today.
City sanitation officials said the garbage was removed for inspection and tossed into an incinerator in Bensonhurst, ending the saga of “the most famous 3,000 tons of garbage in the history of the universe.”
Once incinerated, the ash will be trucked to a landfill in Islip, Long Island, sanitation officials said.
Not Welcome Anywhere
The garbage, which originated from somewhere in the metropolitan area, left Long Island City in March, headed for North Carolina.
When North Carolina refused to accept the trash, the floating dump headed to Louisiana, then to Mexico and British Honduras – only to be rejected at each port. When it finally returned to New York City, it was not welcomed home.
Although the City Health and Sanitation Departments gave the infamous trash a clean bill of health, Queens Borough President Claire Shulman went to court to prohibit the barge from anchoring in Queens, so that its contents could be trucked to Long Island for disposal.
The orphaned garbage sat off Brooklyn, in Gravesend Bay, through 88 days of 90-95-degree heat, while officials battled over its origin – and whether or not it contained toxic materials.
The tugboat “Break Of Dawn,” which was guiding the Mobro, idled alongside the barge for 74 days while officials bickered before cameras, and argued their cases in court.
Tugboat operator Lowell Harrison appealed to a judge hearing the arguments for help in obtaining payment for services provided by the Break of Dawn. Harrison said he had not been paid “one cent,” which made it impossible for him to pay the crew of the tugboat.
The tug was eventually granted a reprieve and allowed to a federal anchorage site on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, just north of the George Washington Bridge.
A National Joke
Before City sanitation officials decided to burn the trash at the Brooklyn incinerator, the agency was averaging 30 to 35 calls each day, from people offering suggestions on ways to get rid of the garbage.
One man from south Texas suggested the City buy armadillos, “A coupla hundred would eat that garbage right up,” he said.
In December 1997, Johnny Carson announced on his “Tonight Show,” that a New York-based firm called, “Waste-Not” was offering samples of the trash, in Lucite, as a holiday gift. He followed the journey of the barge nightly on his show.
Sanitation officials told the Tribune they “chose” certain items of the trash – and had them encased in Lucite as a “keepsake” – a reminder of “the most famous 3,000 tons of trash in the history of the universe.”
