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- NATION, Page 27American NotesPOLLUTIONContaminated Cargo
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- The 32-car train, carrying 2,400 tons of contaminated dirt,
- left Michigan nearly a month ago. Eight states later, it's still
- looking for a landfill. Like the New York garbage barge that
- sailed the seas for five months in 1987 before it finally
- disposed of its malodorous cargo back where it started and the
- "poo-poo choo-choo" filled with Baltimore sewage whose 1989
- odyssey ended up back in Baltimore, the "dirt train'' is
- unwanted.
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- The contaminated cargo originated in 1989 when a train
- carrying acrylic acid and other chemicals derailed in Freeland,
- Mich. CSX Transportation of Jacksonville, Fla., cleaned up the
- mess and sent it to be landfilled. But members of Greenpeace
- and other environmental groups bird-dogged the train, and some
- protesters even chained themselves to it. Two weeks ago, South
- Carolina fined CSX $21,975 because the train was leaking what
- appeared to be a toxic liquid. Meanwhile the controversy has
- scared off four landfill operators so far. Last week the train
- rolled out of Sumter, S.C., like a rail-bound Flying Dutchman,
- toward an undisclosed destination.
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