In 1986, Paolino and Sons, a waste management company hired by the city of Philadelphia, contracted with John Dowd, of the Amalgamated Shipping Corporation, and William Reilly, of the Coastal Carriers Corporation, to dispose of ash from the city's municipal garbage incinerator. The ash was carried aboard the ship Khian Sea for 27 months. In January 1988, the ship unloaded 4,000 tons of the waste, labeled as fertilizer, on the beach of Gonaives, Haiti, in violation of Haitian law prohibiting waste imports.
In May 1988, the ship sailed to the former Yugoslavia, where it docked with approximately 11,000 tons of the remaining ash in its cargo holds. In Yugoslavia, the ship's name was changed to Felicia. It left Yugoslavia shortly thereafter and arrived in Singapore in November 1988 with its cargo holds empty.
Dowd and Reilly stated before a grand jury in 1990 that they had no knowledge of the disposal of the ash. The two contractors were subpoenaed by the Department of Justice during an investigation in response to charges that the ash was off-loaded from the ship en-route to Singapore and dumped into the Indian Ocean. Contradictory testimony by a member of the ship's crew - that the waste had been dumped at sea at Dowd and Reilly's instruction - led to the indictments.
According to the environmental group Greenpeace, tests by the Environmental Protection Agency have revealed hazardous levels of lead, cadmium and dioxin in the Philadelphia incinerator ash. The waste remains exposed in Gonaives, without fencing or warning signs.
"Ironically, these two environmental criminals are being charged not with dumping their toxic cargo at sea, not even with illegally labeling it as fertilizer and abandoning it on the beaches of Haiti - where it is today - but rather with lying to a grand jury," says Ann Leonard of Greenpeace in Washington, D.C.
If convicted, Reilly and Dowd each face a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine.
Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and formerly one of Chamorro's most fervent backers, has been the primary force behind the delay. In a letter to U.S. Agency for International Development director Ronald Rosken, Helms stated that he would continue to block efforts to aid Nicaragua because the Chamorro government "refuses to respect the sanctity of private property." In his communication to Rosken, he argues, "It is well known that ... Chamorro ... has not privatized corporations and other businesses that were seized and nationalized by the Communist Sandinistas."
Ties to the Sandinistas were preserved by the president in an effort towards national reconciliation after eight years of war between the Sandinista government and the U.S.-backed contra rebels.
Comley is an outspoken critic of the Seabrook, New Hampshire nuclear power plant and has been involved in documenting safety hazards there. A number of workers at the Seabrook plant told Comley that the facility was built with faulty fuses and fasteners. A report by Comley of these findings led to an October 1990 General Accounting Office investigation confirming that at least 72 of 111 U.S. nuclear power plants were built with counterfeit or substandard parts.
NRC Assistant Inspector General Leo Norton first subpoenaed Comley on March 12, 1991 to turn over approximately 40 tapes or transcripts of conversations with high- ranking NRC officials, and in particular with Roger Fortuna, deputy director of the NRC's Office of Investigations. The petition for subpoena asserts that the inspector general needs access to the tapes because they may contain previously unreleased safety information about one or more nuclear reactors.
Comley, whose fines continue to accumulate, stands firm in his resolution to protect the identity of the whistleblowers. If he capitulates to pressure to reveal "their identities or break their trust, they will never come forward with safety problems again," he says. "That's what the NRC wants, and I will not give in to them."
- Julie Gozan