POLLUTION Contaminated Cargo

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.

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.