The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hopes a consent agreement with Kamehameha Schools to close any large-capacity cesspools on its more than 3,000 properties and pay a penalty of nearly $100,000 will encourage other Hawaii landowners to voluntarily shut down their cesspools.
The EPA on Wednesday called its settlement with Kamehameha Schools — the state’s largest private landowner — “a landmark agreement” and “a major milestone in Hawaii’s effort to protect its unique natural resources.”
Since 2005, the federal government has banned large-capacity cesspools, which are designed to handle waste from multiple dwellings, recreation centers, churches and small apartment complexes or any facility that has the capacity to serve 20 or more people per day. The pollutants that flow into the cesspools include raw sewage, which can seep through the systems’ open bottom and perforated sides to contaminate groundwater, streams and the ocean.
“It’s literally a hole in the ground and the waste goes wherever it wants to go,” said EPA spokesman Dean Higuchi.
Small-capacity cesspools, which are often found in rural areas such as Oahu’s North Shore, typically handle waste for a single home and are regulated by the state Department of Health, which is working to close or upgrade all small-capacity cesspools by 2050.
The use of cesspools dates back to Hawaii’s plantation era, and the systems were still in use last year by the Navy at Pearl Harbor, which reached its own agreement with the EPA last year to close its three remaining large- capacity cesspools and pay a civil penalty of $94,212.
The case against Kamehameha Schools began with an EPA investigation of a large-capacity cesspool on a Hawaii island property that the private, charitable trust leased to Hawaiian International Sporting Club Inc., which operated Volcano Golf Course and Country Club.
“Our inspector found a large-capacity cesspool that wasn’t closed,” Higuchi said.
The cesspool was in use from at least November 2012 to July 2017, when it was replaced with an approved septic system, the settlement said.
Civil penalties
The Safe Drinking Water Act allows for civil penalties of up to $22,000 per day, up to a maximum $274,000, but under the consent agreement, Kamehameha Schools will pay a civil penalty of only $99,531.
Perhaps more importantly, the landowner also agreed to an audit of more than 3,000 of its properties across the state to identify and close any large-capacity cesspools.
“The agreement gives us a schedule to determine the properties that will be inspected by an independent, third-party auditor to determine the number of cesspools that will be covered by the agreements,” Kamehameha Schools spokeswoman Crystal Kua told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “We are diligently working to identify the relevant properties to be inspected pursuant to the criteria specified in the agreement. We don’t have firm numbers at this point.”
The agreement dictates that the EPA will approve the independent auditor. Kamehameha Schools has 30 days to name a different auditor if the EPA rejects the initial person.
The phased audit will then look at Kamehameha Schools’ properties on Oahu, followed by Kauai, Maui and Molokai, and then Hawaii island.
Kamehameha Schools has 30 days to submit a list of its Oahu properties to the EPA. The subsequent Oahu audit is expected to be finished within 74 days. But if the list is longer than 100 properties, the landowner can propose an audit schedule for EPA approval.
Similar timelines and procedures were set for the neighbor island properties.
“This is the first case of its kind where a business entity with property has said, ‘OK, we have one (large-capacity cesspool) but we want to take care of all of them,’” Higuchi said. “They came forward.”
The agreement was signed in August by representatives from the EPA and Kamehameha Schools but was announced Wednesday following a 30-day comment period and its official filing with the EPA’s Region IX office in San Francisco, which covers Hawaii, Higuchi said.
In a statement, Marissa Harman, Kamehameha Schools’ director of asset management on Hawaii island, said, “Healthy aina is core to the foundation of Native Hawaiian cultural identity and well-being. With this agreement, Kamehameha Schools acknowledges its kuleana to steward aina to preserve its resiliency and ensure that future generations will continue to have a relationship with the land that makes the Native Hawaiian people who they are.”
Other options
Last year, the Navy continued to operate three large-capacity cesspools at Pearl Harbor — at a munitions storage area, a hangar and a troop mobilization area — that served a total of about 160 people.
The Navy agreed to replace the cesspools with appropriate wastewater treatment systems, the EPA said in announcing the agreement last year.
Property owners with either small- or large-capacity cesspools have several options, including replacing them with closed systems, hooking up to county sewer systems or installing small wastewater plants for larger groups of users, Higuchi said.
“It’s better to get on top of it on your own and work with the EPA rather than we go looking for your cesspool and taking full enforcement action on each of the cesspools we find on your property,” Higuchi said.
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