The city broke ground Thursday on two projects totaling $370 million that will make the Honouliuli Waste Water Treatment Plant in Ewa a full secondary treatment facility, making it fully compliant with a 2010 federal consent decree as well as state health laws.
The two projects are also viewed as expansion moves that will accommodate future wastewater flows, increase production of recycled water for nonpotable and possibly potable consumption, and allow for the reuse of biosolid that can be made into pellets used as fertilizer, Department of Environmental Services officials said.
Phase 1A consists of upgrading the solid-stream process to allow digested sludge to be dried into pellets for fertilizer, city officials said. The $63 million contract is with Parsons RCI Inc.
Phase 1B adds aeration basins, six new secondary clarifiers, a central emergency generator facility and underground piping that will be installed through micro- tunneling and open excavation, city officials said. General contractor for the $271 million contract is Nan Inc.
The remaining money is for contingency.
Both projects must be completed by June 30, 2024, for Honouliuli to become a secondary treatment facility. Environmental Services Director Lori Kahikina said Thursday that the city is required to put in an estimated $7 billion in improvements to meet the consent decree, which includes upgrading both the Honouliuli and Sand Island treatment plants to secondary treatment capability.
The Sand Island upgrade improvements must be done by 2035.
The consent decree was mandated due to a series of illegal sanitary sewer overflows at Honouliuli and Sand Island in violation of the city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit and the federal Clean Water Act.
All 372 consent-decree related projects completed by the city as of June 30 were done on schedule and within budget, said Mayor Kirk Caldwell.
Last summer the city completed the $375 million Kaneohe-Kailua gravity sewer tunnel project that increased storage capacity for Windward Oahu’s wastewater system and reduced the possibility of overflow.
Meanwhile the number of sewage spills coming from city facilities dropped to 44 in 2018 from 200 in 2006.
“That’s a 78 percent decrease,” Caldwell said. “And that didn’t just occur because we wished it so.”
The 44 spills were also an 18.5 percent drop from the previous year.
For more on the city’s work to meet the consent decree, go to the Environmental Services website.
