City and County of Honolulu residents: Expect your sewer fee to increase by as much as two- to three-times because in 2010, the city signed a consent decree with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to construct and operate a multibillion-dollar, secondary treatment facility at the Sand Island Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) by 2035.
Hawaii residents: The timetable to pay for mitigating technologies addressing sea level rise will be exacerbated because secondary treatment of sewage at Sand Island WWTP represents a new and significant source of greenhouse gasses (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide) that are causes of global warming.
Many groups are at risk, including individuals (coastal erosion), businesses (Waikiki hotels, Pearl Harbor facilities,) tourism (reduction of coral growth) and county and state government (stressed ecosystems, beach parks). The need for costly adaptive mitigating technologies and government policies addressing these impacts will be accelerated.
However, foregoing unnecessary secondary treatment at Sand Island WWTP will eliminate additional global warming risks attributable to this facility.
This statement represents the views and conclusions of seven environmental engineers and scientists with extensive experience in wastewater treatment operations and water quality management. Group members oppose implementation of the consent decree.
This statement: 1) alerts the public that the consent decree will hit their pocketbooks; 2) calls on the parties to the consent decree to meet and reassess their decisions by comparing expected positive outcomes against anticipated negative outcomes when secondary treatment is implemented, and 3) confirms that the Sand Island WWTP has been discharging primary treated effluent via deep ocean outfall into Mamala Bay for more than 40 years without compromising the recreational water quality of nearby beaches (including Waikiki) while at the same time allowing the biological community within Mamala Bay to remain balanced, abundant and diverse.
These results demonstrate that the existing practice of discharging primary effluent from the Sand Island WWTP meets the criteria for a waiver from secondary treatment under Section 301(h) of the Clean Water Act. This waiver program allows disposal of primary treated effluent into receiving waters wherein natural conditions effectively disperse and transport the flow out to sea.
Natural conditions unique to Hawaii that allow this dispersion and transport include: a) geographic isolation in the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from a continent; b) coastlines that drop off quickly to deep ocean depths; and c) oceanographic conditions characterized by strong and vast currents that flow continuously to, around and beyond Hawaii into the deep ocean.
Safe and successful discharge of primary treated effluent into Mamala Bay has been clearly demonstrated. Secondary treatment of sewage is expensive, unnecessary and will do more harm than good. The process followed in structuring the consent decree in 2010 was flawed because the environmental consequences of its requirements were not thoroughly evaluated and documented, and the public was not informed about the environmental impacts associated with these requirements. For this reason, the parties of the consent decree are urged to meet and engage in in-depth and public discussion of all the issues leading to the signing of the decree.
In summary, the City and County of Honolulu has embarked on a multibillion-dollar project that we believe requires public discussion. This may be the last opportunity to re-examine a project that will bring no measurable benefit to our ocean environment while contributing to global warming and increasing the financial burden on our citizens.
Public discussion should include renegotiation of the consent decree; alternative operating strategies such as advanced primary treatment, ultraviolet disinfection and outfall extension; and integrated water management planning that considers all contaminant sources entering Oahu’s near-shore waters. The city of San Diego set a precedent by successfully challenging the EPA through public discussion and integrated water management planning to achieve sensible outcomes. The City and County of Honolulu can do the same.
Roger Fujioka is former director of the Water Resources Research Center (WRRC) at the University of Hawaii-Manoa; Vic Moreland, former research associate at the WRRC, is an environmental engineering consultant; James Honke, former chief of the Wastewater Division of the city Department of Design and Construction, is an environmental engineering consultant.
