Although they said it would be named in November, Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration now says the future site for Oahu’s next municipal landfill will be made public in December.

That action, boosted in August by the state Land Use Commission’s decision to modify a special-use permit to extend a prior deadline to Dec. 31 to find the city’s alternate landfill, means the city has just over a month to officially name its next dump.

But whether the new dump site, which replaces the 35-year-old Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in Kapolei, will actually be usable remains to be seen.

The city Department of Environmental Services, or ENV, asserts the state Legislature needs to change an existing state law, Act 73, governing where a dump can legally and safely be located in order to achieve a new, permanent landfill location on Oahu.

And city officials say they will likely have to use eminent domain in order to secure private properties for the next dump site as well.

In addition, ENV recently issued a formal “request for information” toward shipping solid waste off-island as an interim measure while the city develops a landfill — a process that could take years to complete.

But such a contract, some argue, could prove too expensive for the city to afford.

The Mayor’s Office this week said that as far as naming a landfill site, the city is still on track to do so by next month.

“It looks like early December. Though a date is not ready to be announced yet,” Ian Scheuring, the mayor’s deputy communications director, said via email.

“We’ve said all along that the announcement would be made before the end of the year,” he added. “We had initially talked about making that announcement in November, but we decided to do it in early December instead.

“Nothing has changed as far as our process or decision making is concerned, just the date of an announcement,” Scheuring said.

During an October update before the Honolulu City Council’s Public Infrastructure and Technology Committee, ENV Director Roger Babcock said options to site a new landfill will be reviewed to allow for the next city-run dump on Oahu.

He noted in an Oct. 15 city report, titled the “Oahu Landfill Siting Study Supplemental Technical Memorandum,” that the city remains interested in selected properties eyed for landfills.

But those sites — including three in the Windward communities of Kailua and Waimanalo and one in West Oahu’s Kapolei — require either an amendment or repeal of Act 73, he said.

Act 73 places restrictions on locating waste-disposal facilities, particularly those close to conservation lands or half-mile “buffer zones” near residential areas, schools or hospitals, as well as near airports or tsunami- inundation zones.

Babcock said amending that law could do one of two things: reduce buffer zones down to a quarter- mile or eliminate them altogether, thereby opening up more lands for potential city dump sites.

The Honolulu Board of Water Supply had also objected to the city siting a landfill within its so-called no-pass zone, an area that covers the interior of the island where Oahu’s potable water aquifer is located.

At the Oct. 24 committee meeting, Council member Andria Tupola, the committee’s chair, questioned the city’s plan to rely on state-level changes to avert current challenges for a new dump site.

“But you guys couldn’t possibly be announcing anything that requires the modification of Act 73, since we’re not in charge of that and the (Legislature) is not in session, correct?” she asked.

“We could name a site that would require legislative action to modify Act 73,” Babcock replied.

Meanwhile, the city previously issued a formal “request for information” over the transshipment of Honolulu’s waste off-island. The RFI’s original closing date for solicitations is Saturday.

However, the RFI’s new closing date is Monday by 2 p.m., the city said.

The RFI says the city is preparing for an “interim alternative” for the disposal of municipal solid waste, or MSW, to an approved nonhazardous waste landfill outside Oahu over a 10-year period.

Under a revised version of the document titled “Requested Information,” the RFI states, “The city is requesting interest and information from interested parties regarding how to ship approximately 75,000 tons of MSW and 225,000 tons of H-POWER ash and residue to a landfill and/or processing facility off-island.”

“The city intends to deliver waste to a private contractor that will process and transport the waste to a landfill and/or processing facility off-island,” the document states.

Under a previous version of the same section, the city’s RFI requested “a future option to transship approximately 650,000 tons annually of municipal solid waste to an off-island landfill as the city designs and constructs a future landfill.”

The city’s reasons for changing the RFI’s dates for solicitation and its requested information were not immediately explained.

Still, ENV Deputy Director Michael O’Keefe told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser the RFI will provide a “cost estimate” for shipping waste off-island.

“That was one reason for this RFI, to help us possibly develop one,” he said, adding, “Generally speaking, (it is) better to deal with the waste here, but part of the purpose of the RFI is to see if there are feasible shipping options that could make shipping waste easier.”

But at the October committee meeting, Council member Calvin Say said he believed the idea of shipping the county’s waste out of state would be too costly to consider.

“I don’t think it’s going to work,” Say added. “But I do hear stories about our Western states who export their waste to the Third World countries in Asia, and that’s how we created that big garbage patch” in the Pacific Ocean.