City to update search for new Oahu landfill

A state-imposed deadline of Dec. 31 looms over Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration.

That deadline — to replace the controversial, 35-year-old Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in Kapolei, which is set to close by 2028 with an alternate location — is one of many such cutoff points that have come and gone over the years in connection to the massive city-run facility.

And following a prior claim that a new dump site would be named in November, city officials say an “announcement” will now be made Tuesday during a planned news conference.

But whether a proposed dump site actually will be usable is another matter entirely.

That’s because the city De­­partment of Environmental Services, or ENV, asserts the state Legislature will first need 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.

Such a legislative change could take time, however.

Moreover, city officials say they may have to use eminent domain in order to secure private properties for the next dump — a parcel they say must be about 200 acres in size and viable as a landfill for at least 20 years.

And as far as the future landfill’s location, Blangiardi has vowed no site will be developed in West Oahu — though prior studies identified possible properties for use along the Leeward Coast.

During an October update before the City Council, ENV Director Roger Babcock noted an Oct. 15 city report, titled the “Oahu Landfill Siting Study Supplemental Technical Memorandum,” that the city remains interested in several selected properties eyed for landfills.

But those sites — including five in the Windward Oahu communities of Kailua and Waimanalo — require either an amendment or repeal of Act 73, he said.

The 2020 law 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 also has 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.

Potential dump sites in the Kailua area include two quarry properties close to the H-3 freeway; a site near Castle Junction and Pali Highway; and an area near the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility and Olomana School.

Down the coast, a spot near the Waimanalo Country Farms, mauka of Kalanianaole Highway and Waima­nalo Beach Park, also was identified, city reports indicate.

In a Dec. 2 letter issued by the Mayor’s Office to “stakeholders” including “elected officials, regulatory agencies and community groups,” Blangiardi claimed finding Oahu’s next landfill offered “challenges with selecting the best site for our residents, environment and waste operations.”

“To arrive at a proposed site, our city team looked at laws, regulations, rules, restrictions and equities to arrive at three potential paths for siting a landfill on Oahu,” the mayor’s letter states. “The three paths and the order of pursuing each path to select and establish a landfill on Oahu will be discussed at our press conference” Tuesday.

But Honolulu City Council Vice Chair Esther Kia‘aina, whose district spans Windward Oahu, said her concerns lie squarely with the city’s list of possible landfill sites.

“I’m so flabbergasted about the list, and how all of them don’t qualify (under state law), that it’s hard for me to take this list seriously,” she told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “What I would care most about right now to take this list seriously … would be, for example, to ask, What was the criteria that they chose?”

“Because their No. 1 criteria is that they should not be looking for lands that would violate Act 73, which they did,” Kia‘aina said. “No. 2, they should not have looked for lands which would violate the no-pass zone that the Board of Water Supply has established.”

“I would be surprised that the mayor would be announcing a site because just based on the list, which is very difficult for me to take seriously, it’s hard to fathom that he would be able to make a decision based on this list,” she said. “He stated in his letter that there are three pathways that he would like to discuss to get to that site, which would require further action.”

“And so this is not the way you would want to announce a site,” she said. “So having said that, am I disappointed? I am disappointed. … It’s not just the sites on the Windward side; in general, I question the methodology of how it came to be, and I’d like to know more about that.”

Bill Hicks, chair of the Kailua Neighborhood Board, said he is concerned over the landfill sites, too.

He added that his problems mostly lie in the general lack of information the city has provided to the public thus far.

“The Kailua community and the Kailua Neighborhood Board have not heard a single word from anybody in the city,” he told the Star-Advertiser.

No one from the Mayor’s Office addressed his city-run board about the landfill issue either, Hicks added.

“I couldn’t even pinpoint exactly where these sites are; there are vague three- and four-word descriptions on some of them,” he said. “This has been a five-year process; it was five years ago that the closing of Waimanalo Gulch Landfill by 2028 was mandated. The deadline has been extended three times.”

He said there’s a “likelihood” the next dump will be in Kailua — a community that over the decades has had its fair share of city-run dumps, the last one being Kapaa Sanitary Landfill, which opened for solid waste collection in 1969 and closed in 1997.

“And yet the reporting has said none of those new sites are legal,” he added.

With little information to go on from the city over this issue, Hicks said that during the Kailua Neighborhood Board’s Dec. 5 meeting, it voted to support the for­mation of a permitted interaction group, or PIG, to investigate the possibility of a landfill in Kailua.

“It’s something that the Kailua Neighborhood Board very, very, very rarely does,” he said, adding that five members of the board will comprise the landfill PIG. “It’s a small group of people who will dig deep to do fact-­finding … and they will deliver a report to the board.”

Meanwhile, Ian Scheuring, the mayor’s deputy communications director, told the Star-Advertiser the city has kept the community informed as its landfill site search has advanced.

“Once the city announces the proposed site, it will engage in a vigorous public engagement process — including with area City Council members, legislators, neighborhood board participants and community members — as we work through the process forward,” he added.

As Honolulu officials pondered a new landfill, the city also had issued a formal “request for information” over the possible transshipment of waste off-island.

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.

The RFI’s closing date for solicitations was initially Nov. 30, later changed to Dec. 2.

After the deadline, Babcock told the Star-­Advertiser that two contractors expressed interest, but only one — Waste Connections of Oregon Inc., a Vancouver, Wash., company — submitted an RFI.

“The purpose of this RFI was to gather information about the shipping of waste from potential service providers to help ENV determine if waste shipping is a viable waste management strategy,” he said. “If determined to be viable, contracting for waste shipping services would have to be done via a future competitive solicitation.”

ENV is expected to evaluate Waste Connections’ information and continue to conduct its research into this topic, he said.

According to the city, the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill, which first opened in 1989, takes in approximately 250,000 tons of waste per year, with roughly 72% being ash and residue from the HPOWER plant, where waste that is not recycled is burned to generate electricity.

The city has said that once the Kapolei dump is closed for good, it “must conduct post-closure care and monitoring of groundwater, stormwater, leachate and landfill gas for at least 30 years.”