The Honolulu Planning Commission plans to make a decision in early 2024 on the city’s request for a two-year extension to find an alternate site for the 34-year-old Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in Kapolei.

The commission last week ended its formal hearing, held over several months, on the request made by the city Department of Environmental Services.

The request, first submitted in December, would amend a previous state-issued special-use permit granted in 2019. If the request is approved, the prior deadline to identify an alternative site would be extended to Dec. 31, 2024, from Dec. 31, 2022.

The existing 200-acre landfill near Ko Olina is scheduled to close by 2028, although the city says its dump won’t reach full capacity until 2036.

In its defense of the requested time extension, city officials asserted health and safety concerns of properly siting the only municipal landfill on Oahu.

At Wednesday’s meeting the Planning Commission finalized a contested case hearing — similar to a court proceeding that included witness testimony and legal exhibits — first held Aug. 9, with a second hearing held Oct. 18. Ultimately, the panel scheduled a possible decision date on the city’s request for late February.

At these hearings, Ko Olina Community Association Inc. and state Sen. Maile Shimabukuro, whose District 22 covers Ko Olina to Kaena, opposed the city’s extension request. They cite the current landfill’s proximity to Ko Olina, noting quality-­of-life effects on its residents including odor, litter, traffic and noise.

Cal Chipchase, attorney for the Ko Olina Community Association, noted the city’s “long history of missing deadlines” with regard to closing Waimanalo Gulch Landfill, which first opened in 1989. The dump was originally slated to close eight years later, by 1997.

Ken Williams, KOCA’s general manger, testified that his 3,000-member residential community, which began development in the mid-1980s, prior to the landfill’s opening, had suffered for decades living near the dump, across busy Farrington Highway.

“This landfill has been open since 1989, and we have gone through several extensions and expansions over the years,” Williams said.

Over the years, Chipchase said, the city had requested — in 2003, 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2022 — formal extensions to continue operations at the landfill or to find an alternate dump site. During that time the landfill grew from its original size of 60.5 acres.

By 2003, when the landfill was approved for another five years of use, the dump “expanded to 107.5 acres,” Williams said.

But as the landfill grew, so did associated problems.

By December 2010 and January 2011, several large storms overwhelmed and flooded the landfill’s expansion area, resulting in hundreds of millions of gallons of contaminated stormwater finding its way into the ocean.

Raw sewage, sewage sludge, blood vials and syringes were among the things that washed up on beaches and drainage areas of the Ko Olina Resort and elsewhere along the Wai­anae Coast for several weeks. Beaches in those areas were closed for a time.

Williams said that following “a 100-year storm” in January 2011, it was KOCA personnel, not the city, who had to clean up medical waste including “sharps, blood samples, tissue samples, everything that they throw away at a hospital.”

“The big problem there was no one called us, no one was in front of it, no one took responsibility for it, so we had to jump into action,” he said, adding that his workers did perilous work themselves. “We had to glove them up, boot them up, put safety glasses on and send them out to start hand-picking a lot of this stuff up — very dangerous and very fortunate no one had a long-term condition or injury from it.”

Meanwhile, Williams wanted to see the Planning Commission or a similar body exercise greater oversight over the city’s search for a new landfill site, including quarterly progress reports to update the panel.

“Basically, holding their feet to the fire,” he told the panel. “Whatever you need to do to urge compliance. … I know the landfill is a tough decision and a tough issue, but we’ve got to face it and we’ve got keep our promises to the community.”

Later in the hearing, Chipchase recounted Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock’s Oct. 18 testimony before the commission. Babcock’s testimony related to amending or rescinding an existing state law, Act 73, that placed restrictions on locating waste disposal facilities, particularly close to conservation lands or near half-mile “buffer zones.”

During his testimony, Babcock said it might prove too difficult to amend this state law, at least for the time being. Rather, the director said, a new landfill site might be acquired through eminent domain of private property or on lands owned by the military or federal government.

Chipchase noted that Babcock, as head of the department in charge of refuse disposal on Oahu, testified he was not part of the discussions with the federal government or military to site a new landfill. Instead, Babcock said Mayor Rick Blangiardi and Managing Director Michael Formby were handling those discussions.

Four possible alternate sites — all on federally owned land in West Oahu and the Windward side — are under consideration to replace the Waimanalo Gulch landfill, according to Babcock. The sites include Lualualei in Waianae, Iroquois Point and Waipio Peninsula near Pearl Harbor, and a property near Bellows Beach in Waimanalo.

Six prior sites for a new landfill were rejected in October 2022 following a presentation by Board of Water Supply Manager Ernie Lau and Deputy Manager Erwin Kawata, who urged Blangiardi’s Landfill Advisory Committee not to place any landfill in the “no pass zone,” an area that covers the interior of the island where Oahu’s potable water aquifer is located.

The prior proposed sites, all in Central Oahu and the North Shore, were in that zone.

On Oct. 27, during the grand opening of a city-run, residential waste drop-off site in Kapolei, Babcock told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the latest four sites were “on a list of all of the potential military lands that were just inside of the ‘no pass zone,’ and don’t have other restrictions barring their use.”

At the same event, Blangiardi told the Star-­Advertiser the four sites were “sort of the list of what’s left, given the fact that everything was in a no-pass zone.”

And although three on this new landfill site list are in West Oahu, Blangiardi reiterated a past promise to the public not to locate any other landfills along the Leeward Coast: “I’ve been on the record, and I’ll say it again, not on the West side.”

Meantime, the Navy also confirmed it’s held discussions with the city over possible landfill lands.

“It would be premature to discuss any specific parcel of land or conversation details, as we are still in the early stages of planning, but the military is part of the community and is committed to finding solutions to the issues we collectively face,” a Navy spokesperson told the Star-Advertiser via email. “The military currently uses between 4% and 5% of the land in the state, and we are meticulously evaluating each parcel to determine if any of these meet the parameters established by Act 73 and are in a con­dition suitable for transfer to the City and County of Honolulu for a landfill.”