Opponents of Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration’s plan to site the city’s next solid-waste landfill on active pineapple fields above Central Oahu’s freshwater aquifer continued to denounce the action this week.
Elected officials, environmental advocates, agriculture insiders and the city’s top water chief appeared Tuesday at the state Capitol to promote new state-level legislation — namely, eight bills introduced in the state House or Senate — that largely seeks to prevent landfills from being placed above fresh groundwater sources anywhere in Hawaii.
That includes on a Wahiawa-area site — west
of Kamehameha Highway and north of Paalaa Uka Pupukea Road — where the city proposed a new dump on agricultural land currently owned by Dole Food Co. Hawaii.
The city says it hopes to negotiate a purchase of about 150 acres — the amount of land needed for a solid-waste landfill — out of what it described as an approximately 2,360-acre parcel now owned by Dole.
Dole has stated its opposition to the city having a landfill on its active farming property.
The city’s move comes as it faced a state-imposed
Dec. 31, 2024, deadline to find an alternate dump site, ahead of the planned closure of the 35-year-old Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in
Kapolei, in accordance with a 2019 decision and order
by the state Land Use
Commission.
That West Oahu dump is set to close in 2028, though the landfill will not reach full capacity until 2032, the city said.
But surrounded by over 20 people holding signs reading “Water = Life,” “No Landfill” and “Ola i ka Wai,” House Majority Leader Sean Quinlan spoke against contamination like toxic heavy metals or man-made PFAS, “forever chemicals” that do not break down in the environment, which might leach out of a landfill over time.
Quinlan, who represents House District 47, which includes Waialua, Haleiwa, Kawailoa Beach and nearby North Shore communities, alluded to contaminated rainwater, also known as leachate, that could percolate downhill from the Wahiawa landfill site and into groundwater sources
and water wells servicing his legislative district.
“I want to say first and foremost how painful it is for me to be up here today dealing with this issue,” said Quinlan during a news conference in the Capitol’s rotunda. “Let’s be really honest about where we are. The Navy
poisoned the water on the south side of this island. Are we now going to allow a landfill to poison the water on the north side of this
island?”
“What is the future of human habitation on this island? Why do we keep rolling the dice with our freshwater drinking supply? I understand that the city is in an impossible situation, but that doesn’t mean that it’s justifiable or right to propose siting a landfill above an aquifer,” Quinlan added.
State Rep. Amy Perruso — whose House District 46 includes the Wahiawa area — alluded to those in the community who called the planned landfill situation in her district “Red Hill 2.”
“And I think Quinlan laid out the moral imperative that lies before us,” she said, adding that affected more than just drinking water, “but also our agricultural lands.”
Perruso said Hawaii as a whole needed to adopt “better policies to address our waste disposal in more sustainable manners.”
She noted state legislation — including Quinlan’s House Bill 969, which would prohibit the construction, modification or expansion of any waste or disposal facility on land that is near or above a significant aquifer as determined by the Department of Health — was being heard Tuesday.
Ernie Lau, Honolulu Board of Water Supply manager and chief engineer, also spoke against locating landfills over freshwater sources on Oahu.
“We need to find a way,” he said. “We all generate opala every day. We all need safe drinking water to survive. How do we manage both in a way that we can ensure that generations and generations to come on this island, in this state, will be able to survive?”
City Council Vice Chair Matt Weyer spoke on Resolution 3, which seeks to uphold a more than 20-year-old city policy over solid-waste landfills and their proximity to Oahu’s drinking water supply.
The resolution reaffirms a prior Council’s 2003 policy against siting dumps near fresh groundwater sources. The Council is scheduled to review the resolution for adoption at its meeting today.
“It’s clear that it’s an issue that affects all of our families, and today the conversation is where we start,” Weyer said. “As we weigh the options for a landfill, we start with protecting our drinking water and the
importance of our prime
agricultural lands.”
Wayne Tanaka, the Sierra Club of Hawaii’s executive director, expressed his “thankfulness” to Blan-giardi, who was not in
attendance at Tuesday’s news conference.
“And I’m sincere about that, because first he’s made it clear that we can no longer burden West Oahu with the trash of this island,” Tanaka said. “Just as there should never be a landfill with toxic waste over water, there should be no more poison in the communities who have sacrificed so much for the rest of us.”
“So we’re committed to ensuring that wherever this next landfill is, it’s not going to threaten our wai, and it’s not going to threaten our aina,” he added.
Brian Miyamoto, the
Hawaii Farm Bureau’s executive director, reminded that the island’s aquifer system provided not just drinking water, but water for agricultural lands, too.
“No water, no agriculture. No agriculture, no food,” he added. “In a time when we’re trying to grow agriculture, why in the world are we considering burying it?”
Miyamoto noted the ongoing shortage of eggs in Hawaii.
“We need to grow more. We need to be less dependent on imported foods, which also bring in invasive species, and protect our agricultural lands,” he said, adding, “It is critical in a time when we are losing our agricultural lands.”
Citing a recent agricultural census, Miyamoto said the state “lost about 80,000 acres of production agricultural land.”
“That’s about 7.4% of our state’s agricultural land,” he said. “Why in the world are we considering taking out more agricultural land?
Let me remind you that it’s productive agricultural land — it’s not fallow, it’s not overgrown, it’s not marginal land. It’s land that’s actually producing food and will produce food in the future.”
“This is bad policy, period,” Miyamoto said.
During the news conference, some claimed U.S. military lands on Oahu — many deemed contaminated through years of military use — should be eyed for the city’s next dump site.
City officials said prior efforts led by the mayor and managing director to gain federal lands for a landfill, including on the Waipio Peninsula, where the city leases property from the Navy
for soccer fields, proved
unsuccessful.
But state Sen. Mike Gabbard — who appeared at Tuesday’s news conference but did not speak — says he intended to reengage with the military on this issue.
Previously, Gabbard — chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Environment — told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he’s begun an initial outreach to the military over the city’s next landfill.
After Tuesday’s news conference, Quinlan was asked whether he or members of the state House will, like Gabbard, also engage with the military over siting the island’s next landfill.
“I think Sen. Gabbard is doing a really good job on that front, and ultimately it’s not one person who’s going to decide, it needs to be a broader conversation,” he told the Star-Advertiser. “I think the city just has to go back to the drawing board.”
Still, Quinlan said he’ll “be meeting with those folks, hopefully later this month.”
“And I’m meeting with the mayor later this week,” he added.
