City Council member Ikaika Anderson said he will submit a letter to Mayor Peter Carlisle today, asking him to approve funding for an alternative method for treating sewage sludge so the city can avoid trucking raw sewage sludge from the Sand Island treatment plant.

Anderson will ask Carlisle to reopen the supplemental budget to include funding for lime stabilization treatment for the sludge, which would render it suitable for disposal at the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill.

"The people of Honolulu expect the city administration and City Council to come together for a long-term solution, and lime stabilization may be that solution," Anderson said in an interview Wednesday after a Council briefing on the city’s plan to haul sewage sludge from Sand Island — which is over capacity — to Honouliuli, Kailua and Waianae treatment plants.

Start-up costs for lime stabilization are estimated at $5 million, city Environmental Services Director Timothy Steinberger told the Council Wednesday.

Community members have expressed concerns about the plan to truck sludge.

In June, the Council eliminated $26 million budgeted for a second 100-foot digester at the Sand Island plant.

The council’s Public Works and Sustainability Committee heard from Steinberger at a hearing Wednesday to discuss options for the Sand Island plant.

Councilmen Tom Berg and Nestor Garcia supported reopening the supplemental budget to resolve the problem.

The city plans to conduct test runs of hauling sludge to the Honouliuli Wastewater Treatment Plant in Ewa later this month.

If no alternative can be found, the city will proceed with plans to transport sludge to Honouliuli as well as the two other plants.

State Rep. Cynthia Thielen (R, Kailua, who opposes the city’s plan, urged the Council to approve funding for the second digester at Sand Island.

She also said an emergency appropriation would be "a much better idea."

Thielen said the Kailua plant is the only one next to an elementary school, Aikahi Elementary.

Noxious odors from the sewage plant have resulted in schoolchildren being sickened and being sent home, Thielen said.