Oahu landfill recommendation tainted by errors, critics charge

A final decision on the fate of the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill likely will be delayed again due to possible procedural errors by the Honolulu Planning Commission.

The state Land Use Commission is scheduled to consider the Planning Commission’s March recommendation to extend the landfill for an unspecified time, as well as arguments by opponents of the landfill to deny the extension, when it meets at 9 a.m. Wednesday in Suite 700 of the Hawaiian Airlines terminal.

But opponents are questioning the steps the Planning Commission took in coming up with its recommendation, and even city officials said they would not object to the two special-use permit requests being sent back to the Planning Commission.

After several years of inaction, the Planning Commission in March voted to recommend that the city be allowed to continue using Oahu’s only landfill until it is filled to capacity, regardless of when that might be.

The Planning Commission imposed several new conditions, including a requirement that the city select an alternate landfill site by Dec. 31, 2022, although it did not say when the new landfill would need to be up and running. Another condition requires the city to file progress reports every six months instead of annually as now mandated.

But Calvert Chipchase, attorney for the Ko Olina Community Association, and state Sen. Maile Shimabukuro (D, Kalaeloa-­Waianae-Makaha) filed a motion last week asking the LUC to deny a permit and send the issue back to the Planning Commission. In a separate “alternative” motion, Chipchase asked that the issue be sent back to the Planning Commission (without a denial of the permit) unless the permit further stipulates a firm landfill closure deadline of 10 years.

In the motion to deny the permit and remand the issue, Chipchase said the commission committed several procedural errors, including a failure to provide all parties a written form of the proposed decision before the vote and an opportunity to raise objections and make oral arguments. He cited the Planning Commission’s own rules stating that in cases where not all commissioners have heard and examined all the evidence, a proposed decision be filed and that those who might oppose it be given a chance to respond.

Chipchase also questioned whether Planning Commission Chairman Dean Hazama should have been allowed to vote because he had indicated in an August article in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he wanted to see the panel move out a positive recommendation for the landfill. Chipchase said the commission also failed to follow the LUC’s 2012 instructions to formally consolidate separate special-use permit requests filed in 2008 and 2011, respectively.

Attorney Richard Naiwi­eha Wurdeman, who represents U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa in her role as intervenor in the landfill proceedings, wrote a memorandum to the LUC agreeing with Chipchase’s concerns about the Planning Commission’s procedural issues.

City attorneys, representing the Department of Environmental Services, said in a filing in response to the Chipchase motion to deny and remand, that Environmental Services “does not object to (the LUC) remanding, without denying, the applications to the Planning Commission to complete the record of the proceeding” by complying with its own rules and “to more clearly issue a single, consolidated” recommendation.

The city and West Oahu interests have clashed over the future of the landfill for more than a decade before the courts and the two land-use commissions. For more information, go to bit.ly/LUClandfillSMAdocket.