Presentation to landfill committee addresses possible replacements

A consultant has completed work looking into potential sites for a new solid-waste landfill and plans to present its findings next week to a panel tasked with advising the mayor on where to put a new landfill on Oahu.

Findings are to be presented Nov. 8 at a meeting of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Landfill Site Selection, the Department of Environmental Services said in a news release.

At its most recent meeting in July, the committee asked its consultants to check with the Board of Water Supply and other entities about possibly adding previously disqualified parcels of land to a list of 47 parcels under consideration.

The findings originally were sought by the committee for its August hearing, but consultant R.M. Towill Corp. requested more time to investigate and prepare its analysis. The committee had canceled two meetings in August while waiting for the analysis.

R.M. Towill needed to contact a number of government agencies, including the Honolulu Board of Water Supply and the state Department of Health’s Solid Waste and Safe Drinking Water branches, and analyze a number of water- and land-use issues, the city said.

The nine-member advisory committee plans to meet at least once more to weigh the criteria and apply them to the potential landfill sites, the city said. The date and time of that particular meeting is to be determined.

A new landfill would replace or supplement the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill, which on July 31 is scheduled to stop receiving municipal solid waste and only accept ash from the HPOWER waste-to-energy plant. The city has appealed the deadline and asked that the landfill be allowed to continue accepting solid waste for at least 15 additional years.

Committee members are tasked with recommending to the mayor a new or supplemental solid-waste landfill site, with the understanding that the Waimanalo Gulch site is off the table under all circumstances.