The head of the City Council’s Public Works Committee said Wednesday it was "unimaginable" that one of the 11 sites for a possible landfill was in the Hawaii Kai area.

Councilman Stanley Chang, whose East Honolulu district includes Hawaii Kai, raised questions about the method of selection used by the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Landfill Site Selection.

City officials appeared Wednesday before the committee to provide a status report on the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill on Oahu’s leeward side and on efforts to find a new landfill site.

Chang, chairman of the Committee on Public Works and Sustainability, raised questions about the advisory committee ranking prospective landfill sites through a "blind process" in which members were given attributes of each site, but did not know their location.

Tim Steinberger, director of the city Department of Environmental Services, said the reason for the blind process is because "you don’t want people to skew the results simply because it’s close to where they live."

Chang said it’s one thing to talk about issues hypothetically.

"It’s another to talk about them in reality," he said.

Steinberger said the city was still evaluating the committee’s results.

He said the next step in the process will be evaluating each site and looking at factors that were not in the committee’s evaluation, such as the potential presence of human burials and endangered species and the access to the sites.

"You have a lot of technical details. … It’s going to take a long time," Steinberger said.

In the meantime, he said, the city feels it should continue to use the Waimanalo Gulch landfill, which has a lifespan of 15 more years.

"We feel that is a good location," he said.

But Steinberger said the city is still waiting to see if it could continue to use the landfill beyond July 31.

The city hopes the Hawaii Supreme Court will rule against a permit condition imposed by state Land Use Commission in 2009 requiring the city to close the landfill by July 31.

The court heard legal arguments on Feb. 7.

Chang said he knew the site in the Hawaii Kai area was ranked low among the 11 possible landfill sites but was curious why the location was selected.

The sites, in the order of ranking, are Upland Kahuku 2, Upland Kahuku 1, Upland Pupukea, Upland Pupukea 1, Ameron Quarry, Upland Nanakuli, Upland Laie, Keaau, Kaneohe by H-3, Upland Hawaii Kai and Kapaa Quarry Road.