The trucking company responsible for dumping dredged material from the Hawaii Kai Marina onto a private agricultural property in Waianae likely will be denied a permit to keep it there and be required return it to East Honolulu or face escalating fines, a city official told members of the City Council Intergovernmental Affairs and Human Services Committee on Thursday.
Meanwhile, city Deputy Planning Director Art Challacombe confirmed that his agency first warned the trucking company that its dumping of sludge in Waianae was a violation 11 days before an Aug. 31 accident in which one of the company’s trucks spilled dredged material onto H-1 freeway, causing a major traffic jam.
"They were supposed to stop and apparently they did not," he said.
Waianae landowner Sandra Silva, who owns the trucking company hired to move the material, was slapped with a notice of violation by city officials Sept. 6 and told that she has until Oct. 7 to return the material to a Hawaii Kai stockpiling site or obtain the grading permit necessary to legally place the material on her property, Challacombe said. She will likely get a one-month extension, through Nov. 7, before fines of $150 a day start kicking in, he said.
"If correction is still not occurring, we will put a lien and, at the very end, foreclose on the property."
Silva has applied for an after-the-fact grading permit, Challacombe said, which he described as "very lacking in its accuracy and information."
City Department of Planning and Permitting staff has been instructed to deny Silva a grading permit until the approvals issued by the Army Corps of Engineers and Department of Land and Natural Resources permits are changed to allow disposal in Waianae, Challacombe said, "which I doubt will occur."
Neither state nor federal officials at Thursday’s meeting gave any indication that Silva has sought changes to her permits with their agencies.
Councilwoman Kymberly Pine, who represents the Leeward Coast, said her staff contacted city officials Aug. 19 after receiving a complaint from a constituent who told her about the possible violation at the Waianae Valley Road property. DPP investigators visited Silva the next day and warned her that she did not have the proper permits to use the material.
Eleven days later a truck belonging to Silva’s trucking company, SER Silva Equipment, overturned on H-1 freeway in Aiea, creating a traffic jam for westbound travelers that lasted for hours.
Challacombe said Silva’s failure to stop dumping after the preliminary warning is part of the reason she was slapped with a notice of violation.
Pine, who heads the Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, said after the meeting that "today’s hearing revealed that people broke city, state and federal law knowingly, and this is extremely disturbing to me and my community."
She noted that Silva had also been issued a violation notice for conducting a trucking business on agricultural property without the proper permit in 2009.
Efforts by the Star-Advertiser and other news organizations to contact Silva have been unsuccessful.
Meanwhile, state Land Board Chairman William Aila and Army Corps of Engineers Hawaii regulatory branch chief George Young both said they are continuing to investigate possible violations of approvals they had issued for dredging of the marina. Both agencies were told by the Hawaii Kai Marina Association that the material was to be distributed in five waterways in East Honolulu.
However, Challacombe said, the marina association "did not stick to the plan, and they had a trucking company take it to an off-site disposal area, agricultural land, without receiving the proper grading permits from our department."
Marina association representatives said they halted the project after being informed of the violations.
