The fate of the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill remains uncertain 15 months after the city endeavored to reach a resolution with the community group that’s fought the hardest to shutter Oahu’s only municipal dump.
Mayor Kirk Caldwell told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the city is looking at "eliminating the need for an everyday landfill," suggesting that the complete shutdown long sought by Leeward area residents is not likely to happen any time soon.
"We’re doing everything possible to minimize use of the landfill," Caldwell said. "Almost 90 percent of the trash on this island is either burned or recycled, and I think that is something we can all be proud about."
For more than a decade, Ko Olina Community Association has been at the forefront of opposition to the 25-year-old landfill’s continued operations.
Attorney Richard Wurdeman III, who represents U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa on legal proceedings seeking to close the landfill, maintains that the city is operating the facility illegally because it lacks a valid special use permit. Hanabusa, a former state senator representing the area, has "intervenor status," giving her a voice in the proceedings currently before the city Planning Commission that have been on hold for 15 months.
Wurdeman and Hanabusa are frustrated that the matter has not advanced.
"It’s been sitting in limbo," he said.
Adding to the aggravation, Wurdeman said, was the April 30 indictment of landfill operator Waste Management of Hawaii and two of its top executives, accused of mismanagement that led to the discharge of syringes and other waste along Ko Olina and other Leeward beaches in January 2011.
The Ko Olina Community Association maintains that the landfill’s odors and other issues affiliated with it are an affront to Leeward Coast residents as well as the growing Ko Olina resort community makai from the facility. The association has challenged the city’s attempts to both expand and extend the life of the landfill.
MOST recently the association challenged the city’s 2008 application for a special use permit to expand the landfill, first before the Planning Commission and later the state’s Land Use Commission. Hanabusa and current state Sen. Maile Shimabukuro (D, Kalaeloa-Waianae-Makaha) were granted intervenor standing in the proceedings.
The matter ended up before the Hawaii Supreme Court, which in May 2012 said the LUC’s decision to require the landfill to stop accepting municipal solid waste (with an exception for ash) beginning July 31, 2012, was incorrect because there was a continuing need for it to accept waste beyond that date. City officials had testified that it would take at least seven years to select and develop a new site.
The matter was eventually sent back to the commission to hold further proceedings consistent with the court’s ruling. In turn, the commission sent the matter back to the Planning Commission for its input.
At the Planning Commission’s first hearing in December 2012, city attorneys asked for a continuance so that then-incoming Mayor Caldwell could provide direction on how the city would proceed. In February 2013 attorneys for the city, Ko Olina, Hanabusa and Shimabukuro agreed to a two-month continuance so the association and new administration could meet outside of official proceedings to come up with a mutually satisfactory agreement.
Fifteen months later the matter has not returned to the commission agenda.
The opening of a third boiler at the city’s HPOWER waste-to-energy facility in 2012 means that approximately 90 percent of Oahu’s municipal waste is now either being recycled or being burned at HPOWER, Caldwell said. Sludge from the city’s wastewater plants is a large component of the remaining 10 percent, and the city is hoping the third boiler will be able to accept sludge by the end of the year, the mayor said.
The other largest portion still going to the landfill is ash residue from what cannot be burned at HPOWER.
"We’re looking at technologies to use that ash in a way that serves all of us," he said.
"The end result is that the landfill would be kept open for minimum use — for emergency uses only — until we have a viable option to shut it down altogether," Caldwell said. "I believe that’s an attainable goal."
The community association declined to respond to specific questions emailed by the Star-Advertiser, including its take on whether a partial closure would be acceptable.
In a one-paragraph statement, the association said, "There are extensive public records regarding Ko Olina’s stance on the closure and relocation of (the landfill). The landfill should be closed. Ko Olina has not wavered on these positions."
Discussion with city officials continue, the statement said, "with goals of determining a succinct plan of action and closure on this issue being our priorities."
The parties are expected to given a status update to the LUC on Friday, the mayor said.
Wurdeman contends that the city has no other option but to keep the landfill open only because it has "generally not been proactive in following up on the promise and assurance that they’ve made to look for other sites." He added, "For intervenor Hanabusa it’s always been an environmental justice issue. The people of the Waianae Coast have been unfairly burdened for many, many years."
A site selection committee came up with a list of 11 sites that it submitted to then-Mayor Peter Carlisle in April 2012. Twenty months later the city Department of Environmental Services’ January 2014 quarterly status report on landfill operations said, "The city is in the process of further evaluating the sites identified and will be writing letters to the landowners to see if they would be willing sellers."
Waianae Neighborhood Board Chairwoman Cynthia Rezentes said she too is frustrated by the city’s inaction. Even if much of the waste is now being diverted away from the landfill, she said, the city should still be working on another landfill site where the remaining ash would go.
"I think that we, as an island state, need to come up with other alternatives than to keep filling up our lands with trash," Rezentes said.
