With a deadline looming and few, if any, viable sites available to develop a new landfill, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi has reached out to the Honolulu Board of Water Supply to see whether it might bend on a policy that restricts the building of waste disposal facilities over Oahu’s aquifer areas.

Blangiardi told the agency’s board of directors that the technology exists to prevent a modern landfill’s chemical-laced rainwater, or leachate, from percolating into the groundwater.

In response, the board pledged to hold a special meeting in the next week or two to consider the question, as well as the agency’s authority over the matter. The directors also said they might form a special subcommittee, known as a permitted interaction group, to examine the question, knowing it has to move at an accelerated pace.

Time is short because the city faces an end-of-year deadline to name a landfill site by order of the state Land Use Commission.

“This is a very big decision, and the clock is ticking,” Blangiardi told the board Monday.

However, giving its blessing to a landfill over the island’s aquifer zone could prove problematic for the board, which has criticized the Navy for placing fuel storage tanks over the aquifer at Red Hill 80 years ago.

According to Navy reports, some 180,000 gallons of various types of fuel have leaked from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility over the decades, including 27,000 gallons of jet fuel in 2014 and 19,000 gallons of jet fuel in May 2021. The last spill led to contaminated tap water in military housing and the shutdown of several Board of Water Supply water sources.

During a meeting Monday, BWS board member Na‘alehu Anthony seemed a bit wary of the the mayor’s request.

“Eighty years ago, when there was a decision made to put 250 million gallons of fuel 100 feet above the aquifer, were they thinking about November of 2021 when some of that might spill into the aquifer?” Anthony said.

“We have to really be cautious how we go forward, understanding we have to put the rubbish somewhere,” he said. “But in 80 years is there going to be a similar conversation with whomever’s at the helm of the Board of Water Supply, wondering what we were thinking when we set this site above an aquifer?”

The city’s Landfill Advisory Committee this summer decided not to recommend any of the six candidate sites to replace the island’s only municipal landfill at Waimanalo Gulch on the West side of Oahu.

They declined to did so following a presentation by BWS Manager Ernie Lau and Deputy Manager Erwin Kawata, who urged them not to place any landfill in the No Pass Zone, an area that generally covers the interior of the island where the aquifer is located. All of the proposed sites — in pockets of Central Oahu and the North Shore region — are in the No Pass Zone.

Finding a viable site was difficult for the city because most everywhere else is off limits. Act 73, passed by the Legislature in 2021, prohibits any waste or disposal facility from being located in a state conservation district and requires a half-mile buffer between the edge of any disposal activity and the closest residence, school or hospital property line.

Although the advisory committee did not recommend a site, it did rank them, based on various attributes, including the amount of rainfall they receive. A location in Kunia was ranked first, followed by a site in Waipahu, three locations in Waialua and a site between Haleiwa and Waialua.

But the top choice in Kunia is situated right over the Ewa Shaft, which provides significant amounts of drinking water to the Leeward side of the island, according the BWS.

In an interview, Roger Babcock, director of the city Department of Environmental Services, said the technology exists today to safeguard drinking water supplies.

The standard Environmental Protection Agency- required protection for a Class D solid-waste landfill is a protective liner that includes a clay-based liner and a thick plastic liner in addition to a collection system that allows for the safe removal of leachate.

But the city’s plan, he said, is to double the liner systems to provide the same level of protection that would be required of a Class C hazardous-waste landfill.

“It’s important because we don’t want anything to happen to our groundwater,” Babcock said.

Blangiardi told the BWS directors Monday that he was appearing before them “out of respect for the community.”

“We owed it to you,” he said. “Quite frankly, I wish this was happening on another mayor’s watch three terms from now or whatever, but it’s here, it’s now and we have to deal with it.”

The final choice on the landfill site belongs to Blangiardi.

What happens if the Board of Water Supply sends the mayor packing without a landfill site?

Babcock said the city might have to throw itself on the mercy of the Land Use Commission and ask for an extension, or propose another site with a plan to obtain an exception to any current restriction. Either way, city attorneys are likely to be involved in figuring out a way to proceed, he said.