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Starting Wednesday, the Hawaii Department of Health will start taking applications for a new grant program intended to nudge a needed environmental overhaul: eliminating an excess of cesspools. It’s been lagging, and that remains a threat to island water quality.
It’s lagging in part because the cesspools, shallow underground repositories for human waste disposal, historically were built in remote, rural areas, and also because of the perception that there is ample time to remove this health hazard.
The impact of the cost of replacement or upgrading can fall on low- and moderate-income families, so money is an issue. That’s the hurdle the new grants are meant to help clear, and the state should work to maximize the use of these resources to jump-start the upgrades.
The untreated sewage is buried but can leach into oceans, streams and groundwater, which in Hawaii are never far away from the point source of pollution. Pathogens in the sewage can harm the health of those exposed by drinking or swimming in it, and the nitrates it contains can damage aquatic ecosystems as well.
About 83,000 cesspools serve residences in Hawaii. In 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned the use of large-capacity cesspools, including those serving multiple residences. Most of the Hawaii cesspools are for single-family residences and are not regulated by the EPA.
But the large-capacity facilities continue to draw down federal fines. As recently as 2021, the state was fined nearly $222,000 for operating seven of them on Kauai.
Hawaii has been under the gun in particular since 2017, when the Legislature required all cesspools to be upgraded to a septic system or aerobic treatment unit system, or be connected to a sewer system by 2050. The deadline was set forward in large part because of cost, which averages $24,000 per system.
However, lawmakers also pressed the state Department of Health to convene a Cesspool Conversion Working Group to further study the situation. In advance of the current session, the working group issued a report recommending that the deadline be moved up significantly for the 13,821 cesspools that pose the greatest environmental threat.
Rightly, the Legislature is following that advice. Senate Bill 426 has crossed over and is now under consideration by the House. The measure is up at
9 a.m. Thursday for a joint hearing of the Energy and Environmental Protection, and the Water and Land committees.
In the Senate draft now being considered, the top-priority cesspools would need to be upgraded by 2030, with Priority 2 facilities due for their fix by 2035. Exemptions may be granted by the state health director for cause, reasons including the small lot size, steep topography, poor soils or accessibility issues.
There would seem to be enough flexibility provided to arrive at a substantial improvement on the wastewater infrastructure that is also realistic.
Among these reasonable provisions: SB 426 now gives an extension to 2035 for the 100 recreational residences within Koke‘e/Waimea Canyon State Parks, because their leases will expire between 2029 and 2031. That extension was favored by the Department of Land and Natural Resources, and it would be fair to allow the next leaseholder to amortize the cost over a longer term.
In the meantime, there is help in the near term to ease the cesspool-conversion process. Information on the grants, limited to those in Priority 1 and 2 categories, is online (health.hawaii.gov/wastewater/home/ccpgp) or by phone, 808-586-4294. There is compelling reason to make progress now.
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