The Honolulu Planning Commission today is expected to review the city’s request for a two-year extension to find a replacement site for the controversial, decades-old Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in Kapolei.
The city Department of Environmental Services’ formal request — first submitted in December — would amend a previous state-issued special-use permit granted in 2019, which would extend the prior deadline of Dec. 31, 2022, to Dec. 31, 2024, in order to identify that alternate landfill site.
In 2019 the Planning Commission had also granted conditions to the special-use permit. These actions followed the state Land Use Commission order that a new landfill site be found and, once found, that the current facility cease all operations.
The Waimanalo Gulch Landfill is slated to close in 2028.
“The purpose of the Planning Commission’s June 28 meeting is, in part, to receive public testimony on (the department’s) request,” Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser via email.
Babcock said the city is focusing its search for the city’s next landfill on federally owned properties — namely, properties under the purview of the military.
“Having not yet selected a site, the cost to procure and develop a site is very difficult to estimate,” said Babcock, adding that development costs for the island’s next major landfill could range between $60 million to $80 million, “not including the cost to acquire the site.”
The city’s most recent action regarding the landfill began in late 2022.
On Dec. 23, Mayor Rick Blangiardi formally announced that his administration — on that day — submitted its request to the Planning Commission for a two-year extension.
“The significance of this decision and what it means to the people of Oahu, especially the residents of the Leeward Coast, is not lost on anyone, and we remain committed to exhaustively exploring all options in fulfilling the Planning Commission’s directive to find a different landfill site,” Blangiardi said in a statement in December. “Our request for a two-year extension is in the best interest of all Oahu communities, because this administration will not, under the difficult circumstances, simply default to an extension of the Waimanalo Gulch landfill.”
During a news conference on Dec. 23, Babcock said the requested extension would allow the city more time to narrow its sights on a single property that would pose no risks to groundwater resources, the environment or the community at large.
In addition, Babcock said a new site might include a large enough parcel currently owned by the military, though he stressed the difficulty in obtaining federally owned land.
“These are all military lands, and the military is reluctant to give up lands,” Babcock said then, adding that the city would continue to look for a suitable landfill site, though he would not disclose other possible locations. “We want to give more time for a review.”
Yet the city’s effort to find that alternative site has been mired in both official rejection as well as the mandates of a recently enacted state law.
Blangiardi’s Landfill Advisory Committee, formed in 2021 to evaluate six proposed and publicly undisclosed landfill sites, did not recommend any of the six. But the committee in October rejected all of the sites following a presentation by Board of Water Supply Manager Ernie Lau and Deputy Manager Erwin Kawata, who urged the committee not to place any landfill in the “No Pass Zone,” an area that covers the interior of the island where Oahu’s potable water aquifer is located.
The prior sites — all proposed for Central Oahu and the North Shore — were in that zone.
Similarly, the city says any new landfill site must conform to Act 73 and its restrictions on waste disposal facilities, particularly near conservation lands or near “buffer zones” in the vicinity of residential areas, schools or hospitals.
A state law since 2020, Act 73 states that “no waste or disposal facility shall be located in a conservation district except in emergency circumstances where it may be necessary to mitigate significant risks to public safety and health.”
The act further states that “no person, including the state or any county, shall construct, modify or expand a waste or disposal facility including a municipal solid waste landfill unit, a construction or demolition landfill unit without first establishing a buffer zone of no less than one-half mile around the waste or disposal facility.”
The city says that due to the state-imposed restrictions of Act 73, all prior landfill sites had been “thoroughly re-evaluated,” essentially stalling the search. On Dec. 23, Babcock stressed the city would seek to “ease state regulations limiting landfill sites on Oahu.”
Babcock asserted that federally owned properties are not affected by Act 73 restrictions.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency requires a so-called Class D solid-waste landfill such as Waimanalo Gulch to have 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 leached chemicals and similar materials known as leachate.
Babcock had stated the city’s plan was to double the liner systems to provide the same level of protection required of a Class C hazardous-waste landfill.
According to the city, the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill, which opened in 1987, takes in approximately 250,000 tons of waste per year, with roughly 72% being ash and residue from the HPOWER plant, where waste that is not recycled is burned to generate electricity.
The city has said that once the Waianae Coast dump is closed for good, it “must conduct post-closure care and monitoring of groundwater, stormwater, leachate and landfill gas for at least 30 years.”
In advance of today’s Planning Commission meeting, many residents of West Oahu filed written comments with the panel over the issue of the current and future sites of the island’s main solid-waste facility.
Among them, Makakilo resident Mario Nanguse said his community had been affected for years by the landfill’s malodorous presence.
“With residents, workers, and visitors expressing concerns about odors, noise, dust, blasting, visual blight, truck traffic, and flying litter from the landfill,” Nanguse wrote to the commission May 12. “Additionally, the landfill released unknown quantities of municipal solid waste, sewage sludge, leachate, and medical solid waste into coastal waters in 2012.”
And others, including the Nanakuli-Maili Neighborhood Board, also objected to the landfill siting.
During its May 16 meeting, the panel voted unanimously not to support the city’s latest “two-year extension of time to reevaluate its options,” board Chair Patty Kahanamoku-Teruya wrote May 19.
“Further the board does not support any federal lands located in the Waianae Coast be an option for the city’s sanitary landfill, to remove the federal Navy Lualualei parcel in Nanakuli as an alternative site,” she wrote. “The board supports all federal lands located in the Waianae Coast be returned to the State of Hawaii, then turned over to the Department of Hawaiian Homelands.”
The Planning Commission meeting is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. at the Mission Memorial Auditorium, Mission Memorial Building, 550 S. King St.
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Honolulu Star-Advertiser staff writer Timothy Hurley contributed to this report.
