The Honolulu Planning Commission took public testimony Wednesday on the city’s request for a two-year extension to find a replacement site for the nearly 40-year-old Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in Kapolei, which is slated to close by 2028.

After only two members of the public and one city staffer spoke on the matter, the board voted to continue public comment on the city Department of Environmental Services’ formal request — first submitted in December — to amend a previous state-issued special-use permit granted in 2019. The request is to extend the prior deadline of Dec. 31, 2022, to Dec. 31, 2024, in order to identify an alternate landfill site.

The commission expects to take further public testimony over the city’s requested time extension at a scheduled Aug. 9 contested case hearing — a proceeding, according to state law, in which the legal rights, duties or privileges of specific parties are required by law to be determined after an opportunity for an agency hearing.

At that Aug. 9 hearing, the commission anticipates taking up several pleadings filed with the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting over the landfill matter, which allows only those who’ve filed to participate as interested parties or “interveners,” according to city staff.

The filings to DPP and the Planning Commission were required by a June 13 deadline, following a 14-day filing period from the posting date of Wednesday’s public hearing.

The filings include one jointly from Ko Olina Community Association Inc. and state Sen. Maile Shimabukuro — whose Senate District 22 covers Ko Olina to Kaena — on motions to recognize them as existing parties and a petition to intervene, filed June 9. Similarly, Schnitzer Steel Hawaii Corp., located nearby, submitted a motion for more time as well as a petition to intervene, filed June 13.

“Today’s public hearing’s purpose is to allow the public to comment on the request to modify the conditions,” commission Chair Pane Meatoga III said Wednesday afternoon at Mission Memorial Auditorium. “To my fellow commissioners I ask that commissioners hold off asking testifiers questions at this time and reserve them for the contested case hearing.”

During public comment Wednesday, Ian Sandison, an attorney representing Schnitzer Steel, said the company supported the city’s request for a two-year extension to identify an alternative landfill site.

But resident Cynthia Rezentes did not support ongoing delays to find the city’s new landfill site.

“So I think the longer the decision takes the worse position we, as a community, are going to be placed in because now we’re going to come back in two years, or three, or four and go to the Land Use Commission and say ‘2028 is not a good number anymore,’” she said.

The city’s action was “like the kid’s game of kick the can down the road” with no end in sight, she added.

“Every mayor since 1998, whether intentional or not, has kicked this can down the road. And you’re doing it at the expense of one of the underserved communities on island and continue to expect them to just take it. I will tell you being born and raised on that coast, the community is tired,” she said. “We’re tired of the inadequacies, and this is just the tip of the spear point that has been stuck in our back since at least the late 1980s. That’s been a long time for a community to suck it up for the rest of the island, and I think it’s about time that we all get serious about solving this.”

The city’s effort to find an alternative landfill site has been mired in official rejection as well as mandates of a recently enacted state law.

Mayor Rick 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.

During public comment at Wednesday’s commission meeting, Franz Kraintz, DPP’s chief of community planning, said the city’s requested extension over the landfill was recommended to be granted.

“In the meantime, during this two-year period, (Department of Environmental Services) continues to work … to find sites that meet these criteria and do not affect the groundwater, to be good stewards of protecting our aquifer,” Kraintz said.

The city, he added, does this in a number of ways including “working with the military to see if those lands can be used and, perhaps even repealing, some of those restrictions through legislative action and then finally, if necessary, the use of eminent domain to expand acquisitions that would bypass the restrictions of Act 73.”

Prior to the meeting, Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser via email that the city initially did not consider using federally owned lands “because of ongoing military activities and/or structures that would present significant challenges when siting a landfill, and due to the fact that acquiring or receiving permission to use federal land for landfilling purposes would take a very long time and would ultimately impact our ability to meet deadlines in our special-use permit.”

Still, Babcock said his department is now focusing its search on federally owned lands that may include military properties.

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.”