LIHU‘E — With the Kekaha Landfill nearing its capacity, the county is scrambling for solutions to avoid a potential garbage disaster.
“This could arguably be the largest challenge we’re facing,” said Kaua‘i County Councilmember Felicia Cowden at a Thursday meeting. “We don’t want to be the Garbage Island, we want to be the Garden Island.”
The landfill is currently projected to reach capacity in January 2027.
According to the county’s Department of Public Works, the construction of a new landfill can take 10 to 12 years. A new landfill would not be completed until 2032 at the earliest. This means that at the current trajectory, there would be a multi-year gap when the county would not have access to its own landfill.
It seems likely that the county may bridge some of the gap period by shipping waste to landfills on O’ahu and the West Coast, but this is less than ideal, featuring high costs, difficult logistics, and legal hurdles.
The DPW laid out several potential strategies for dealing with this gap to the council at its Jan. 20 Public Works and Veterans Services Committee meeting.
One option is preserving the landfill capacity by replacing daily cover soil with a thinner, spray-applied mineral mortar coating. Using this new Posi-Shell Technology could extend the landfill capacity by 1.44 years while also reducing labor costs, County Environmental Services Management Engineer Dustin Moises reported. This option would be subject to Department of Health approval.
Another option is improving waste diversion by instituting curbside recycling or a materials recovery facility.
“For me, diversion should be our top priority to extend the landfill,” said Councilmember Luke Evslin, who voiced support for the quick implementation of programs like curbside recycling. “The sooner we can get a variety of good diversion options running the more we can extend the life of the landfill.”
The estimated cost of building a materials recovery facility would be $12.2 million, Moises said, while a curbside recycling program would add $2.914 million to the budget annually.
The option that Moises described as “the most out-of-the-box” is landfill mining in Kekaha. This, he said, could potentially extend the lifespan of the landfill by 30 years and would have the added benefit of potentially recovering recyclable materials.
But this option could range from $106 million to $187 million, would require DOH approval, and has the potential for nuisance odors, leachate releases and dust particulates.
Likely, a combination of more than one of these methods would be required. Councilmembers requested more cost data on different options before coming to any conclusions.
But while these options may expand the life of the Kekaha Landfill, none of them would be a permanent solution.
“There’s just no way around siting and constructing a new landfill,” said Moises.
Over the past decade, officials have made efforts to site the next landfill at Ma‘alo. However, the Department of Transportation Airports Division considers the proximity of the proposed site to the Lihu‘e Airport to be a risk to aircraft flight operations. While the county made proposals to mitigate the Division’s concerns, these were deemed insufficient and unpersuasive.
The vast majority of the land on Kaua‘i, for various reasons, has already been deemed unviable for a landfill. The county will likely have to purchase or rent land from private owners in some of the limited area remaining.
Councilmembers expressed that, whatever action is taken, it must be taken quickly.
“We’re facing a fiscal cliff if we run out of space in the landfill without having set up other good options,” Evslin said. “We potentially have a major crisis ahead of us.”
The council will meet again on Wednesday, Jan. 26 at 8:30 a.m.
