HONOLULU — The state Land Use Commission on Thursday officially granted Honolulu’s request to find Oahu’s next municipal landfill by the end of this year.
The LUC’s vote, which adopted formal documents related to the city’s December 2022 petition to modify the state special-use permit and extend a deadline by two years, gives the city time to find an alternate site for the 35-year-old Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in Kapolei.
The prior deadline of Dec. 31, 2022, to locate the island’s next dump is now extended to Dec. 31 — just over four months away.
Closure of the existing 200-acre landfill near Ko Olina is scheduled for 2028, though the city says its dump won’t reach full capacity until 2036.
LUC’s approval, in part, requires the city to provide quarterly, in-person reports to the Honolulu Planning Commission over its ongoing search for a new landfill as well as submit quarterly written updates to the LUC on that same search effort.
That information is supposed to include timelines and milestones, a list of potential sites and any obstacles to the city’s ability to choose a site as well as “reporting on the investigation of alternative technologies” for the landfill, among others.
“We appreciate the LUC decision and additional time to identify a landfill site,” Scott Humber, the mayor’s communications director, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser via email after the approval.
To date, no new landfill sites have been located, according to Humber.
“The Mayor and Managing Director are currently working with the Department of Environmental Services on a preferred site, and intend to publicly announce in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2024,” he said. “The administration is confident it will be able to identify a new landfill site by Dec. 31, 2024.”
Starting in August 2023, a contested case hearing held before the city Planning Commission — which finished earlier this summer and provided findings for the state’s review for approval of a time extension — focused on the request by the city to amend a special-use permit the LUC granted to the city in 2019.
By October, city ENV Director Roger Babcock testified before the Planning Commission on the city’s need and difficulty to find an alternate landfill.
In part, Babcock’s testimony related to amending or rescinding an existing state law, Act 73, that placed restrictions on locating waste disposal facilities, particularly those close to conservation lands or half-mile “buffer zones,” near residential areas, schools or hospitals, as well as near airports or tsunami inundation zones.
He said it might be too difficult to amend this state law, at least for the time being. Rather, the director said, a new landfill site might be acquired through eminent domain of private property or on land owned by the military or federal government.
But Babcock later claimed the city was only looking at federal lands for its future dump.
In 2023, the city says, Mayor Rick Blangiardi and city Managing Director Michael Formby engaged in discussions with the U.S. military to gain assistance in siting a new landfill on Oahu.
Four possible alternate sites — all on federally owned land in West Oahu and the Windward side — were under consideration, city officials said.
Those locations included Lualualei in Waianae, Iroquois Point and Waipio Peninsula near Pearl Harbor, and a property near Bellows Air Force Station in Waimanalo.
The city said it eliminated federal lands for potential landfills along the Waianae Coast. And for its part, the military has “excluded” Bellows-area lands, too, city officials said.
In April the Navy also announced it would not allow the city to locate a new landfill on Waipio Peninsula near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.
The Navy’s decision, via an April 12 letter signed by then Adm. John C. Aquilino, former commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, was based on concerns regarding the site’s proximity to near-shore waters and “the Navy’s mission critical operations and training activities in the vicinity of the Waipio Peninsula,” the city stated in a news release.
Still, the state Office of Planning and Sustainable Development believed the city could find a new landfill site by year’s end.
In July, OPSD Director Mary Alice Evans told the LUC in a written recommendation that “despite the short timeframe, OPSD believes that it is possible for ENV to identify an alternative landfill site by that date (Dec. 31), especially given the efforts made to date.”
“Given ENV’s active and good faith efforts to comply with LUC … despite several unforeseen events, the public need for the continued operation of a permitted landfill, the relatively short time of the extension from today, and the lack of objections from the parties, OPSD recommends the LUC approve ENV’s application,” Evans wrote.
