LIHU‘E — Stuck between a rock and a hard place, county officials said they have agreed to a significant financial settlement to mitigate the concerns of a company on the Westside. Sunrise Capital blames seabirds eating frozen shrimp dumped
LIHU‘E — Stuck between a rock and a hard place, county officials said they have agreed to a significant financial settlement to mitigate the concerns of a company on the Westside.
Sunrise Capital blames seabirds eating frozen shrimp dumped at the Kekaha Landfill for contaminating nearby shrimp ponds. The facility has had to shut down twice in the last seven years due to an untreatable viral outbreak in the shrimp.
Government officials dispute this claim, but don’t have time to fight it in a lengthy contested case hearing because the island’s sole landfill is rapidly nearing capacity.
So on Oct. 30, 2009, Sunrise Capital Vice President Kenneth Morrison signed an agreement with county officials in which the county would give $250,000 to the shrimp farm to mitigate possible contamination from the nearby landfill.
In exchange for the “financial support,” county documents show that Sunrise Capital agreed to waive its right to contest or oppose the county’s expansion of the landfill “on the basis of a perceived or potential spread of shrimp diseases by birds.”
The company said it plans to use the taxpayer money to install protective nets over the shrimp ponds.
County officials said the funds will only be disbursed when Sunrise provides documentation and receipts for the work.
Shrimp farm history
The shrimp farm first opened in 1999, under Ceatech ownership. It reached a peak annual production of nearly 1 million pounds of shrimp and employed more than 60 residents. But in 2004 the company went under after a white spot syndrome virus outbreak, which is harmless for humans but lethal for crustaceans.
Sunrise Capital bought the farm in 2006, but was forced to suspend operations in 2008 because of another outbreak of the same virus.
Integrated Aquaculture purchased the shares of Sunrise Capital in 2009. Despite new ownership, the farm still operates under the name of Sunrise Capital.
“This is one of the most bio-secure places in the world, except for the landfill,” Integrated Aquaculture Director of Operations George Chamberlain said Sept. 16 at the farm during an invitation-only meeting conducted jointly with the state Department of Health.
The virus is widespread all over the world, especially in Asian farms, he said. Hawai‘i has the advantage of being geographically isolated from the WSS virus, he added. But still, Kaua‘i was not immune from contamination in recent history.
The DOH on Jan. 23 issued a permit for Sunrise Capital to discharge up to 20 million gallons of shrimp waste into the ocean a day. The process took more than a year as controversial hearings were held, public testimony was gathered and permit conditions were amended. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit is valid until Jan. 23, 2016.
From the landfill
to the farm
Chamberlain said that during the 2008 outbreak, the virus was detected in frozen imported shrimp that were dumped in the landfill after an electrical power failure.
In the most probable explanation, he said seabirds feasted on the shrimp at the landfill. Then the seabirds flew to the neighboring shrimp ponds and ended up contaminating the shrimp there. Chamberlain said the seabirds would hang out by the ponds because they represented a steady food source.
Chamberlain said the virus has a short life span outside the host and would not survive through the seabirds’ intestines. So the seabirds, he said, would eat so much shrimp at the landfill that by the time they landed at the shrimp ponds they would vomit the shrimp into the ponds.
And that’s how the virus made it to the shrimp ponds, according to Chamberlain, because if the birds would have digested the shrimp eaten at the landfill the virus would not have made it alive through the seabirds’ excrement.
Once in the ponds, a closed environment, the virus quickly multiplied and decimated the shrimp population, he said.
$250K to avoid contested case
To prevent contamination from birds, Chamberlain on Sept. 16 told the 12 attendees at the meeting that the farm would be installing nets over the ponds, discouraging seabirds from hanging out there. He said if the seabirds were unable to eat shrimp in the ponds, they would not be coming around anymore.
But what Chamberlain neglected to mention at that time was the company had filed for a contested case against the county’s proposed landfill expansion.
The agreement forged between the county and the company guaranteed the farm’s withdrawal from the contested case in exchange for the county reimbursing the farm $250,000 for improvements made to mitigate potential contamination.
“In consideration of the financial support that the County has agreed to provide to Sunrise … Sunrise further agrees to waive its right to contest or oppose, on the basis of a perceived or potential spread of shrimp diseases by birds from the Kekaha Landfill to Sunrise’s shrimp farm … relating to the expansion of the Kekaha Landfill to include Cell 2 of existing Phase II and Cell 3,” the agreement states.
Kaua‘i County Council Chair Jay Furfaro said the county has not written a quarter-million-dollar check to the company.
“There was a required amount of documentation before any funds would be released,” he said. “They didn’t get a check for $250,000. In the agreement they are required to document it and show receipts.”
The agreement states the county would pay Sunrise the settlement amount “by way of reimbursement for costs and expenses incurred by Sunrise in risk mitigation measures to protect its shrimp farm from shrimp diseases.”
Councilman Tim Bynum, who was present in all four executive sessions discussing the matter last year, said none of the council members were happy with the situation.
“We would have contested it,” he said. “But they had us up against this timeline.”
At that time the county was seeking permits to extend the life of the Kekaha Landfill. Bynum said if the contested case went forward, it would have delayed the expansion.
“I didn’t object to the settlement, because we didn’t have any choice,” Bynum said. “What I objected to was the secrecy and the way it was done. And I objected in writing to the county attorney last year.”
He said he has heard that the county has paid some $25,000 to the company thus far, but has not seen this in writing.
Also as part of the settlement, the county engineer must submit to the council a bill for an ordinance to ban commercial and non-residential raw, uncooked shrimp from the landfill.
Plan B too costly
Bynum said with the landfill nearing capacity, if the expansion was delayed the administration would have had to pile the trash on top of the space reserved for capping the landfill as a temporary measure. After finally receiving the expansion permit, the county would then have had to re-handle the trash, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
“Double-handling that trash would’ve been very, very expensive and embarrassing,” Bynum said. “The county should not get themselves in a situation where the time lines are so tight, because things go wrong.”
In the long run, Bynum said, it was a fiscal decision — a couple hundred thousand dollars versus millions. “We were not going to take the risk of having to double-handle this trash.”
Bynum praised the council for being “very diligent” in settling on an agreement that ensures the funds would be used for the intended purposes.
“Nobody liked this situation,” he said. “I don’t really think it’s the current administration issue. It really goes back to (former Mayors) Marianne (Kusaka) and Bryan (Baptiste).”
Still fighting the clock
Now, despite the agreement finalized and the extension for the landfill approved, Bynum said the county is still up against the wall in figuring out a way to deal with the trash. There are two expansions in place, and then the county will have to start sending trash to another landfill.
After scrapping his advisory committee’s proposed siting of a new landfill on A&B property in Kalaheo, Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. last year proposed a different site on Grove Farm land in Kalepa near Hanama‘ulu. That approval process is ongoing.
The county’s settlement with Sunrise only applies to the existing landfill and its anticipated expansions. “The waiver … does not apply to any future application of county to further expand and/or modify the Kekaha Landfill or to establish any new landfill in Kekaha or elsewhere on the island of Kaua‘i or in its environs.”
