HONOLULU — A Honolulu City Council resolution seeks both transparency and assurance over how the city’s site selection process to find the next municipal solid waste landfill on Oahu will affect the public.
Via Resolution 221, Andria Tupola, whose Council District 1 encompasses the Leeward Coast and includes the 35-year-old Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in Kapolei, which is set to close in 2028, urges the city administration to reconvene the disbanded Landfill Advisory Committee as well as provide the Council itself with updates.
The city has other ideas, however.
It says its ongoing search, boosted Aug. 22 by the state Land Use Commission’s decision to modify a state special-use permit to extend a prior deadline to find a landfill to Dec. 31, means the city has just over three months to name its next dump site.
Due to that tight time limit, city Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock told Tupola at the Council’s Committee on Planning and the Economy meeting Thursday that to reconvene the LAC would be a wasted effort.
“The administration’s position is that it’s not needed to reconvene the advisory committee,” he said, “and we’re in the final stages of naming the next landfill site.”
In response, Tupola said she believed the city has led no real community-level discussions on the landfill issue — particularly for residents of the Waianae Coast.
“So regardless of whether there is a new site announced, that is not the concern of my community,” she said. “We’re wondering what the path forward looks like.”
In 2021, Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s volunteer LAC, composed of community members, publicly met eight times.
In its search, the group was instructed not to consider the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill in its deliberations, “as the WGSL could not replace or supplement itself,” according to the resolution.
Six potential landfill sites — four in Wahiawa, one in the Kapolei and Waipahu area near Kunia Road and one in Haleiwa — were identified for evaluation by the LAC.
But in the committee’s final report published in June 2022, the group did not recommend any of the six sites.
They said those locations were either situated above Oahu’s drinking water aquifer systems or too close to prime agricultural lands, residential areas, schools or hospitals, or a variety of each.
The Honolulu Board of Water Supply had also raised concerns.
During a December 2021 meeting, BWS objected to siting a landfill within its “no pass zone,” an area that covers the interior of the island where Oahu’s potable water aquifer is located.
According to Babcock, use of many of these proposed but still restricted sites would require the state Legislature to amend or rescind an existing state law called Act 73.
That law places 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.
Babcock said amending Act 73 could do one of two things: reduce buffer zones down to a quarter-mile or eliminate them altogether, thereby opening more lands up for potential city dump sites.
Meantime, the original sites investigated by the mayor’s LAC are still being reviewed.
According to ENV, six sites in Central Oahu are restricted by the BWS no-pass zone but not restricted by Act 73.
The city said 10 sites that are not restricted by the BWS no-pass zone are restricted by Act 73.
The city added that military sites and expansion of the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill are not restricted by either Act 73 or the no-pass zone, but will not be considered at all.
Previously, the Mayor’s Office told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser the city might look at private properties and use of eminent domain to secure its next landfill.
But any future landfill needs to be about 100 acres in size and must last about 20 years to accommodate Oahu’s current waste load, Babcock said.
At the committee meeting, he disclosed it will likely take many years — perhaps five or more — after the selection of a landfill site is made before a dump actually opens somewhere on Oahu.
He added that identifying the future landfill is only “the first step.”
“As you know, there will be a long public process,” he told the committee. “There will be an (environmental impact statement) that has to be conducted; there’s a lot of public interaction in that process. And so that will take some time.”
He said that “other steps” will be taken toward “siting and opening the next landfill.”
“The responsible thing for the city to do is to have a landfill,” Babcock added. “There may be a time in the future when what goes into a landfill is very, very minimal.”
“Currently, we have about 88 percent diversion” of solid waste on Oahu, he said.
“So only about 12 percent of what needs to be disposed of on the island, what’s generated on the island, goes to the landfill now,” he said. “The rest is recycled or minimized by making ash or electricity or doing a lot of recycling programs.”
Vice Chair Esther Kia‘aina later asked about “the status of the six sites” that were originally selected.
Babcock said there were actually 10 sites but then seemed unclear on exactly how many sites — public or private — would be available for the city’s potential use.
“So I’m not 100 percent sure what the ownership is,” he added.
To that, Tupola balked at the lack of details on the city’s targeted properties.
“First off, what you said about state and private lands … it was very unclear to me,” she said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard that. Secondly, it wasn’t clear enough for anybody to really understand what’s going to happen.”
Tupola said the city’s proposed “repeal of Act 73” would still have to undergo a process at the state Legislature.
“That’s not going to happen until the end of May, and what happens if that doesn’t pass the Legislature?” she asked. “Are we going to name a site that has to go through a process in (the Legislature) that might not happen, and it takes another year?”
“Realistically, this is going to last awhile. Realistically, the community should always be advising, hands down … so I feel like it would behoove us to get in front of this instead of being behind it,” she said.
During public testimony, Laie resident Choon James said that “we really need to plan seven generations ahead.”
“And I don’t see how we can keep duplicating landfills in our puny island of Oahu,” she said, adding that greater recycling efforts needed to be done here instead. “And our water aquifer is just life to us; we need to have that.”
James urged the city to move away from creating another landfill and “gravitate to other technological systems to do it.”
Austin Salcedo, a Waianae resident, said the city needed “to continue the dialogue with the West side community, because we have been dumped on for centuries on this thing, way too long.”
“We need advanced notification for what’s going to happen,” he added.
Ultimately, Kia‘aina, who chairs the planning committee, called for Resolution 221 to be postponed until a date and time yet to be determined.
However, she suggested that future updates on the city’s progress to locate the next landfill could be held before the Council.
“I am still open to any thoughts based on the dialogue today,” she added.
