Controversial Landfill Expansion To Receive Trash Soon
KAPOLEI — My window is rolled down and my arm is hanging out in the sun. Wind blows in my face. There’s a patch of green on one side and deep blue as far as I can see in the other direction.
No, I’m not cruising down to Ala Moana Beach Park for a barbecue. I’m in the passenger seat of Waste Management General Manager Joe Whelan‘s white Chevy Z71 4X4 as he gives me a tour of Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill.
Throw out your expectations of a landfill. It’s not 1970 anymore. Plastic bags blowing in the wind, bottles strewn about, seagulls digging for food and an unholy stench are nowhere to be found. On a recent windy morning, the island’s biggest dump was proudly described by City and County of Honolulu Department of Environmental Services Director Tim Steinberger as “one of the best-run landfills in the country.”
Whelan, Steinberger and Environmental Services Deputy Director Manny Lanuevo first showed me an aerial view of the 200-acre property and then took me for a drive to see where more than 500 tons of trash are deposited every day, but which in a matter of a couple of years will just be for ash from H-POWER. The days of this facility taking residential garbage are almost over.
“We need to handle our own waste,” Steinberger said.
The clock to do that is ticking, and ticking quickly.
The hillside where trash is placed, then covered with dirt or a canvas tarp every day to stifle odors and keep rubbish on the ground, is expected to reach its capacity in six weeks, Whelan said. After six more weeks topping off an adjacent cell where expansion supplies like liner and pipe are now being stored, the entirety of the current landfill will be at capacity.
At that stage it will be time to move to the expansion area, further back and higher up in the gulch. Whelan says it will be open for business in two or three months, just in the nick of time. Delays were caused by furloughs and a lot of red tape.
“To be fair, when you’re looking at a canyon like that, it’s a huge engineering undertaking,” he said. “It’s not like a field in Nebraska. It’s much more complicated.”
The expansion area is big enough to add 15 years of life to Waimanalo Gulch. Whether the city is allowed to actually use the landfill for that whole period is unclear. The current permit expires in 2012. In [pdf] in 2009, the Hawaii Land Use Commission said that ash could be deposited after the deadline, but not solid waste.
H-POWER — Honolulu Program of Waste Energy Recovery — produces about 100,000 tons of ash annually by burning 600,000 tons of waste. The plant generates enough power for 45,000 homes.
“Unlike most mainland cities, Honolulu has had waste-to-energy for 20 years,” Whelan said. “This was always designed as overflow.”
The partnership between H-POWER and Waimanalo Gulch is based on the many materials that currently cannot be processed for energy. Carpets and mattresses that do not shred, as well as animals and waste treatment sludge, can’t be burned easily at this point. So they end up in the landfill. But that could change soon.
The plan is that by 2012, H-POWER will have increased its capacity and will be able to handle the island’s entire solid waste stream. At that point, Waimanalo Gulch would take just ash and residue from H-POWER and serve as an emergency backup.
A survey to identify a site for the island’s next landfill is already under way. But that process could take 15 or 20 years, Steinberger said.
Whelan and Steinberger joke that the landfill, with its spectacular view of the Pacific, will someday be the site of a $300-per-round golf course or a Disney resort, a nod to the entertainment company’s current development at nearby Ko Olina.
Despite the operators’ sunny outlook, complaints about the landfill expansion have been brought by developers and homeowners at Ko Olina — just down the hill and across Farrington Highway — as well as others in Leeward Oahu. Hawaii Senate President and Congressional hopeful Colleen Hanabusa, who represents the area, filed a lawsuit last year against the city seeking to stop the expansion in its tracks.
One other solution, shipping up to 100,000 tons of waste to the mainland annually — under a proposal just approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture after months of delays and subsequent fines — is merely a short-term fix.
