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Once molasses gets into the water there’s little that can be done to clean it up. First it sinks, then dissolves, just like sugar in coffee.

That’s why a new molasses spill prevention and response plan filed with the state Harbors Division by Kahului Trucking & Storage in Maui is heavily focused on early detection.

The Alexander & Baldwin subsidiary, which pumps molasses onto vessels to be shipped to the mainland for cattle feed, has created the first molasses spill prevention and and response plan for Hawaii.

The plan was prepared for Kahului Trucking by A&B and was sent to the state Oct. 18. It aims to avert disasters, such as the Sept. 9 molasses spill in Honolulu Harbor that killed tens of thousands of fish and cost millions of dollars in response resources.

But while the plan is a good first step in preventing future spills, it also highlights the dearth of regulatory oversight and general lackadaisical attitude toward shipping molasses through Hawaii’s waters.
The new plan calls for hourly monitoring of molasses shipping operations in a manner that would alert officials of a spill before it gets out of hand. Routine inspections of molasses pipelines will also be required.

Until recently, there was no requirement for businesses shipping molasses in Hawaii to follow these procedures because the sugary liquid is not considered a hazardous material, such as oil or gas, both which require spill response plans.

The lack of molasses oversight protocols became glaringly apparent on Sept. 9, when a Matson Navigation Co. pipeline discharged 233,000 gallons of molasses into Honolulu Harbor. Matson, which has acknowledged responsibility for the discharge, did not have a spill response plan for molasses.

The Hawaii Department of Transportation oversees harbor operations, and has since required all business in Hawaii’s ports to provide spill response plans for any products being pumped through harbor pipelines.

“Any extra precautions that are taken are welcome to help prevent situations such as the one we had with the molasses spill on Sept. 9,” said Dean Higuchi, spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA oversees the Clean Water Act and is currently investigating the spill.

The DOT acknowledged it received a copy of Kahului Trucking’s molasses spill response plan, but referred questions about it to the company. DOT officials also declined to comment on whether the plan met agency expectations.

A First for Hawaii?

Matson has yet to provide a spill response plan to the DOT, saying in an Oct. 15 letter that it might halt all molasses shipments as a result of the Sept. 9 spill.

But the Kahului Trucking response plan appears to break new ground in Hawaii.

The molasses it handles comes from Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., which is owned by A&B. Matson used to be an A&B subsidiary, but recently split off to become its own publicly traded company.

Kahului Trucking and Matson are the only two pipeline operators in the state that pump molasses. Matson was in charge of shipping the substance on its vessels.

The new molasses spill prevention and response plan is 65 pages, and is modeled in large part off of those used for oil-spill response. The plan acknowledges the dangers of molasses, and highlights the difficulties of cleaning up a spill once it has happened.

Unlike petroleum-based products, molasses is water soluble and therefore can’t be skimmed off the surface of the water. That makes prevention all the more important.

“While molasses is biodegradable and is unlikely to have significant environmental impacts in the event it is accidentally released in small quantities, the potential severity of environmental impacts from a large molasses release cannot be overstated,” the plan states.

“Gone unnoticed, even a small pipeline leak has the potential to release a significant quantity of molasses over time. Moreover small leaks are indicative of deterioration of the pipeline which, if not corrected, could result in much larger leaks, including pipeline failure, in the future.”

The plan includes a 43-point checklist that Kahului Trucking employees must follow when transferring molasses from a storage container to a vessel.

Some of the provisions include having adequate lighting to search for leaks during night transfers and conducting visual inspections of the pipeline while molasses is being pumped. The 233,000-gallon discharge from Matson’s pipeline occurred overnight.

Checks are also in place to make sure leaks are immediately identified, such as constant monitoring of molasses levels in both the storage tanks and vessels to make sure none of the viscous liquid goes missing. And at least once during each molasses transfer, employees are expected to visually inspect the pipelines and record any observations in a logbook.

“Experience has shown that options for recovering and reducing the impacts of a molasses spill once it has entered the harbor are extremely limited, since molasses is water soluble,” the plan states.

“By necessity, then, the primary focus of this plan must be the prevention of a release of molasses to the harbor. A secondary focus is to ensure that in the event that a molasses release does occur it will be quickly discovered and stopped, thereby limiting the quantity of molasses released to the harbor.”

No More Big Spills?

With the new checks in place, Kahului Trucking believes that the “worst-case” scenario for a spill would only be 150 to 200 tons of molasses. The Sept. 9 spill in Honolulu Harbor was 1,400 tons.

Newly developed monitoring protocols are designed to catch any leaks on an hourly basis, if not earlier, whether it’s through visual inspections of harbor waters and pumping equipment or measuring how much molasses has been transferred from the storage tanks to the shipping vessel.

“Since a catastrophic rupture of the molasses pipeline is unlikely to occur, the most likely spill scenario would release much less molasses to the harbor. A more likely spill scenario would be a small leak on the pipeline or a hose that discharges less than 10 percent of the pipeline flow into the harbor and is discovered within one hour of occurring.

“This would result in a release of less than 20 tons of molasses to the harbor. A release of this quantity of molasses to the harbor is expected to have only a minor localized and transient impact on water quality.”

In the event of the spill, the plan states Kahului Trucking would be financially responsible since it has “sole responsibility” for the pipeline and for any cleanup that would be needed as a result of a leak.

“All businesses have some degree of operational risk,” said Rick Volner, general manager for Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., in a statement provided by Alexander & Baldwin. “Management is aware of the risk associated with its operations and accepts responsibility for those risks.”

Questions in Kahului

What’s unclear is why Matson and Kahului Trucking were allowed to operate without a molasses spill response plans for so long.

In 2003, Kahului Trucking discharged 50,000 gallons of molasses into Kahului Harbor from the company’s pipeline. But there’s little in the way of documentation regarding that spill, and the environmental ramifications appear to have been minimal.

Civil Beat requested records on the 2003 spill from DOT and the state Department of Health but the agencies had little information available. They released a one-sentence entry in a spreadsheet about issuing a press release about the spill and that published on Dec. 10, 2003, two days after the spill.

According to the story, a two-inch hole in a state-owned pipeline caused the 50,000 gallon spill. A state clean water employee also told the newspaper that he expected the molasses to flush out of the harbor relatively quickly due to winter storm conditions. He also didn’t expect any long-term effects on harbor waters.

The spilled molasses, which came from Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., was supposed to be loaded onto a Matson vessel. The leak was spotted after a Kahului Trucking employees noticed a difference in how much molasses was leaving the storage facility and what was actually being loaded onto the Matson ship.

Kahului Trucking was involved in another major molasses spill on Maui in 1998 when 500,000 gallons spewed from a broken seam in a storage tank. The molasses was contained before it flowed into the harbor, according to a brief news report at the time.

And just within the past few weeks, Kahului Trucking in its molasses pipeline that resulted in small amounts of the substance getting into the harbor.

A Burgeoning Backlog

Another big question is what will happen with the molasses that’s currently being produced on Maui. Since Matson has quit transporting the substance, Alexander & Baldwin is searching for a new shipper but has yet to find a permanent replacement.

The Maui sugar mill can produce about 1,500 tons of molasses each week, with annual production averaging nearly 50,000 tons. Kahului Trucking can store about 11,000 gallons of molasses, according to the new molasses response plan.

But space seems to running out.

According to Suzy Hollinger, the director of investor relations at Alexander & Baldwin, the sugar operation is nearing its off-season which should buy the company some time to evaluate its options for shipping molasses from Maui.

“We expect to have sufficient molasses storage to get us through the remainder of the year and the remainder of this harvest season,” Hollinger said in an email.

Alexander & Baldwin saw its when compared to last year in part because of sugar prices and complications related to its production and transport.

Read Kahului Trucking spill prevention and response plan here: