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A prolonged legal battle is delaying Maui County’s ability to acquire the Puunene property it chose in April as the final disposal site of an estimated 400,000 cubic tons of debris from the Aug. 8 fire in Lahaina.

The eminent domain case over the 20-acre parcel owned by Komar Maui Properties is moving to federal court with a jury trial now set for September 2025. And while county officials hope to resolve the dispute before then, they will likely have to rely on the temporary Olowalu dump site longer than expected before the burned material can be transferred to Central Maui as the community desires.

“We don’t really have a Plan B,” said Shayne Agawa, director of the county’s Department of Environmental Management. “So getting that eminent domain is critical right now. We have airspace for our trash, but we don’t have airspace for the debris and our trash.”

The Army Corps of Engineers said Monday it has moved 248,000 tons of fire debris to Olowalu from Lahaina and expects to be done by February. But the county says it can’t begin to build a permanent site — a process that even expedited could take a year — until it has possession of the parcel next to the Central Maui Landfill.

Maui Corporation Counsel Victoria Takayesu said in an email Tuesday that she expects the court will consider the county’s motion for possession within months, after it is determined whether state or federal law apply. The decision on fair compensation likely will take years, but that part would likely play out while work on the landfill commences.

“We’ve already done our part, which was to deposit the good faith monies ($830,000) into the account for the purchase of the property,” said Maui Mayor Richard Bissen, a former judge. “If they’re going to continue to resist, then we need the court’s ruling.”

In court documents, the county said it needs 14 acres of the property for the fire debris, drainage, access and infrastructure. The county said it needs the remainder of the land for its future municipal solid waste needs, beginning in 2028 when it expects its available capacity will be full.

Komar countered in court documents that the county only needs 5 acres to handle the Lahaina fire debris and drainage, and taking the other 15 acres is nothing but a land grab under the veil of a disaster.

“The county has no right to take more than they need,” said Andy Naden, executive vice president and general counsel of Komar Investments, the umbrella company of the property owner.

There is the possibility of a settlement.

“Komar reached out to the mayor, and said, ‘Hey, we want to sit down and talk story,’” Agawa said.

While previous negotiation attempts have gone nowhere, Naden said Komar has a meeting scheduled with Bissen for Tuesday after he returns from a trip to Washington, D.C.

Naden said Komar’s offer still stands to donate 5 acres to the county, which the company made on April 8 during a press conference before any lawsuits were filed.

The county declined the offer, saying in a press release later that day that it was acquiring the land to accommodate future municipal solid waste in addition to the fire debris.

Maui County wants to build the permanent site as soon as possible to enable the removal of the debris from Olowalu, which was built roughly 7 miles south of Lahaina overlooking a world-renowned coral reef.

The majority of public sentiment — through a county survey and testimony at council meetings — has been against keeping the debris permanently at Olowalu due to environmental and health concerns.

Agawa said there’s an urgency to take advantage of the current 100% reimbursement by the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the estimated $60 million price tag to transport the material from Olowalu to the final dumping site. There is so much debris from the more than 2,200 structures that burned that the Corps said it could fill about five football fields five stories high.

FEMA can lower the reimbursement to 90%, leaving the county on the hook for about $6 million, Agawa said.

County officials stressed the urgency to the County Council, which passed a resolution on April 5 to authorize the Bissen administration to begin eminent domain proceedings.

But the county took 25 days before it filed its lawsuit in state court to condemn the property. The county also did not take the other two necessary steps to take the land — deposit good faith monies for the land value with the court clerk and file a motion for possession — until early June.

Meanwhile, Komar Maui Properties filed its own preemptive lawsuit on April 17 in federal court. In the suit, Komar claimed the county’s actions were “intended to take advantage of the Maui wildfires as an excuse to obtain the Komar 15 acres at far less than fair market value.”

The county’s appraisal said the property, which it considers ideal for a landfill because it basically is a 50-foot deep hole after being used as a quarry, is worth $830,000. Komar purchased the land in 2015 from Alexander & Baldwin for $700,000 and with the blessing of then-Maui Mayor Alan Arakawa, according to an email Arakawa wrote to Komar.

Naden countered that the land’s value at the “highest and best use,” which is required in eminent domain cases, is in the tens of millions of dollars.

The county said the tipping fees for the 400,000 cubic tons, which is being paid by FEMA, will be at the current municipal solid waste rate of $117 per ton, which would be about $46.8 million.

Agawa said the fire debris needs to go into the municipal solid waste site to meet regulatory requirements, despite it being more costly to build and maintain. Municipal solid waste landfills need more safeguards than a construction and demolition site due to the storing of organic material.

Before the August fires, Komar Maui Properties was working with Maui-based Pulehu C&D to develop the property as a landfill. Naden said Komar Investments’ Aloha Waste had operated on Maui for 25 years and Komar could build a MSW site at the property. It already has built 11 such sites around the country.

The county already has done some work to turn the property into a municipal solid waste site, including an aerial topographical survey. But the permitting, final engineering design, selection of a contractor and construction of the site cannot be done until the county has possession of the property, Agawa said.

The process also will be a little faster because the county can use portions of the previous designs done on the property, which has been Phase VI of the county’s master landfill plan, Agawa said.

“We don’t have to start from scratch,” Agawa said, but added that the county will need to get bids to operate it “because our landfill guys can’t do both.”

In the county budget for fiscal year 2025, which starts July 1, the council approved up to $16 million for design, construction and permitting of the wildfire permanent disposal site and up to $17.4 million for operations and maintenance of the site.

The portion of Komar’s property not used for fire debris would provide the county with about five years of additional landfill use, according to an affidavit by county civil engineer Sage Kiyonaga.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.

Civil Beat’s coverage of environmental issues on Maui is supported by grants from the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and the Hawaii Wildfires Recovery Fund, the Knight Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation.