Shipper prepares for
Oahu garbage

Having trash taken to the mainland
will soon be an option

While the City Council struggles to name a site for the city's next landfill, a private company plans to start exporting garbage from Oahu to Washington state before summer.

Pacific Rim Environmental Services should to be ready to compact, shrink-wrap and ship trash to the Roosevelt Regional Landfill in Klickitat County "by the end of the first quarter of next year," said Jim Hodge, company chief executive officer.

Hodge's company handles marketing for the private Roosevelt Regional Landfill, which opened in south-central Washington state in 1991 with 291 million tons of capacity, he said.

Mayor Jeremy Harris' administration turned down Hodge's unsolicited offer to ship 100,000 to 200,000 tons a year of Honolulu's waste to Washington at a starting cost of $76 per ton.

But Mayor-elect Mufi Hannemann and a number of City Council members have said they want to consider all the options for Oahu's garbage -- including shipping off island.

"In the mid-70-dollar range, we think there'd be quite a few people willing to do it," Hodge said last week. He refused to confirm any contracts with private trash haulers but said, "We feel quite confident that there will be a fairly substantial volume of waste."

Councilman Gary Okino said the prospect of a private competitor to the city's Waimanalo Gulch Landfill is mixed news.

"On one hand the good news would be the reduced need for landfill (space)," Okino said, "but in terms of impact on city's budget, it would be huge."

Private haulers bringing trash to either HPOWER or the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill are charged about $82 a ton. But since the landfill costs the city only $12 a ton to operate, the net profit to the city is $70 a ton, Okino said.

If private haulers elected to ship all 400,000 tons of garbage off island that they now delivered to the city landfill or power plant, the city budget would see an annual loss of $28 million, Okino said.

In addition, Okino said, if the city shipped its own waste off island, it would be paying "a lot more than what we're paying right now," adding, "I think we'd do better to invest in landfill development costs with general obligation bonds."

City procurement laws require seeking bids on a contract valued at $25,000 or more. Shipping 100,000 tons of garbage a year at $76 a ton would cost $7.6 million.

Environmental Services Director Frank Doyle has said that all the city's profits at HPOWER and the landfill are used to subsidize the cost of other waste services, including residential pickup.

Hodge said his company is negotiating to buy a 2- to 3-acre Sand Island site for compacting and wrapping garbage for shipment. He would not disclose the exact location, but said it would be in an area "close to other waste facilities."

If it is approved for necessary permits from the state and city, the company would construct a 17,000-square-foot building to house a small tipping floor, grinder, baler, wrapper and conveyor, Hodge said. The company has "relationships" with two trans-Pacific barge companies that would take the trash to the mainland, where it would be offloaded at a dock on the Columbia River.

The company's investment in land and equipment to begin Hawaii operations would be "north of $10 million," Hodge said.

When Hodge testified before a City Council committee in October, he said that his company's offer was "very environmentally secure, economical, and it lets solid-waste decisions be made over a longer period of time, so you folks don't have to make hard solid-waste decisions every year."

Harris criticized shipping out trash as "bad management" that would leave the city vulnerable to price hikes by the shipping company.

Doyle has called shipping trash off island "immoral."

Councilman Mike Gabbard, who leaves office at the end of December, has called it "morally wrong to ... put our trash anywhere on Oahu, as long as we have this viable option of shipping it."

Gabbard said he will vote for no new landfill site on the island. He has promoted the merits of shipping trash to well-managed mainland landfills that want it.

Hodge said Honolulu would not have to commit to more than a five-year contract, with annual increases tied to the Consumer Price Index. "I think we could act as a safety net," he said.

The Roosevelt Regional Landfill has been averaging about 2 million tons a year over the past few years and had a record 3 million tons buried this year, Hodge said. At the currently permitted rate of 5 million tons a year, the landfill will last at least 44 years.

About one-fifth of the rural landfill's trash comes from out of state, and only about 20,000 tons a year is actually from Klickitat County, Hodge said.