KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM
Carroll Cox, of EnviroWatch, stood near hundreds of metal cylinders yesterday near the old incinerator building at the end of Waipahu Depot Road. The area is now used as a maintenance yard.
When Lawrence Kalilikane heard about tons of household appliances being illegally buried at the city's Waipahu incinerator site, he wasn't too surprised. City recycling volume
sank as cost went upA buyer for Hawaii Metal
Recycling says appliances
piled up by the thousands
By Diana Leone
In 2001, when the city virtually stopped recycling household appliances with Hawaii Metal Recycling Co., it had thousands of them stockpiled at the Waipahu site -- "at least 200 to 300 tons" of used stoves, water heaters, washers and such, said Kalilikane, the buyer for Hawaii Metal Recycling.
If a state Department of Health investigation determines that city workers flattened and illegally buried the appliances there, Kalilikane said he holds Mayor Jeremy Harris responsible for it.
"No worker would do anything like that on his own," Kalilikane said yesterday.
After a meeting yesterday between state and city officials about the buried appliances, Harris "reiterated the city's commitment to environmental protection and to recycling and again stated how important it is to correct the problem at the Waipahu incinerator immediately," according to a written statement from his office.
Neither city nor state officials provided the Star-Bulletin with details about yesterday's meeting.
The state Department of Health, which has the authority to enforce federal environmental laws governing solid waste disposal, is investigating how at least 30 tons of appliances came to be buried there. It has said there is the potential of fines up to $10,000 a day of violation.
The meeting yesterday was the city's first response to the state's request for information about its practices with appliance disposal and activities at the Waipahu incinerator site.
Meanwhile, the state Attorney General's Office has begun an investigation, Chief Investigator Donald Wong confirmed yesterday. Allegations were referred to his office Monday, he said, and "we're in the very early, infantile investigative state right now."
Scott West, special agent-in-charge of the Environmental Protection Agency's criminal investigation division that includes Hawaii, said that information is typically gathered about an environmental crime before it is determined whether county, state or federal laws are the most appropriate way to prosecute. He said he could not confirm or deny whether his office is participating in the Waipahu investigation.
Hawaii Metal Recycling General Manager Jim Banigan said that in 2000 the city recycled 1,700 tons of appliances with his company. But in 2001, city sales to Hawaii Metal Recycling plummeted to 97 tons because the city objected to increased charges by the company "and the material stopped coming."
In 2002 the city and company compromised on rates, and the city sent 167 tons of appliances for recycling, Banigan said. So far this year, the city has recycled 88 tons of appliances.
Banigan and Kalilikane said they do not know why the volume of appliances the city has recycled has dropped from past levels. No other company on Oahu recycles appliances by crushing them for scrap metal, they said.
The state prohibits burying appliances in a landfill unless there is a reason they cannot be recycled, said Steve Chang, chief of the DOH Solid and Hazardous Waste Division.
City & County of Honolulu
