DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Mike Leary, left, owner of Island Demo, Inc., and state Sen. Melodie Aduja yesterday inspected a pile of tires illegally dumped on Puhuli Road in Hauula. Aduja helped coordinate a cleanup effort by recycling companies that removed a bus, cars, tires and other trash from the property.
A cleanup in Hauula
shows how recycling can
help fight illegal dumping
Four Oahu recycling businesses removed 32 tons of junk from a Hauula property yesterday to raise public awareness of how recycling can help fight illegal dumping.
Between 7 a.m. and noon, eight dump trucks were filled with an old school bus, 25 cars and plenty of tires that have been piled over time on a 100-acre parcel on Puhuli Road.
"We took it upon ourselves to show how we can react and clean this sort of stuff up," said Mike Leary, owner of Island Demolition, a construction demolition company.
His company was joined by Hawaii Metals Recycling, Resource Recovery and Grace Pacific in donating trucks and crew time valued at $20,000. The businesses are part of a coalition of recyclers that wants the public to know that much of what's illegally dumped can actually be reused.
The bus and cars will be sold as scrap metal, and the tires will be mixed with coal and burned at a power plant.
If they had been recycled instead of dumped in the first place, they wouldn't have leaked oil, gas, transmission and brake fluids, and battery acid into a nearby stream, which carried it to the ocean, said state Sen. Melodie Aduja (D, Kahuku-Kaneohe).
Citizen environmentalist Carroll Cox, who has unearthed illegal dumpsites at the city's Waipahu incinerator and elsewhere, showed Aduja this site and two others on a recent tour of dumpsites in her Windward district. With the permission of the landowner, Aduja helped coordinate yesterday's cleanup.
DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Four recycling businesses yesterday cleaned up an illegal dump site that contained cars and a bus among the rubbish.
Aduja and Sen. Kalani English (D, East Maui-Lanai-Molokai) are co-chairs of a recently established interim legislative committee on waste management.
Aduja said she hopes the committee can hold a symposium later this summer to discuss the problem of illegal dumping and potential solutions.
One thing Aduja wants the committee to address is the economic motivation for illegal dumping. There's no tip fee if you dump illegally and the fee at Waimanalo Gulch Landfill is $82 a ton, Aduja said. Meanwhile, the state Department of Health fine for those caught dumping illegally is only $250.
"Obviously, the system is broken," she said.
Construction waste, hazardous waste, green waste (plants) and abandoned vehicles all have a place where they can be recycled, Aduja said.
The land cleaned yesterday is owned by Buddha Light International Agriculture Inc., which grows fruits and vegetables on 370 acres of leased land in Kahuku and Waimanalo, said Vice President You Soukaseum of Kailua. The company employs 20 people and had hoped to farm in Hauula, but couldn't afford to remove the pile of trash on the land that it bought in 1995, he said.
Soukaseum said that for the past six months he's paid two men to stay on the property, clean it up and ward off more rubbish dumpers.
"Now it looks nice," Soukaseum said. "We are very happy."
