Waimanalo is off list
as possible landfill siteFour places make a recommended
list for the City Council
In a contentious final meeting yesterday, an advisory committee removed the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill from a short list of potential sites for a city landfill after 2008.
The Mayor's Advisory Committee on Landfill Siting is recommending to the City Council four sites -- Ameron Quarry in Kailua, and Makaiwa Valley, Maili and Nanakuli on the Leeward Coast -- without indicating a preference among them.
The vote was unanimous, but only after four of the 15 members resigned in protest because Waimanalo Gulch in Kahe Valley on the Leeward Coast was being left off the list. The committee has been working on the recommendation for five months.
The city is under order from the state Land Use Commission to name a site for a new landfill by June. The deadline was imposed to ensure the city did not wait until the last minute to create a new landfill, since the process requires an environmental impact study, public hearings, multiple permits and governmental approvals.
Earlier this year, the Land Use Commission granted the city a special use permit to continue using Waimanalo Gulch as a landfill through May 2008, provided it meets specific milestones toward preparing a new landfill site.
The City Council is not bound by the committee's recommendation. However, Councilman Mike Gabbard said yesterday he expects the Council will study each of the four sites suggested.
Gabbard said yesterday he is against the three Leeward sites, which are in his district, because "we've carried Oahu's (garbage) burden for the last 15 years."
Gabbard also said he will seek an $8 million annual payment to the community ultimately chosen as the next landfill site.
"Wherever the next landfill is located, the neighboring community must be compensated with additional improvement projects money to offset the nuisance," Gabbard said.
He said the money could come from a combination of sources, including the city capital improvement budget, landfill tipping fees, federal Community Development Block Grant funds, general fund money or a new solid-waste impact surcharge.
"This is the right thing to do, whether the landfill is located in Waianae, Kailua or Hawaii Kai," Gabbard said. "We all need to recognize that Oahu's opala (garbage) is not just the responsibility of one community, but the responsibility of us all."
Environmental guidelines that prohibit putting a landfill over a drinking water aquifer remove most of Oahu from consideration.
The advisory committee narrowed an original list of more than 40 potential sites to eight by requiring that a site have room for at least 10 years of garbage at the current rate of disposal. It also established criteria for judging sites, including effects on nearby communities, compatibility with existing land uses, environmental concerns, safety and costs of buying, preparing and running a landfill.
Yesterday, nine committee members -- Todd Apo, Ted Jung, Shad Kane, Cynthia Rezentes, Gary Slovin, Gary Tomita, Robert Tong, George Yamamoto and Michael Chun -- voted to remove Waimanalo Gulch from consideration.
Committee members Bruce Anderson, Cynthia Thielen, Kathy Bryant-Hunter and Eric Guinther all excused themselves from the meeting before the vote and asked that their names be removed from the committee's recommendation.
Members Steve Holmes, who attended some previous meetings, and Bill Paty, who attended none, were not present yesterday.
Thielen, the Republican state representative for Kailua, said she felt a Nov. 20 letter to city Environmental Services Director Frank Doyle from Ko Olina Resort developer Jeff Stone threatened the city with legal action if it did not remove Waimanalo Gulch from consideration.
Doyle responded in a letter Wednesday that the city administration "intends to comply with the state Land Use Commission decision ... which requires the city to close Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill no later than May 1, 2008. We reiterate our commitment in this letter."
Doyle continued in his letter that "neither the city administration nor the Land Use Commission can dictate what the City Council may or may not consider as a potential site. Therefore, the city administration has not interfered with or tried to dictate what the committee may or may not recommend."
Doyle's and Stone's letters were distributed to the committee before it voted.
