City considers shipping
garbage off to mainland

Shipping at least some of Honolulu's garbage to the mainland could buy time to figure out long-term solutions to waste management, private landfill operators told a City Council committee yesterday.

Or the city could decide that the practice should be a part of its permanent trash plan, said representatives of landfills in Idaho and Washington.

Committee to meet The Public Works and Economic Development Committee will meet at 9:30 a.m. Thursday. The agenda includes: » Final proposals from companies offering alternative trash technologies. » The Department of Environmental Services' analysis of proposals to ship Honolulu garbage out of state. » A report from the city administration on its 25-year solid-waste plan. » Reviewing the steps toward choosing a new landfill by Dec. 1.

Jim Hodge, chief executive officer of Pacific Rim Environmental Resources, told the Public Works and Economic Development Committee that large regional landfills in remote areas are becoming "the harbinger of long-haul disposal" on the mainland.

Hodge's company is promoting the use of the 230 million-ton-capacity Roosevelt Regional Landfill in Klickitat County, Wash.

About a month ago the company made an unsolicited proposal to the city, offering to take 100,000 tons a year of garbage at a price of $76.38 per ton.

Idaho Waste Systems can offer a similar price, said Grant Gauthier, its vice president of business development, though he declined to be specific. His company proposes to take between 200,000 and 300,000 tons per year of Honolulu's waste at its 420 million-ton-capacity landfill 22 miles east of Boise.

After city recycling programs, transport to a private construction and demolition landfill, and burning waste for electricity at HPOWER, Oahu produces 300,000 tons of solid waste a year that is buried at Waimanalo Gulch Landfill.

The city's present fee for both HPOWER and the landfill is $81 a ton, scheduled to increase to $91 in January.

Both mainland companies proposed to compact garbage into bales about 4 by 5 by 8 feet, which would be shrink-wrapped in plastic and loaded onto empty barges returning to the mainland after delivering goods to Honolulu. Both propose to build and operate a baling and wrapping facility in Honolulu at locations on Sand Island or Barbers Point.

Idaho Waste Management would use train transport from a Washington port to its inland site, while the Klickitat landfill is directly accessible via the Columbia River.

Hodge called Pacific Rim's offer "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."