Mayor trashes
landfill ideas

Harris calls the latest site
proposals "absurd," while two
Council members introduce a
measure to ban dumps on Oahu

Mayor Jeremy Harris challenged the City Council yesterday to let him decide where to put the city's next landfill after criticizing as "absurd" the Council's proposed sites of Koko Crater and Campbell Industrial Park.

Meanwhile, City Council Members Rod Tam and Ann Kobayashi introduced a bill yesterday that would ban landfills on Oahu entirely.

Kobayashi said the bill, which will be heard by the Council on Wednesday, would not close the existing Waimanalo Gulch Landfill on the Leeward Coast before its current permit expires in May 2008. She said the ban would be contingent on finding technology that will reduce Oahu's trash so that no landfill will be needed.

Harris was out of town Friday when the Council's Public Works and Economic Development Committee voted 4-0 to put the next landfill on a 23-acre city-owned site in Campbell Industrial Park, next to the HPOWER waste-to-energy plant.

On Tuesday, following comments by Councilman Charles Djou and others that the industrial park site had serious drawbacks, Tam suggested that other sites be considered, including Hawaii Kai's Koko Crater.

Both proposals this week were outside a list of five landfill sites screened by an advisory committee: Maili, Nanakuli, Makaiwa Gulch and an expanded Waimanalo Gulch, all on the Leeward Coast, and Kapaa Quarry in Kailua.

Harris said he is "trying to read the political tea leaves" and suspects that "there's someone in the background angling for a landfill site." And rather than just award it to that person, Harris said, "the Council is proposing these outlandish sites so that they can throw up their hands and say, 'Well no one wants it in their community, but this person wants it so let's give it to them.'"

"The problem with this is that politics has been driving the decision up until now, and it needs to be a decision that's based on environmental considerations and on scientific considerations," Harris said yesterday after he returned from his trip.

"My hope is that the City Council makes a responsible decision immediately, and if they are unwilling to make a responsible decision, that they authorize me to make a decision," Harris said.

If given that charge by the Council, Harris said he would recommend that Waimanalo Gulch be expanded. It is the most cost-effective and environmentally sound choice, he said.

During the past year, Tam, chairman of the committee reviewing landfill options, has repeatedly accused the mayor of "punting" responsibility for landfill site selection to the Council instead of doing it himself.

Harris said yesterday that the state Land Use Commission -- not him -- specified that the Council should make the landfill site selection.

The reason the Harris administration promised to close Waimanalo Gulch Landfill was because that was a condition placed on getting a five-year land use authorization from the Land Use Commission in 2003, Harris said.

He said the requirement was imposed by the commission to force the city to seek public input on locating a landfill, not to bar the city from considering an expansion of Waimanalo Gulch, which has up to 20 years of capacity remaining.

"We would go back, and we'll explain we've gone through an exhaustive (assessment) process and public hearings ... (to determine) that Waimanalo Gulch is the best site," Harris said.

Kobayashi said yesterday that both the Campbell Industrial Park site and the landfill ban are meant to force the city to "get serious" about new technologies that can reduce the amount of trash going to the landfill.

Kobayashi said she believes company representatives who have said they can eliminate completely the need for a landfill on Oahu.

Councilmen Djou and Gary Okino both said yesterday that they believe the Council must choose a usable landfill site from among the five finalists to comply with the Land Use Commission's order.

Djou also said yesterday that the Koko Crater site will not go anywhere, because a restriction in the deed requires that it remain as park land. Djou is telling constituents worried about a Koko Crater landfill to testify at a 2 p.m. Monday Council committee hearing, he said.

But Djou is also telling them not to worry and that he does not think the full Council will support the site.

Any of the sites that have been reviewed in public hearings -- and new sites -- could come up in discussions at the Wednesday meeting of the full Council, Tam said.

Mayor-elect Mufi Hannemann declined comment yesterday and is unlikely to comment on the landfill until he is sworn in as mayor, said spokeswoman Elisa Yadao.