Council picks
landfill today

Members find a deed
restriction that forbids
use of Campbell Industrial Park

The Campbell Industrial Park proposed landfill site facing a vote today by the City Council has a deed restriction that prohibits it from being used as a dump.

It's decision time The City Council meets at 10 a.m. today in Honolulu Hale: Issue: Choosing a landfill site is the 38th item on the morning agenda. Agenda: The agenda can be seen at www.honolulu.gov/council/agendas.htm. Online poll:What do you think of the City Council's handling of the landfill site issue? Cast your vote.

Some members say that kicks the 23-acre plot out of the running and refocuses attention on the five sites originally on the short list: Maili, Nanakuli, Makaiwa Gulch and an expansion of Waimanalo Gulch Landfill, all on the Leeward Coast; and Kapaa Quarry in Kailua.

Others say the city still could choose the industrial park site and use it.

But Councilmembers Barbara Marshall, Gary Okino and Rod Tam said yesterday that they will support an expansion of the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill.

"Waimanalo Gulch is the only way we can go," Marshall said, "with this caveat: It's absolutely imperative that this Council work with the new administration to minimize, if not eliminate, the need for a landfill."

Councilman Mike Gabbard said he will not vote for any landfill site, and Councilman Charles Djou called the Nanakuli site the "least bad" choice.

That means with four uncommitted votes, the only two sites that are likely to be approved today are Waimanalo Gulch or Nanakuli.

The Council must name a new landfill site by today or lose its state Land Use Commission permit for the current Waimanalo Gulch Landfill. The deadline was intended to ensure that the city have a replacement landfill ready for use when the landfill is closed in May 2008.

However, both city attorneys and staff for the Land Use Commission have said it would be possible for the city to seek to continue using Waimanalo Gulch by seeking an amendment to the Land Use Commission order.

Opponents of keeping the landfill at Waimanalo Gulch have said the city must adhere to its promise to close it.

When the city bought the 23-acre industrial park land from Campbell Estate in 2002 for $5.3 million, it agreed to conditions including prohibition of "refuse dumps, sanitary fills or incinerators" and "no uses releasing odor, dust, smoke or other pollutants from the property."

"Reading the description (in the deed) of what can't go there, it sounds like HPOWER can't go there," Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi said, noting that the city's waste-to-energy plant is right next door to the 23-acre site.

"You can condemn the covenant. I think the city could, because they (apparently) did that for HPOWER," Kobayashi said.

The small site best expresses the city's intention of reducing its trash volume via technology and recycling, Kobayashi said, and "I'm still going to support it."

Council Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz also said yesterday that he will support the site, "unless I get new information."

But no other Council members reached yesterday would commit to the site and three of the four members of the Public Works and Economic Development Committee who voted for it in committee on Nov. 19 -- Tam, Djou and Gabbard -- say they will not support it today.

Kobayashi said if the votes aren't there for the proposed industrial park site, "whatever the majority goes with I will support."

Tam, Public Works chairman, said he will revisit his original proposal: expanding the Waimanalo Gulch landfill, a choice he called "the most reasonable -- economically and socially."

Tam said his motion Nov. 19 proposing the industrial park site and his Nov. 23 suggestion of Koko Crater as a landfill site were both intended to further discussion, since "my role as chairman is to make sure we have an open process."

"We have to choose a landfill site, but we've got to be ... rational and also realistic about it," Tam said yesterday.

Djou, who blasted Tam's suggestion of Koko Crater as irresponsible, said he doesn't support the proposed industrial park site.

"The problem with government is, we can break our own rules," Djou said of the idea of ignoring the deed restrictions. "I think that's irresponsible, bad public policy and it's not the way I'm going to vote."

Gabbard said immediately after voting for the industrial park site that he only supports using a portion of it as a staging area to ship garbage off-island and won't support it as a landfill site.

Councilman Romy Cachola, the fifth member of the Public Works Committee, was absent from its Nov. 19 meeting because he was undergoing surgery on a pinched nerve in his neck. Cachola said yesterday he wasn't ready to make a statement on how he'll vote today, other than to say that the cost is a key factor.

"This is not just a not-in-my-backyard issue," Cachola said. "How will the taxpayers' money be best spent?"