Landfill siting on Oʻahu and Kauaʻi hit roadblocks with Act 73, which created buffer zones and limitations on potential new sites.
More than seven months have passed since the City and County of Honolulu was supposed to have chosen a new landfill site.
The Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill off Farrington Highway in Kapolei is set to close in 2028, with attempts to narrow down a site ongoing since 2011.
"The most recent effort of our Landfill Advisory Committee, there were quite a bit of agricultural lands in Central Oʻahu that were evaluated actually, and some of the North Shore," Roger Babcock, director of the city’s Environmental Services Department, said Monday.
"But it turns out, all of those then were over the potable aquifer, which hadn't been a restriction that was at the forefront previously. But because of the Red Hill issue, it really sort of catapulted that to the forefront and kind of made that most recent effort not fruitful," Babcock said.
The city asked for a two-year extension just days before its Dec. 31, 2022 deadline to have a site selected. This decision is up for discussion in front of the city’s Planning Commission, where a contested case hearing is set for Aug. 9.
Babcock said the process included an application and approaching local neighborhood boards about the extension. The Nanakuli-Maili board voted to not support the request.
Past evaluations didn't consider federal lands, but now, the city is in talks with the military on potential agreements since "we really don't have any other options," Babcock said. It could be a "very long process," before any decisions can be made.
"The military has current needs, and sometimes future needs that are not necessarily well defined," Babcock said. "It's a challenge for them to give up lands that they might need for training or other things."
Another Kekaha Landfill
On Kauaʻi, the Kekaha Landfill will hit capacity in October 2026, but the county is awaiting permits from the state Department of Health for a vertical expansion, which would extend its lifetime to October 2029.
Allison Fraley, the County of Kauaʻi's Solid Waste Division's environmental services manager, said they're at the beginning of the new siting process.
"We have a right of entry agreement with the state Ag Department, who owns the land," Fraley said. "We are working on consultant contract for a firm that's going to be doing the preliminary investigation of the site."
This new site is about three and a half miles west of Kekaha, and less than two miles past the current landfill, mauka on Kaumualiʻi Highway.
The consultant would work with different agencies and groups to summarize the site use, zoning, constraints and impacts on the ecosystem, Fraley said.
"It's a huge list of things that need to be assessed," she said.
A second landfill was sited about a decade ago, but new regulations which went into effect in 2020 made the Maʻalo Road site unusable. Fraley said it takes about 10 years to complete construction of a landfill.
"If you're doing the math here, there is a gap in the time between when we're going to be filling Kekaha and when we’d be able to have this new site up and running, so we're working on other options," Fraley said.
Those options include plans for a liner over phase one of the current landfill.
