Ma’alo Road site added to possible landfill locations Where to put Kauai’s garbage is one of the big unanswered questions on the island. And a pair of Kaua’i County Council members are worried about what they see as the county
Ma’alo Road site added to possible landfill locations
Where to put Kauai’s garbage is one of the big unanswered questions on the island.
And a pair of Kaua’i County Council members are worried about what they see as the county administration’s latest attempt to answer the question.
The debate is important because the garbage question needs an answer soon, as the county’s Kekaha landfill is projected to fill up somewhere in the vicinity of 2005.
To sink the floated idea of barging garbage off-island, the county in May of 2000 commissioned a consultant, Earth Tech Inc., of Honolulu, to rank potential sites for a new county dump.
The number-one site was across Kaumuali Highway from the existing landfill.
The second-highest-ranked site was in Kipu, just outside Puhi. At the time, the owner, Grove Farm Co., wasn’t averse to selling or leasing the land, but the aquifer underlying the site is used for drinking water.
The study ranked five more sites in descending order. But according to a pair of council members, the administration of Mayor Maryanne Kusaka isn’t planning to utilize the results of the study or any of the seven studied sites. Instead, the county is considering an eighth site, adjacent to Amfac-owned land along Ma’alo Road in Kapaia.
“They are negotiating with somebody,” claimed Councilman Gary Hooser, who doesn’t know who.
The top-ranked site “was right across the street” from the current dump, “but the state decided not to sell the land,” Hooser said.
Councilman Ron Kouchi was the first council member to question county solid-waste coordinator Troy Tanigawa publicly last month at a council meeting about the alleged negotiations. Kouchi expressed similar concerns.
But Kouchi stopped short of Hooser’s assessment of the landfill situation, which critics say hasn’t moved forward one inch in the past year.
“I have no faith in the management of the county’s solid-waste programs and the problems associated with that,” Hooser said.
The administration painted a vastly different picture of the situation Monday afternoon. County spokeswoman Beth Tokioka reported that Tanigawa and Kusaka’s top assistant, Wally Rezentes, denied negotiations were underway.
“We’re definitely not negotiating with anybody. Basically, Grove Farm was not interested in offering the Kipu site any more, but they said they had another site we might be interested in,” Tokioka said, referring to the Ma’alo site in Hanamaulu. “The seed has been planted, but we need to find out if the site meets the technical points.”
Kouchi said the problem wasn’t necessarily related to the site itself, but the process.
“Whatever we are proposing to do, shouldn’t we be doing some public meetings? According to a handout (from the administration) the council received Aug. 2, a site evaluation was to be done Aug. 3, and then they would begin land acquisition,” Kouchi said. “This was never part of a public discussion.”
While the council and the administration “may end up at the same place, there are things related to this that should be publicly discussed in the interest of the taxpayers. Then, if we end up in the same place through public discussions, I’m for all for it,” Kouchi said.
According to a county press release distributed when the site-selection study was commissioned last May, the seven sites were chosen from areas not excluded by an islandwide evaluation.
Potential sites were excluded for a variety of reasons, including special management areas; sites within 1,000 feet of shoreline’ federal-owned land; areas within 100-year flood zones, 300 feet of perennial streams or 1,000 feet of surface water; wetlands; state conservation lands; and areas within 1,000 feet of water wells or 10,000 feet of airport runways.
But it doesn’t appear the county is going to follow it’s own study’s recommendation.
In addition to the county’s plans, a private firm, Central Kaua’i Sanitary Landfill, claims to be committed to building a private landfill near Puhi.
The company has been in negotiations to buy or lease Grove Farm-owned land near the intersection of Kipu Road and Kaumualii Highway.
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and mailto:dwilken@pulitzer.net
