Kaua’i County is moving forward with a plan to allow the Kekaha landfill to grow several feet higher in order to extend its life. The “vertical expansion,” or piling trash on top of trash, could add three to five years
Kaua’i County is moving forward with a plan to allow the Kekaha landfill to grow several feet higher in order to extend its life.
The “vertical expansion,” or piling trash on top of trash, could add three to five years to the island’s only operational landfill, said Troy Tanigawa, the county’s solid-waste coordinator.
The landfill has between four and five years of useful life left, said county engineer Cesar Portugal.
State Department of Health approval is necessary for the expansion, which also will likely require additional environmental assessments, according to Tanigawa.
He said the potential continuation of the landfill doesn’t change the county’s urgency to develop a new landfill somewhere else on the island before the Kekaha dump is full.
The primary focus regarding a new landfill remains finding the site, Tanigawa said. Currently, a 100-acre parcel inland of Kalepa Ridge near Hanama’ulu is the county’s preferred location, even though it wasn’t among seven sites identified by a consultant as worthy of consideration, Portugal told a Lihu’e Business Association meeting in Lihu’e Wednesday morning.
An area commonly referred to as the Ma’alo Road site that was one of the consultant-designated seven potential sites is only a few hundred yards from the Kalepa site, Tanigawa said. Both are owned by AOL/Time Warner mogul Steve Case’s Lihu’e Land Co., and were formerly farmed by Amfac Sugar Kaua’i.
The company is willing to possibly sell the parcel to the county, said Tanigawa.
The county has much work to do to make sure the Hanama’ulu site would work as a landfill, said Tanigawa.
Getting the Hanama’ulu community to embrace the idea of a landfill in their neighborhood will be another task, Portugal said. The prevailing attitude for most communities toward landfills is “not in my back yard,” he noted.
“No matter where we place it, there will be opposition,” he said.
Staff Writer Paul C. Curtis can be reached at mailto:pcurtis@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 224).
