Even with a slow economy, Waimanalo Gulch continues to fill at an alarming rate.

On a normal day, the gulch takes in 600 tons of garbage plus another 400 to 500 tons of ash, residue and unburnable garbage from the H-Power plant 5 1/2 miles away.ut last week H-Power was down for its twice-a-year maintenance. So a rainbow of private and government garbage trucks — green, red, white, blue and yellow — lined up at the entrance to Waimanalo Gulch.

Joe Hernandez, the environmental manager for the private company that operates the city landfill, stood on a berm of dirt covering tons of garbage.

Below, a stream of garbage trucks dumped one load after another. Dinosaur-sized bulldozers, squeaking around on enormous spiked treads, immediately buried each new pile, leaving only smooth patches of earth in their wake.

The work went methodically and smoothly. For the long term, Hernandez worries where all of the garbage will go.

"We can handle it for now," Hernandez said over the din of bulldozers and garbage trucks. "But you can see the impact of what happens whenever H-Power goes down. We fill up fast."

Neighbor Islands face problem

Like O'ahu, Hilo's landfill is also expected to reach its capacity within two years. Across the Big Island, the landfill in Kona still has enough room for another 50 years. But the people in Kona don't want their roads filled with garbage trucks ferrying trash from Hilo, Chang said.

A new phase of the central Maui landfill will extend capacity another 20 years, Chang said. Hana and Lana'i have another five years; Moloka'i 10.

Kaua'i's landfill in Kekaha is expected to be filled within four years. For the past two years, county officials have been planning for a long-term answer, said Troy Tanigawa, solid waste program administrator.

In the solid waste business, Tanigawa said, the rule of thumb calls for planning to begin five to eight years before a landfill fills up.

Timson, of the Makakilo /Kapolei/Honokai Hale neighborhood board, believes Honolulu officials got started too late in searching for an alternative to the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill.

"Everyone knew this was coming up, but the city's been slow to react," Timson said.

Residents oppose landfill expansion

The search for a solution has stirred up old feelings of resentment on the Leeward Coast, which became home to both H-Power and the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill in the late 1980s.

Neighbors around Waimanalo Gulch feel they've done their duty for the rest of O'ahu. They don't want the landfill expanded to cover Honolulu's trash needs for another 15 years, as city officials have proposed.

"The whole situation stinks," said Jane Ross, who lives a mile from the landfill and serves on the Makakilo/Kapolei/Honokai Hale neighborhood board. "I'm sorry, there is just no other word."

She wants the city to consider new ideas, such as so-called "plasma arc technology" that generates intense heat, supposedly vaporizing garbage and leaving nothing behind.

Plasma arc technology is used to destroy medical waste, but not yet on a large scale handling thousands of tons of garbage per day.

It would also cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build a system that could serve a city the size of Honolulu.

Councilman John DeSoto, who represents the area, argues that city officials "need to be creative" in looking at new technologies.

"We don't like to be creative here," DeSoto said. "The people in the state and the city feel comfortable, and they don't want to change things because their jobs might be in jeopardy."

New technology costly

The city's Department of Environmental Services has visited the Huntsville, Ala., headquarters of one company that works in plasma arc technology. The department also has a Mainland firm conducting a nationwide survey of alternative technologies.

Jones, at H-Power, has heard lots of new ideas for getting rid of trash.

They're all expensive.

"There is a lot of technology out there and a lot of people who want to sell the technology to you," he said. "But when you get down to the economics, it always boils down to how much do you want to charge the citizens to get rid of their refuse?"

City officials are open to ideas that would cut down on the thousands of tons of trash per day going into both H-Power and Waimanalo Gulch, Doyle said. They want to divert foliage, grass and other "green waste" into composting. They're talking to a private company about using the ash from H-Power and turning it into a new type of building material.

"We're open to listening to ideas that make sense," Doyle said. "Other things are far, far, far down the road. Plasma arc is far down the road."

For now, Hernandez hopes city officials allow his company, Waste Management, to expand Waimanalo Gulch and handle O'ahu's garbage for the next 15 years.

Each new load will be hidden under tons of earth. And at the end of 15 years, the company will landscape the earth left behind so it blends with the rest of the Leeward landscape, Hernandez said.

But after 15 years, Hernandez said, the 200 acres of Waimanalo Gulch will have no room for any new garbage.

Then, he said, the city will have to find some other way to deal with O'ahu's trash.