City says no-show was error
By Scott Ishikawa
Advertiser Staff Writer
The city administration admits it should have had a high-ranking official at Wednesday's public hearing to answer questions on the sensitive issue of expanding the Waimanalo Gulch landfill in Nanakuli.
Many of the 125 residents who attended the well-publicized hearing in Kapolei and are opposed to the expansion became more irritated about the absence of a city administration official to answer their questions. The state Department of Health hearing was held on behalf of the city, which is applying for a temporary permit to raise the trash level there from 400 feet to 430 feet.
The city is asking for the temporary eight-month solution until a five-year landfill permit extension can be approved by state health officials. An original plan to increase the size of the landfill by more than 60 acres, allowing dumping for another 10 to 15 years, has since been scaled back.
Calling it a "miscommunications error" yesterday, city managing director Ben Lee said he will ask city environmental services director Tim Steinberger and deputy director Frank Doyle why no one from the Harris administration was available for questions Wednesday night.
"I take it as my responsibility and I'll be putting in a call to them on what happened," said Lee, who said city officials will be present at future meetings on the landfill issue.
Lee was under the assumption after earlier conversations with Steinberger and Doyle that one of them or another department official was to attend. City officials said they had someone representing the Department of Environmental Services at the meeting, but did not know who it was.
City Council member John DeSoto, who attended Wednesday's hearing, said there were repeated calls for a city administration official to stand and answer questions. No one did.
DeSoto said the city should have had a representative there.
"It was arrogant," DeSoto told Lee at an unrelated press conference yesterday. "Someone should have been there. It's a communication thing."
"It's almost like a done deal for the city already," DeSoto said afterward, referring to the proposed expansion. "This landfill is making the city $30 million a year in revenue, so it was a done deal for them getting the permit."
State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, D-21st (Kalaeloa, Makaha), said the city's no-show at the hearing frustrated residents already miffed at the city for extending the public comment period nine times for the landfill expansion's environmental impact statement — until it was too late to do anything but expand the landfill.
City administration officials say they have extended the comment period since last year to gather additional public input.
"It doesn't matter if the city held previous meetings with residents on the same issue, they should have been there," Hanabusa said. "If this was a private entity applying for the same permit and the applicant didn't show up, the people handling the permit would have said, 'Forget it.' "
