EDITORIAL
Better monitoring at sewage treatment plant

The seemingly endless controversy over how thoroughly to treat sewage at the city's Sand Island plant is in one of its quieter phases, but the federal Environmental Protection Agency reminds us that it's not time to relax.

From the days of Mayor Frank Fasi, the city's solution to pollution has been dilution. That is, almost all of O'ahu's sewage is treated to a given extent and then pumped through outfalls into the ocean.

Nearly all sewage plants in the nation that discharge into waterways or the ocean are required to provide secondary treatment.

For many years, Honolulu has been an exception. Because it said its outfalls were deep and far offshore, the city contended that primary treatment was all that was needed. After years of sometimes bitter and often expensive legal battles, however, the Kailua plant today provides secondary treatment and the Sand Island plant, which handles two-third's of the island's waste, is undergoing an extensive upgrade that, when finished, will both filter and disinfect treatment.

But the $300 million Sand Island project, writes Advertiser reporter Johnny Brannon, is a year behind schedule. That means that, most of the time, the effluent discharged into the ocean about 1.7 miles from Sand Island has had most of the solids separated from it but has not been disinfected.

And now, echoing a worry voiced for the past decade by environmentalists, the EPA reports water-monitoring data that suggest the plume of waste from the Sand Island outfall sometimes flows shoreward and toward Ala Moana and Waikiki — and that effluent also may be contaminating fish caught near the outfall.

It is important not to overreact to the EPA report. At the moment, it is urging the city simply to more aggressively monitor the outfall to ensure that it isn't causing problems that we've been unaware of.

Still, imagine if the effluent plume, if even just rarely, washes up on the shores of Waikiki. This is an area where we must be absolutely fastidious.

We are millions of dollars into what is, in effect, 1980s technology. The 21st-century solution for all of O'ahu, we're convinced, will eventually be tertiary treatment so the wastewater can be recycled.

Pure drinking water, of which the city now uses 100 million gallons a day to pump sewage effluent through its outfalls, is too precious to waste in this manner.