Landfill alternatives sought for O'ahu

By Robbie Dingeman
Advertiser City Hall Writer

Some members of the City Council are pressing the city administration to study new technology designed to get rid of garbage and reduce the need for landfills.

Councilman Gary Okino yesterday said he can't see the sense in spending as much as $70 million to expand the city's H-POWER garbage-to-energy plant without adequately exploring other ways to deal with solid waste that would end the need for landfills. H-POWER produces ash, which the city buries.

"It's just antiquated technology," Okino said at a briefing on how the city is managing its solid waste.

Mayor Jeremy Harris said the administration is exploring plasma arc technology that could eliminate a lot of garbage by heating materials at very high temperatures, creating a fuel gas and a small amount of glasslike slag. That material can be used to build roads.

But Harris said the city has to keep H-POWER running while it examines other technologies.

City Council budget chairwoman Ann Kobayashi and Okino said they are concerned that the city is moving to expand H-POWER without studying the new techniques. "I just think it's prudent that we go ahead with the feasibility study," Okino said.

The council's public works committee received briefings on some of the new technologies yesterday and Friday.

Dennis Miller, of Washington, D.C.-based Solena Group, is pitching his plasma arc technology. Okino said the method has been tested on a smaller scale than what Honolulu would need, but he's impressed. "I think they offer good alternatives for eliminating the need for landfills," Okino said.

Wai'anae Coast resident and community leader Kamaki Kanahele said his Hokupili group is interested in the new technology. Kanahele said there is potential for his organization, working with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, to bring some new technology here without city involvement.

"We were never going to allow the mayor to keep extending that garbage dump for another 15 years," Kanahele said. "We just had enough of it."

Harris said the city needs to continue expanding H-POWER as it works to find other ways to deal with treated lumber, auto waste and other garbage that can't be burned there.

"There is no plant in the world anywhere in existence that takes 3,000 tons of waste a day," Harris said. "We simply can't put our citizens out on the end of the gangplank with an unproven, untested technology."

During the past year, the H-POWER plant was closed 180 days for maintenance, which meant much more garbage than usual was sent to the rapidly filling landfill. Harris called it "extremely ill-advised" to lose a year designing the new boiler at H-POWER while the new technology is being explored.

City environmental services director Tim Steinberger said he is talking with the various groups about their technology.