Panel to take last shot at picking landfill site

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Leeward O'ahu Writer

With time running out, the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Landfill Siting will make a last-ditch attempt to resolve its differences today — the deadline for naming a spot for O'ahu's next landfill.

That meeting could be a showdown over whether the present city landfill on the Wai'anae Coast will be considered.

Today's 9 a.m. meeting is set to take place in the same small room on the third floor of Kapolei Hale where the committee failed to finalize a final draft report or reach a consensus on Nov. 21.

At that contentious meeting the committee, which is deadlocked, decided to meet one last time on Dec. 1 to try to hammer out a single site recommendation.

Otherwise, the committee voted to finalize the report and move it on to the city with no recommendation, but with a list of five potential landfill sites, narrowed down by the committee from a list of 44.

The five final locations include Ameron Kapa'a Quarry in Kailua, and four sites on the Wai'anae Coast — Makaiwa Gulch, a location referred to as Nanakuli B, a quarry in Ma'ili, and the present Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill near Kahe Point.

Unless a final draft report is submitted to the city today and a site chosen by June, the city risks losing the state permit that extends the use of the Waimanalo Gulch through 2008.

Few present at the last meeting seemed hopeful that a final site recommendation would be made. Waimanalo Gulch is a major focus of the dispute.

Committee member Todd Apo is leading the faction against including Waimanalo Gulch on the final list of five. Apo is vice president of corporate operations at Ko Olina Resort, which sits directly across from the landfill.

The day before that last meeting, Ko Olina developer Jeff Stone sent a letter to a number of city officials, including Frank Doyle, director of the Dept. of Environmental Services, reminding them that the city has promised that the Waimanalo Gulch site would be shut down as of 2008.

Stone's letter said that based on those promises, large companies, such as the Marriott International, have invested millions in the resort. Should the landfill be expanded after 2008, it would pose a financial threat to those investors, Stone said.

The letter demanded that Doyle convey to the committee members "the potential liabilities that exist by continuing to consider Waimanalo Gulch as a potential new landfill site."

State Representative Cynthia Thielen, R-50th (Kailua, Mokapu), who is also a member of the committee, favors leaving Waimanalo Gulch on the potential site list. She has said she regards Stone's letter as threatening and an interference with the panel's task.

Thielen opposes the selection of Ameron Kapa'a Quarry as a potential site. She says that the committee has finished its job because the mayor, in convening the panel, asked the advisory group to "help the city establish site selection criteria and recommend one or more sites to the City Council for approval."

According to Thielen, since the panel doesn't seem to be able to reach a consensus, "we've accomplished what we were asked to do."

Reach Will Hoover at 525-8038 or whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com.