COMMENTARY
Waimanalo Gulch site supporters have been fed misinformation

By State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa
Democrat representing the 21st District (Nanakuli, Makaha)

To control the outcome of an issue, the recipe is: First, define it (increases the odds of success in your favor); add the ability to withhold critical information; sprinkle with the manipulation of information; mix well with the talent of obfuscation.

A suggestion that Waimanalo Gulch and another site be removed from a list of proposed landfill locations led four members of the Mayor's Landfill Selection Committee to resign in protest. Advertiser library photo

This has been how the landfill fiasco was cooked and consumed as evidenced by The Advertiser's editorial of Dec. 4 ("Landfill panel's work is valuable").

However, before you judge the quality of this repast, let's look carefully at the ingredients we have been fed.

Begin with the name. To some, it is such a surprise that Waimanalo Gulch is not in Waimanalo but actually across a four-lane highway from the Ko Olina Resort.

Next let's look at quantity. How often has it been quoted that "Waimanalo Gulch has 20 more years of capacity"?

I contend that when most hear "capacity," they visualize a puka in the ground to be filled. There is no puka at Waimanalo Gulch. This is why the correct statement is an "expansion" of Waimanalo Gulch for 15 years.

There is a critical difference between capacity and expansion, beyond semantics.

One should have been suspicious that things are not as represented when the reports indicated that Waimanalo Gulch, with an area of only 60 acres, has an expected life of "20 years." Compare that to Ma'ili, with 200 acres and a life of 15 years; Nanakuli B, 432 acres and 15.6 years; Makaiwa Gulch, 338 acres and 25 years; and Ameron Quarry, 391 acres and 15 years.

I ask: What's wrong with this picture? The answer is found in an unpublicized 1999 document extending Waste Management Inc.'s contract to operate Waimanalo Gulch for an additional 15 years.

This contract, with a base price of $100 million, provides that the expansion of Waimanalo Gulch by 15.5 million cubic yards of airspace (15 years of landfill life) requires the excavation of 8.5 million cubic yards of native soil. To put this into perspective, a tractor-trailer you see on the highway hauling dirt or gravel carries about 20 cubic yards.

Simple math calls for 425,000 truckloads of dirt to be removed to create "capacity" for 15 more years. If you removed 100 truckloads a day for five days a week, that would take you about 15 years.

Thus, when one supports Waimanalo as the site, you are saying the city can excavate the mountain above the present landfill and then build it up again with rubbish.

This is not 20 more years of capacity; this is the rape of the 'aina — the only way to get 20 years out of 60 acres.

You have heard that Waimanalo is the cheapest, so let's look at costs.

Operating costs should be about the same for all sites, because the landfill operator gets paid on a per-ton basis. We can assume that wherever the landfill is situated, the operator will get the same tonnage fee for the same amount of trash.

The same applies to the development costs. More than likely, the development costs will be paid by the tonnage fee received by the operator. The difference, however, lies in Waste Management Inc.'s contract at Waimanalo. There, city officials agreed to pay $4 per cubic yard to Waste Management to excavate 8.5 million cubic yards, for a total of $34 million.

Add the $34 million to the Waimanalo costs and it would be one of the most expensive sites.

Another argument made in favor of Waimanalo Gulch is that the area has been despoiled already, so why go anywhere else? No one can possibly advocate that it's OK to take down a mountain. City officials have raped the land called Waimanalo Gulch; no one should say this atrocity should continue.

The Advertiser editorial referenced a political decision by Mayor Jeremy Harris to close Waimanalo Gulch. Maybe his decision was political. But isn't it the role of government to make such decisions after hearing the public's concerns and a community's outcry?

If there is a critical lesson to be learned, it is simply: Do not take on the burden of this island community. Know that government has a short memory, and your neighbors will say that it's better in your back yard than mine.

When a community like mine says, "Enough is enough!" it is because we know that everyone else wants us to take the landfills, centrate (the most toxic part of sewage), power plants, live-fire exercises, fiber optics, pigs, cattle and chickens, halfway houses and homeless people, just to name a few.

Some seem to be OK with this because Wai'anae is at the end of the island.