EPA finds low contamination levels at former Maui sugar mill

Associated Press

Soil tests at a defunct sugar mill on Maui have found only small amounts of contamination, federal environmental officials said yesterday.

The investigation at the Pioneer Mill site in Lahaina was part of a 6-year-old state program to root out the potential threats to public health and the environment at Hawai'i's former sugar mills.

Testing at the site found two areas of elevated arsenic and lead that pose no immediate risk to residents, the Environmental Protection Agency said.

Amfac/JMB stopped processing sugar at Pioneer Mill in 1999.

Herbicides, pesticides and other chemicals associated with processing sugar were either at very low levels or not detected at all and none of the chemicals were found off site, the EPA said.

The Pioneer Mill study is the third investigation completed since the sugar mill project began in 1997, said Melody Calisay, an environmental health specialist with the state Department of Health.

"We just completed the Oahu Sugar Co., and we finished Kekaha (Kaua'i), which is the former herbicide mixing plant," she said.

Pioneer Mill "was one of the ones they wanted to look at sooner rather than later," said EPA spokesman Dean Higuchi.

The two sites are away from the residential areas and what was found was "a lot less than what anyone expected," Higuchi said.

The state is investigating sugar mills that closed in the 1990s — the Waialua and O'ahu sugar mills on O'ahu; Kekaha and Lihu'e on Kaua'i; and Pa'ia and Pioneer Mill on Maui — as well as 11 sugar mills on the Big Island, mostly on the Hamakua Coast, that closed in the 1940s, Calisay said.

At Pioneer Mill, the EPA and the state recommended that plastic sheeting be placed over the contaminated soil at the two sites until they can be cleaned up.

EPA and state officials are holding a public meeting tonight in Lahaina to discuss the test results.