Dent made in junk piles at Hilo scrap yard
| • | Plans to transport garbage draw fire |
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
Kevin Dayton • The Honolulu Advertiser
HILO, Hawai'i — Behind the rubbish transfer station near the end of Leilani Street in Hilo is a muddy lane that winds between mountains of scrap metal piled under towering albezia trees.
Barbara Bell director of the Big Island's Department of Environmental Management said, despite appearances, the Hilo rubbish transfer station has made significant gains in reducing the amount of scrap metal lying around.
Crushed cars are stacked 10 high, with a seemingly intact primer-gray Nissan sedan perched on top of one scrap pile. Cast-off propane tanks are heaped together, and old tires and tin roofing material protrude from pile after pile of unidentifiable crushed metal.
Barbara Bell, director of the Hawai'i County Department of Environmental Management, is encouraged as she picks her way down the lane through mud ruts and deep puddles with oily rainbows.
"This is better than it was, by a lot," she said. "This is way better. I know it's hard for you to believe."
But haulers who dump regularly at the five-acre metal scrap yard are believers. They agree the county has made progress clearing out some 8,000 tons of scrap metal that had been allowed to accumulate there last June.
The rubbish piled up because of a series of problems, most recently because a contractor hired to move scrap metal to the Mainland halted shipments after world scrap prices declined and the contractor began losing money with each barge load.
Similar scrap metal piles at the Kealakehe transfer station grew to an estimated 6,000 tons, becoming an almost unavoidable eyesore smack on the tourist route between Kailua town and the Kona airport.
Both scrap piles were cited in a recent report by the legislative Task Force on Waste Management and Recycling, which has been documenting statewide problems with landfills and illegal dumping.
State lawmakers are expected to consider a variety of potential solutions this year, ranging from new enforcement initiatives to stop illegal dumping, to an advance disposal fee to be paid at the time of purchase of items ranging from milk cartons to refrigerators.
Kevin Dayton • The Honolulu Advertiser
Euclid LoGiudice, a security guard at the Hilo transfer station, said there was so much discarded scrap overflowing from the metal mountains into the lane between them that haulers were reluctant to drive in for fear they would puncture their tires.
Though green waste piles up at rubbish sites, officials say it is less of an issue than metal because residents are quick to haul it off after it has been turned to mulch.
"Nothing was moving, and it was really piling up," he said.
Now, a new contractor has been crushing and moving out the scrap, but it is costing the county far more to dispose of the metal.
In 1999 the county paid a recycling subsidy of $12.50 per ton to have scrap shipped to the Mainland and sold off. Under the new contract that began last May, the county generally pays a subsidy of $110 to $135 per ton, depending on global scrap prices, Bell said.
The huge increase in the recycling subsidy was necessary because the world price of scrap metal had dropped dramatically, Bell said. With scrap metal at historic low prices, haulers said they needed much larger subsidies from the county to recoup their shipping and other costs.
The county tripled its annual vehicle-disposal fee from $4 to $12 this fiscal year to help cover the cost of getting rid of the scrap metal, most of which is generated by cast-off cars.
The higher fee will raise an extra $1 million a year to cope with the problem, but an estimated 1,000 tons of junked cars and other scrap metal still flow into the Hilo and Kona yards each month.
The new contractor, Big Island Scrap Metal, has shipped more than 4,600 tons of scrap in the first six months of the new contract. Given the continuing influx and the size of the scrap piles, county officials don't expect to clear the Hilo backlog until late next year.
The Kona backlog should be cleared out by March 2006, Bell said.
The county's problems with scrap metal disposal have been evident in a very visible way on the Big Island, but generated few complaints, Bell said.
The county does not offer curbside garbage pickup, so Big Island residents must haul their household trash to the dump, routinely driving past the scrap mountains in both Hilo and Kona.
Yet Bell said she cannot recall receiving even a single complaint, perhaps because residents long ago grew accustomed to the walls of junked cars.
"I expect when it's gone, people might notice that it's gone," said Bell, who took over the department in 2002. "They've probably complained already because it's been so long and it's been so bad."
The county also has enormous piles of green waste such as tree trimmings and discarded plants that pile up at the Hilo and Kealakehe transfer stations.
Bert Dougherty was dwarfed by one such pile after dumping a pickup load of green waste. Standing next to a two-story pile of palms, uprooted weeds and tree trimmings, he remarked: "I was just saying, somebody's going to be killed by an avalanche."
But Bell said the green waste presents less of a problem than scrap metal, especially in Hilo.
East Hawai'i residents are happy to haul off the green waste for gardening uses after it is turned into mulch, and county officials plan a composting operation in Kona to encourage more people to haul away green waste there as well, Bell said.
Although Bell said she is confident the new scrap metal contractor is making progress, there are still unknowns.
The county took over the Hilo dump in 1969, but the site was used to dump and burn rubbish long before that.
Bell gestures toward a thick growth of maile pilau, also known as skunk vine, growing in an odd shape on top of something — or a pile of something — that is about 30 feet high.
"What we don't know is how much metal is under the green vegetation," she said.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 935-3916.
