State lax on waste rules, audit says
By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau
The state Department of Health is not adequately monitoring or enforcing solid waste regulations, especially for landfills, a state audit released yesterday said.
"Although the Department of Health is faced with the complex and technical issues of managing the statewide comprehensive solid waste management program, it has not fulfilled its responsibilities to the public and the environment," the audit said.
Department officials said while they are working on improvements, the audit's review was too limited to make a fair evaluation of the department's performance.
The audit said the department's Office of Solid Waste Management is hampered by disorganized paperwork and takes too long to review permit applications. The audit said the department failed to review 16 out of 45 applications for facilities regulated under state laws within the established 180-day review period.
The department is also lax on its monitoring and enforcement efforts, the audit said. The audit said the department conducts inspections for larger facilities such as landfills and incinerators less than once a year, even though department procedures call for inspections once or twice a year. The department also failed to conduct adequate follow-up inspections, the audit said.
The audit also said the department failed to issue violation notices for offenses. For example, between 1998 and 2003, 10 out of the 45 state-regulated facilities that were reviewed or had been operating without having submitted an application before their permit expired, but the department did not cite them, the audit said.
The audit also said the department could not provide "justifiable" estimates of volume capacities or the remaining operating lives for any of Hawai'i's 13 landfills, a criticism the department disputes.
State Department of Health director Chiyome Fukino said the department does protect public health and the environment. She said the audit only reviewed a small portion of the program's responsibilities and looked at a fraction of the solid waste facilities the department regulates.
For example, she said, the audit did not cover the department's priority efforts to respond to public complaints and deal with illegal operations like open dumps, which pose a greater public threat than permitted facilities. Fukino said the program's enforcement priority is to target illegal facilities and provided statistics on enforcement actions taken in the last several years, including 46 informal and formal actions in the 2003 fiscal year.
Fukino also said the department's solid waste program has been developing a new computer tracking system to help track permit and report requirements for facilities and will soon begin improving its information system.
Reach Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8070.
