Tam said Friday that he still favors his original proposal: expanding the current landfill at Waimanalo Gulch, which has operated since 1989. Mayor Jeremy Harris said he also thinks that's the best option, despite his earlier promise to close the landfill in 2008.

Some other council members want to create a new dump in Nanakuli, on a site owned by a company that wants to run its own landfill and charge the city for each ton of rubbish.

But others want to use a city-owned site beside the H-Power incinerator in the industrial park, which was chosen by the City Council's Public Works and Economic Development Committee on Nov. 19 but has been criticized as inadequate.

Tam, the panel's chairman, initially proposed to expand the Waimanalo Gulch dump, but shifted to the Campbell site at the suggestion of Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi. Tam said he did so only because the committee would have otherwise remained deadlocked.

"If I didn't choose, on paper, another site, the whole resolution would die and, quite frankly, we'd end up doing nothing," he said. "We've got to choose a site. It's the responsible thing to do, and we made a commitment to the state Land Use Commission that by Dec. 1 we'd come up with a site."

Tam said he had held back from publicly restating his preference for Waimanalo Gulch after the vote, because he wants O'ahu residents to feel free to express views in a public hearing that his panel will hold tomorrow afternoon.

"I do want us to embrace the process; people have to think for themselves," he said. "I try to resist from coming out. This is what I think as a councilman but, as chairman, I want people to think for themselves.

"What is the proper site, using proper criteria? Not based on emotionalism, and not based on outside forces coming in with money and twisting arms."

Tam said that's definitely happening. While he declined to offer specifics, he did say lobbying has been heavy on several options.

"I'm trying to take the politics out of decision-making," Tam said.

The Nanakuli site is owned by Leeward Land LCC, a newly created firm headed by Clyde Kaneshiro, president of the island's largest private trash hauler, Honolulu Disposal Service.

Councilman Charles Djou said that he does not strongly favor any of the locations being considered, but that the Nanakuli site is the "least bad."

Councilman Nestor Garcia would not specify which site he prefers, but said he is adamantly against expanding Waimanalo Gulch.

Jeff Stone, developer of the nearby Ko Olina resort, said he's outraged that Harris would even consider that option.

"It's just incredible that he would break his word," Stone said.

Harris said that he had hoped to minimize the amount of garbage that goes to any landfill,

but that his plans were stalled by council opposition to creating an islandwide household recycling program and expanding the H-Power facility.

Stone said he believes that recycling, and processing garbage with new technology such as a plasma-arc system, would virtually eliminate the need for a landfill, but that those plans won't move quickly if Waimanalo Gulch remains open.

"The only way our city officials are going to get off their butts and do the right thing is if you take away the hole they've been dumping in," he said. "It's not a hole anymore. It's a mountain of trash 420 feet high. If you have a mountain of trash sitting above a resort, it just doesn't make any sense."

He said his company recently purchased a three-acre site beside the Barbers Point harbor specifically so it could be used as a staging area to ship garbage to the Mainland or another country. The city would have that option if it closes Waimanalo Gulch but is unable to quickly implement a new technology and is left without a viable dump, Stone said.