H-Power upgrade sought
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
The city is moving ahead with plans to expand H-Power — the Campbell Industrial Park facility that crushes the contents of 300 garbage trucks per day, burns the crushed pulp and converts the heat to electricity.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
A proposal to add a third boiler would cost the city $64.1 million, and would increase the plant's capacity by 20 percent, keeping about 120,000 tons of unprocessed garbage out of O'ahu landfills.
Rodney Smith, of Covanta Energy, peers into the observation port of a steam boiler where trash is being burned.
"And no matter where our next landfill is going to be,'' said Suzanne Jones, the city's recycling coordinator, "we need to reduce, reduce, reduce our reliance on landfills."
An additional boiler at H-Power would mean that instead of 300,000 tons of raw garbage going into the Waimanalo Gulch landfill — or whatever site is eventually chosen to replace it — only 180,000 tons would be buried there, Jones said.
O'ahu generates 1.6 million tons of waste per year, Jones said. H-Power disposes of 600,000 tons of that, reducing the volume of the garbage it burns by 90 percent and creating 5 percent of O'ahu's electricity in the process.
Half of the remaining million tons of O'ahu's annual waste is recycled. The other 500,000 tons ends up in the city landfill or, in the case of construction debris, in a privately owned landfill.
Wai'anae Coast Neighborhood Board member Adrian Silva Jr. said he hopes the expansion is approved and moves forward.
"I think any expansion of H-Power would be a blessing," he said. "We have the people out at Ko Olina dying to get rid of their trash problems, and the people of Wai'anae don't want it in their back yards, either."
Waimanalo Gulch landfill is on the mauka side of Farrington Highway near Ko Olina resort, and other Wai'anae coast sites have been considered for future landfills.
Residents who live near Waimanalo Gulch often complain about garbage trucks lined up for hours at the landfill, waiting to dump raw garbage that was turned away from H-Power, city officials
An open house to find out more about a proposed third boiler at H-Power will be 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the plant, 91-174 Hanua St. in Campbell Industrial Park. To attend, register by calling 945-1122, or go to www.honoluluhpower.com
said.
Open house
H-Power has been operating at above recommended capacity for years, and when the system requires routine maintenance, trucks are sometimes turned away for up to five weeks while the work is performed, said Rodney Smith, H-Power's business manager.
The third boiler would allow two boilers to remain active during maintenance periods, Smith said.
H-Power began operation in 1990 on 28 acres in Campbell Industrial Park. It has 150 employees and an annual payroll of $10 million. It burns garbage at 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, reducing it to an inert ash.
City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, 5th (Makiki, Manoa, Kapahulu, Palolo), says H-Power has done a good job in the past, but she thinks other forms of waste disposal should be studied before the city moves forward with the expansion.
"This expansion isn't just a few dollars," she said. "We'll have to borrow the money, maybe float bonds.."
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
Bruce Anderson, a former state health director and former member of a commission that studied potential landfill sites on O'ahu, said he thinks expanding H-Power would definitely help to keep down the island's reliance on landfills.
Garbage coming into the H-Power plant runs through a magnetic separator to remove ferrous materials, which are not burnable.
"We don't have markets for a lot of recycled materials here," Anderson said. "And exporting often exceeds the value of the materials."
Burning paper-based trash at H-Power and converting the energy to electricity, he said, helps to recover some of the value of the recyclables.
Anderson said H-Power was built with state-of-the-art pollution controls, and is a standard for other cities' environmentally sound waste reduction.
Jones, the city's recycling coordinator, agreed.
"It is a very clean, well-run facility," she said.
Rob Graham, vice president for project development Covanta Energy Corp., the company that manages H-Power for the city, said an open house Saturday is designed to "take questions on concerns like traffic, noise and stack emissions."
Smith, the plant manager, said issues raised during the open house will help H-Power to prepare a draft environmental impact statement, which could be ready by January.
"We've been working with the city for a while," Smith said, "and we're just hoping that once we get a new mayor elected, they'll address this and decide to go forward."
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
