Posted on: Sunday, September 26, 2004

EDITORIAL
H-Power expansion is a crucial need

The day may come when Honolulu adopts a technology, or a technique, that deals with its garbage in a way that satisfies everyone and angers no one.

The latest idea along these lines is the possibility that at least some of our garbage can be shipped to the Mainland, where massive landfills await.

If this idea pencils out (but many city officials say there is no way it will), it would diminish the pressure on our own landfills and garbage-to-energy facilities. Clearly, this is an option worth pursuing.

But unhappily, the day of a miracle cure for our refuse problems remains a long way off.

In the meantime, our choices remain these: Bury it or burn it.

The "bury it" option is lost in a morass of politics. The Ho-nolulu City Council is supposed to decide where it will locate a new landfill to take the place of the rapidly-filling Waimanalo landfill on the Leeward Coast.

But that issue has been put off until after the elections, when those who make the decision will have at least a couple of years to let the antagonism over their choice diminish.

Our argument has been that the landfill decision should be based on the best science available, with the affected community receiving a "bundle" of benefits to offset the equities it may lose by accepting a garbage dump.

Meanwhile, the "burn it" option is at a crossroads. City officials say the H-Power garbage-to-energy plant at Campbell Industrial Park is already over capacity.

They want to add a third boiler (cost $64 million) that would boost the plant's capacity by 20 percent.

Even if alternatives such as shipping some of our garbage to the Mainland becomes a reality, adding a third boiler to the H-Power plant should be a no-brainer. Increasing capacity by 20 percent won't wipe out the need for landfill space or other alternatives. But it will have a significant impact on operations at the H-Power plant that reduce the long-term demand for landfill.

That's because today, when one of the existing two boilers is taken down for mandatory maintenance, a considerable amount of garbage is automatically directed to the landfill.

With a third boiler, maintenance can be achieved without any substantial reduction in the amount of garbage accepted for burning.

Ultimately, O'ahu will come up with creative and — perhaps as yet undreamed of — solutions to its garbage problem.

In the meantime, it makes absolute good sense to expand the tested and effective H-Power plant. Not only does it eliminate vast amounts of solid waste, it produces electricity for an island woefully dependent otherwise on fossil fuel.