The 817-room Hale Koa Hotel in Waikiki is plugged into the city's sewer system but the facility is exempt from paying an estimated $344,000 a year in sewer fees.

That's millions of dollars the city has not collected since the Hale Koa opened for business 32 years ago.

The fee waiver doesn't sit well with Congressman Neil Abercrombie, who has supported city efforts to get the Hale Koa to pay the same, ever-increasing fees that the rest of us are assessed to use and improve the city's troubled wastewater system.

Abercrombie points out that the Hale Koa, unlike other military facilities, is a commercial business that boasts on its Web site of being self-supporting "with not one taxpayer dollar supporting upkeep or operation."

Abercrombie noted: "It's easy to say that you're self-supporting when you don't have to pay sewer fees or property taxes.

"I'll give them the property taxes because it's federal property, but I still think it's a stretch. ... But sewer fees are not taxes. It's a user fee. You pay to use the system. The last time I looked, all the (Hale Koa) patrons were using the sewer system just like everybody else."

Army spokesman Troy Griffin said the waiver of sewer fees for the Hale Koa property dates to 1966, when the federal government granted an easement of a tiny portion of the property to the city for the site of the Fort DeRussy sewage pump station and installation of a sewer line through the land.

"It's a fair-trade agreement, a legal contract," Griffin said. The wording of the easement gives the military a perpetual waiver from payment of sewer fees, he said.

City spokesman Bill Brennan said there were talks late last year about trying to get the Hale Koa to pay a share of sewer fees. Abercrombie was part of those discussions.

"The Army doesn't want to give up the free sewer service provided to it when it gave the city an easement back in the 1960s for the Fort DeRussy pump station and a sewer line," Brennan said.

The easement was granted when there were no sewer charges, Brennan said. The city may ask the military to help pay for upgrades to the sewer lines serving Fort DeRussy and other locations, he said.

The Hale Koa opened in 1975 as a 419-room hotel serving armed forces personnel and their dependents. The facility nearly doubled in size in 1995 with the construction of a new tower of hotel rooms and other improvements.

If you know that a particular money trail will lead to boondoggle, excessive spending or white elephants, reach Jim Dooley at 535-2447 or jdooley@honoluluadvertiser.com