A plan to ship more than 100,000 tons of Oahu's trash to a Washington state landfill each year has been delayed again after the city received another protest from a company accusing the low bidder of undervaluing the project.

Earlier this month, the city upheld the low bid from one of three firms bidding to ship some of O'ahu's trash to a Washington state landfill.

The low bid, from Hawaiian Waste Systems, was challenged with three protests from the two competing bidders, Off-Island Transfer and Simcoe Environmental Services Inc.

A fourth protest came to the attention of the Department of Budget and Fiscal Services on Jan. 20.

The department is reviewing the protest, and pending a determination on how to respond to it, a statutory stay on shipping the trash is in effect, according to Markus Owens, spokesman for the city's department of Environmental Services.

Officials could not say when the program to ship trash might begin.

Shipping trash off island is a stopgap measure intended to buy time for the island's only municipal landfill, at Waimanalo Gulch, in Leeward O'ahu, which has come close to its capacity at times and is now operating under a temporary extension.

There are no appeals of the denials of the other three protests that have been made to the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

If the appeals were not filed in time, those protests are considered resolved.

Off-Island and Simcoe had lodged separate protests, claiming that Hawaiian Waste's bid was so low that it "undervalued" the project.

Hawaiian Waste submitted a bid of $99 per ton to ship trash from O'ahu to a landfill in Roosevelt, Wash.

Simcoe bid $184.47 per ton and Off-Island bid $204.21 per ton.

City Councilman Rod Tam called the delays "frustrating" and said he thinks the protests are the result of fierce competition between the firms.

The city wants to start shipping trash before the end of this year so it won't have to send most of O'ahu's trash to Waimanalo Gulch.

Last year, city officials applied for a two-year extension to the special use permit for the landfill, but the state Land Use Commission voted 6-2 to allow the landfill to remain open only until November and asked the city to report on alternative waste management practices every six months.