On a good day, the intersection of Pa`akea and Ili`ili roads is tranquil in a dusty, rural sort of way. Along the narrow dirt Ili`ili Road, pigs can be seen wallowing in a pond of mud. A soft, earthy smell, not unpleasant, hangs in the air.
But when the food waste processor at Eco-Feeds is running – day or night, still or breezy – anyone familiar with the area will tell you: The odor coming from the place is enough to make you sick.
Cathy Goeggel, president of Animal Rights Hawai`i, says after her team of investigators toured the flat 10-acre farm lot in Nanakuli, on O`ahu’s Wai`anae Coast, one of them had to throw his shoes away because he couldn’t get the stink out of them.
State Vector Control inspector Mark Leong writes in one of his many reports on Eco-Feeds of “eye irritating fumes” detected along `Ili`ili Road.
Neighbors often can’t sleep or eat when the processor is running. Some say the smell gets worse at night and in the early morning. A Department of Health record of a request for an investigation last year made by Elaine Marass states: “She baby sits her sister’s kids at [Pa`akea Road]. The odor has been very bad, resembling a dead carcass. Her sister’s kids have been throwing up and are sick. Elaine believes the source of the odor is J&J Livestock/Eco-Feeds, directly across the street from her sister’s house. Her sister has lived there for three to four years, and it’s been bad since Eco-Feeds started up.”
The source of the problem is simple: food waste, tons of it, being recycled at a place and in a way that it shouldn’t be. Last year, three branches of the state Department of Health (Wastewater, Vector Control, and Clean Air) levied fines against Eco-Feeds totaling more than $1 million. Some of the fines are being negotiated, but the DOH’s Leong says that complaints against the operation persist.
“Even after the settlement meeting recently, a few weeks ago, violations are still ongoing,” he said last month.
Both the City and County of Honolulu and the state Department of Health probably already have legal grounds to stop Eco-Feeds from operating. The company processes many tons of food waste each day, six days a week, and sometimes at night. This industrial-scale activity is occurring on land not zoned for it, amidst a community of mixed small farms and modest single-family dwellings.
About the only thing that gives the operation some semblance of legitimacy is an informal agreement between the company’s owner and the city (made before Eco-Feeds even existed), and the word of Eco-Feeds officers and employees who say they are in compliance with the law.
The Operation
From the uneaten remains of a pork chop at Sam Choy’s restaurant, to the raw scraps of meat trimmed by supermarket butchers, to the barrels of “plate waste” from military messes, Honolulu generates some 50,000 tons of food waste each year. That’s according to a spokeswoman for the Hawai`i Restaurant Association.
Some of that is hauled to Island Commodities, which renders raw meat scraps, cooking oil, fat, bone and the like into usable products. Hawai`i Food Bank takes canned, dried or packaged goods. Aloha Harvest takes perishable food from hotels and restaurants and gives it to agencies feeding the homeless.
For at least the last four years, as many as 50 tons a day – and possibily even more – has been hauled to the Nanakuli lot. In 1998, J&C Food Waste Recyclers, Inc., ran the operation, taking in eight to 10 tons a day, of which about half would be cooked and fed to pigs on the property. Since late 1999, the recycling operation has been expanded and is being conducted by a company named Eco-Feeds, Inc. J&C and Eco-Feeds have a common owner, John Yoshikawa, who also owns J&J Livestock, which operates a piggery on the same site.
According to information provided to the DOH by Eco-Feeds, last year, about 12 tons a week of the collected food waste was fed to the pigs at J&J Livestock. About 36 tons a week was cooked and mixed with grain to form a “kix” feed for livestock. The feed was then sold at the Feed & Farm store across the street. (Until last October, Yoshikawa also owned Feed & Farm.) Some food waste went to other piggeries or to Hawaiian Earth Products, which uses food sludge to make a soil amendment.
Since the DOH began investigating the property more than two years ago, the number of pigs at J&J has fluctuated greatly. For example, last March, a DOH inspector found 110 pigs. In October, J&J reported it had 650 pigs; a month later, the number had dropped to 400.
Even Yoshikawa has difficulty pinning the exact number down. “It’s hard to say. Right now I have 260 mammas,” he told Environment Hawai`i last month.
Similarly, the volume of waste processed daily has spanned a wide range. In July 2001, Yoshikawa told a Clean Air inspector that Eco-Feeds was bringing in 50 tons of waste a day, 30 tons of which were fruits and vegetables that went to ranchers or were composted, 10 to 12 tons went to other farmers, and seven to eight tons went to his own pigs. Other reports have six tons a day going into the livestock feed processor and four tons a day of food waste delivered, three days a week, being cooked into pig slop.
That variation, and the resulting inability of regulators to know exactly when or whether J&J’s pigs are consuming all of Eco-Feeds’s waste, are apparently all that have kept the city and the DOH’s Office of Solid Waste Management from requiring permits for the operation.
‘Fresher Smelling’
From almost the outset of the Eco-Feeds’ operations, the state Department of Health has received complaints from neighbors of foul smells and heavy fly infestations. But while odors have been the focus of news stories about the operation – in the last year, the Honolulu Advertiser carried two stories about the problem – air pollution controls are just a few of the regulations Eco-Feeds is accused of violating.
The city has cited Eco-Feeds for conducting operations not permitted on agricultural land and for failing to obtain a building permit for the food waste processing structure. The Department of Health Clean Air branch cited the company for clean air violations, although in January a permit to operate feed the cooker was finally issued. The DOH’s Solid Waste branch appears to have decided, for the time being, at least, that the company does not need to obtain a permit to operate a solid waste facility. However, both the Wastewater and the Vector Control branches had notices of violations against Eco-Feeds pending as of early February. As for the city violations, Eco-Feeds has applied for a building permit for its illegal structure, and the Department of Planning and Permitting was holding off enforcement of a notice of violation issued last March until pending DOH issues were resolved.
Despite the problems, Eco-Feeds provides a much-needed service. The City and County of Honolulu, which is trying to reduce the amount of waste going into landfills, touts the benefits of food waste recycling. On its web page for food waste recycling, Eco-Feeds is at the top of its list of recyclers.
“For businesses that generate large volumes of food waste, recycling works,” the web page says. “Although [restaurants] incur additional cost to separately collect the food waste, that cost is counter-balanced by a reduction in their waste disposal costsÉ And separate collection of food waste for recycling may make the environment immediately surrounding your facility neater, cleaner and fresher-smelling.”
An added benefit, according to Yoshikawa, is the cheap livestock feed that’s produced: “Our cattle and hog industries are suffering terrible from the high cost of grain feeds,” he wrote in a letter soliciting business for J&C Food Waste Recyclers, predecessor to Eco-Feeds. “In the past, O`ahu farmers utilized various feed stocks, which were available on the island. One such feedstock was restaurant waste.” Yoshikawa touted his cooking system, which processed restaurant waste into “nutritious animal feed which will be sold to our farmers at a fraction of the cost of grain.”
‘Putrescible’
Since 1997, food waste recycling has not only been a good idea, it’s been the law. In 1996, the City Council of Honolulu passed Ordinance 96-20, requiring large hotels, restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, food courts, and food manufacturers and processors to recycle food waste. Landfills were reaching capacity, H-POWER, the city’s waste-to-energy facility, was at its limits and expansion would be costly. Food waste, which has a high moisture content, also reduces the efficiency of H-POWER, a fact cited by many of the ordinance’s proponents.
But ordinance 96-20 – the first mandatory food waste recycling ordinance in the country – has led to its own set of problems. And that was not unforeseen.
Bob Harrington of the Hawai`i Restaurant Association made just this point in his testimony against the bill. “The bill,” he said, “makes no attempt to balance the presumed benefits of recycling against the introduction of new public health hazards in the form of extended storage of putrescible materials. Literally all such regulations must be a risk/benefit compromise.”
The City Council was warned again by Ray Kraai, general manager of Waste Management of Hawai`i, Inc. “The Council,” Kraai testified, “should understand that food waste composting is still a specialized and relatively new waste management practice that has not been tested on the scale envisioned by Council Bill 11É Programs that separate, collect and process food wastes must adhere to strict operating procedures to produce a usable product and to avoid a number of nuisance conditions.” Among other things, problems would arise if there were any contamination of the waste with inorganic material, such as bottle tops, or if the waste were not collected daily – and even then, Kraai cautioned, the waste might require refrigeration.
In written testimony, Browning-Ferris Industries recycling coordinator Cynthia Keolanui noted that the county had not yet started a pilot food waste recycling program proposed for Chinatown. “Why are we mandating a program prior to implementation of a pilot project? It seems to follow reason that a pilot project should be completed and analyzed before an ordinance is imposed on business.”
Others testifying included restaurant operators, food and hotel associations, and competing waste managers. All testified against the bill in the beginning.
This year, bills that would mandate food-waste recycling state-wide have been heard in both chambers of the state Legislature. Eco-Feeds has appeared before committees in the House and Senate to support the bills.
The DOH has opposed the measure, testifying food waste recycling is an option right now on the neighbor islands, and the bill creates program without giving money to the counties to implement it. “It also imposes a civil penalty without providing an opportunity to contest the penalty,” DOH director Bruce Anderson wrote in testimony to the Senate Committee on Water, Land, Energy, and Environment.
Unisyn
Much of the criticism of the Honolulu ordinance at the time the council considered it revolved around problems associated with Unisyn, then the island’s largest food waste recycler. For several years in the 1990s, many residents of Waimanalo protested noxious odors emanating from its facility, tucked away in the rural community’s back roads.
The smells were far worse than the usual odors associated with dairies and piggeries, residents told inspectors – one of whom was overcome with nausea when he went to check out their complaints in the spring of 1996.
Waimanalo residents suffering from itchy skin, coughing and asthma slammed the company for not having proper permits from the city to operate a waste processing facility on agriculture-zoned land.
Unisyn began operations in Waimanalo in 1985 on land subleased from Meadow Gold and owned by the state. A 1985 environmental assessment for the facility stated that Unisyn intended to process feed lot waste – mostly manure – from the adjoining Foremost Dairies. Methane from the processing would provide the facility’s energy. In 1990, Unisyn began processing also food waste from restaurants, hotels, supermarkets, and a fish auction house.
In July 1995, the state Department of Health warned Uniysn that it was violating its solid waste permit. A month later, the city’s Department of Land Utilization issued a notice of violation to Unisyn for failing to have a Special Use Permit for nonconforming uses in the Agricultural District and a county Conditional Use Permit.
The mandatory food recycling bill, supported strongly by Unisyn, went into effect in January 1997. But mounting city and state requirements apparently proved too much for Unisyn, and on March 31, 1999, the company ceased operations.
The Star-Bulletin reported that Unisyn owners had been upgrading the facility and were prepared to invest more into the company, but the cost of improvements required by the government and uncertainty about future legal requirements “no longer makes the business economically viable.”
The article went on to quote Gary Gill, the DOH’s deputy director for environmental health, as saying, “Unisyn provided needed recycling services, but an important part of any wastewater technology is its location. There are very few good locations available. Anything near a residential area is going to generate opposition.” Gill also noted that Uniysn was in violation of its solid waste permit, the article said. “Unisyn as a company and technology grew and evolved faster than state and county regulations could keep up with, from when it was conceived as a small test facility to what it is today,” Gill told the Star-Bulletin. “The whole technology has raised a number of questions, starting with adequate control of lease of state land to the definitions of agricultural use and major recycling facilities.”
Gill said Unisyn had a technique that was “unique and viable” but which created problems with odor and the handling of wastewater. The problems are not insurmountable but costly, he added. Honolulu Recovery would be taking over Unisyn’s services, the article concluded.
Incest
Eco-Feeds has many of the same problems Unisyn had. And it’s no coincidence. The same people who ran Unisyn into the ground, who lobbied for the city food waste ordinance, now run Eco-Feeds.
When the recycling ordinance was being debated, spokesmen for waste hauler giants BFI and Waste Management Hawai`i expressed concerns that the bill seemed to unfairly benefit a select group of people. Waste Management noted that Unisyn Hauling, Inc. and Ali`i Refuse Corp. shared a common officer and director, Jerald Fujii. Waste Management also noted that Ali`i Refuse Corp and Honolulu Disposal Service, Inc. operated from the same property on Sand Island. (Eco-Feeds trucks have also been seen at the site.)
BFI had similar concerns. In March 1996, Keolanui wrote the City Council: “The recent disclosure that Unisyn, Unisyn Hauling, Inc., Ali`i Refuse Corp and Honolulu Disposal share a common officer and director once again raises the concern that a monopoly is being formed. More importantly, Honolulu Disposal, Ali`i Refuse Corp and Honolulu Recovery are all owned by Clyde KaneshiroÉ These are our competitors and this ordinance would force us to patronize their processing facility. It’s like asking you to contribute to the campaign fund of your political adversary.” Kaneshiro also owns with Fujii Waimanalo Biowaste Inc., whose purpose is “to make investments.” Waimanalo Biowaste was part owner of Unisyn.
By 1998, the writing was on the wall for Unisyn. It was being sued by a neighbor. It was having difficulties meeting environmental regulations. The entire community of Waimanalo seemed to be up in arms over its daily operations and the ongoing stench.
On the opposite side of the island, J&C Food Waste Recycling, incorporated in July 1998 by Yoshikawa and Clai Carlton, began efforts to claim some of the food waste business for its own operation in Nanakuli, just starting up. Two weeks after Unisyn folded, Yoshikawa incorporated Eco-Feeds, which appears to have supplanted operations of J&C by the end of 1999.
At first, Yoshikawa was the sole officer of Eco-Feeds. But by December 31, 2000, Sandi Yagi had become its president, secretary, treasurer, and director. Yagi is president of Honolulu Recovery, which took over Unisyn’s accounts.
Yoshikawa was asked about the transition from J&C to Eco-Feeds. “What happened,” he said, “was Sandi was running another, or starting another company. We started talking, [and decided] it would be better to join forces, better than be butting heads.”
Also linking several of the different companies are the investors in Eco-Feeds – Clyde Kaneshiro and Robert Iwamoto. Iwamoto is better known as the principal owner of the Robert’s Hawai`i group of tourism companies. While neither Iwamoto nor Kaneshiro is listed as a director of Eco-Feeds on business registration records at the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, both are mentioned as investors or owners in documents at the DOH, and Yoshikawa confirmed their role.
Kaneshiro, who has close personal and business relationships with members of the House and Senate, is reportedly behind the food waste recycling bill introduced this legislative session. He would stand to benefit greatly from the bill, as he already has a waste management business on Maui, Valley Isle Disposal (in which Iwamoto is also a participant).
Laying Down the Law
At the March 2, 2001 meeting with DOH officials, Eco-Feeds representatives reported that up to 25 percent of the processed feed went to J&J’s pigs, with the remainder sold. Under Honolulu’s Land Use Ordinance, and under state solid waste rules, such sale is illegal.
The land Eco-Feeds and J&J occupy is zoned AG-1-Restricted. This allows large livestock operations, but not waste disposal and processing. Waste processing would normally require special land use permits from the county and the state, as was required of Unisyn. But a letter from former Planning and Permitting director Jan Naoe Sullivan to John Yoshikawa seems to stretch the interpretation of what is allowed on ag-zoned land.
Yoshikawa wrote a letter to Sullivan in September 1998, explaining the community benefits of expanding local pig farming operations. “Toward this end, J&J is pursuing expansion of its herd and supporting expansion of herds of our neighbor farmers (all within a one mile radius) through the establishment of a feed supply co-op,” he wrote. “The co-op will consume all the prepared restaurant waste.”
Sullivan responded in January 1999. She noted that J&J appeared to comply with county Land Use Ordinance standards that allow major livestock operations on AG-1 land. Regarding what was then J&C, Yoshikawa’s and Carlton’s food recycling operation, Sullivan set up parameters, based on Yoshikawa’s information, that allowed the distribution of food waste to the members of the co-op he had described. At the time, Yoshikawa wanted to expand his operation to process up to 25 tons of food waste a day.
Sullivan’s letter continued: “In a December 28, 1998 phone conversation with Eileen Mark, of our staff, you estimated that the animals raised by cooperative members alone could consume up to 3000 tons of processed food waste per month.”
The department, Sullivan wrote, had determined that the “feed supply cooperative” could be considered an accessory to the livestock operation under the following conditions:
- The livestock operation must be the principal use of the site.
- Co-op members must be located within a one-mile radius of the J&J property.
- All feed processing and distribution must be done by co-op employees.
- All processed food waste must be used exclusively as feed for coop livestock.
Sullivan concluded, “Please be advised that waste disposal and processing activities are not permitted uses in the State Agricultural District and would require special land use permits, including a State Special Use Permit and use variance. Therefore, any expansion of the livestock cooperative processing and distribution activities must be reviewed in advance by this department.”
What’s missing from Sullivan’s letter – and from city files – is any map showing what livestock operations lie within a one-mile radius of Eco-Feeds. One will also search in vain for any list of co-op members.
“A list would be helpful,” says Lester Hirano, the city inspector who issued the notice of violation last March. If there is no list, oversight is next to impossible.
According to DOH inspector Leong, the co-op doesn’t exist and never has. But Yoshikawa insists, “Right now the kix meal is just for my pig farm. We’re consuming everything we’re producing.” Most of what Eco-Feeds is picking up is being given away to other pig farmers who, Yoshikawa says, appreciate the service. “A lot of them have given up their own processing because it’s a hassle.”
A Litany
Before J&C gave way to Eco-Feeds, Yoshikawa and Carlton already had plans to expand their business to accept up to 25 tons of food waste per day. In correspondence with the city, it seems they were aware of the problems encountered by Unisyn.
“It is our opinion that greater tonnage would require the development of a second site, separated by distance in order to accommodate the concerns of our agricultural neighbors regarding the industrialization of the surrounding area. We have constructed our plant using modular planning to allow for the above concerns,” Yoshikawa wrote in his September 1998 letter to Jan Sullivan.
Despite Yoshikawa’s apparent wish to avoid the problems that sank Unisyn, he ran straight into them. In December 1999, Yoshikawa began operating a food dehydrator he imported from Australia at a cost of nearly half a million dollars.
It didn’t take long for the complaints to start pouring in.
On February 24, 2000, DOH Clean Air investigator Jill Stensrud visited Eco-Feeds and discovered that Eco-Feeds had no permit to operate the food dehydrator. State regulations require so-called “noncovered sources” of emissions to obtain a permit from the Clean Air branch, and food dehydrators fall into that class.
After Eco-Feeds did not respond to a first warning, the DOH sent Eco-Feeds an informal Notice of Violation on April 11, 2000 and gave the company 60 days to apply for the required permit. Not until May 31, 2001, and after another warning from the DOH, did Eco-Feeds finally submit its application.
The Clean Air branch issued a permit this January. Yet throughout the nearly two years between the first inspection and the granting of the permit this year, Eco-Feeds continued operation. The Clean Air branch issued a formal Notice and Finding of Violation and Order on September 18, 2001. Between February 2000 and the violation notice, the DOH claimed, Eco-Feeds had violated state laws dealing with air pollution by operating its food dehydrator without a non-covered source permit. Eco-Feeds was ordered to pay fines of $11,100.
The Clean Air branch was not the only DOH agency looking into Eco-Feeds. On December 28, 2000, the department’s Vector Control branch received an anonymous complaint of an odor from rotting slop and flies. Inspector Leong found that Malathion was being sprayed every morning to control the flies – and even that was not sufficient. Leong noted heavy infestations of three species of flies and maggots in a large slop collection hopper, but the only odor was “due to normal farm operations.”
On February 1, 2001, the DOH’s Wastewater Branch issued an informal Notice of Violation. A January 2001 inspection found wastewater from the piggery operations was being conveyed to an unlined pond, vectors, including flies, insects, maggots as wells as garbage and trash were observed in and around the pond, and islands found in the pond suggested that the pond’s capacity had diminished due to solid deposition.
Yoshikawa was given 10 days to submit an action plan. A February 4, 2001 Honolulu Advertiser article quoted Yoshikawa as saying that the company was spending a lot of money mitigating the problem and that “We’ve pretty much cleared up most of the problem now.” It would be one of many band-aid fixes to occur at Eco-Feeds over the year.
On February 5, the DOH’s Vector Control branch heaped on another Notice and Finding of Violation and later issued a fine of $41,000. In addition to fly infestations, “many of over 50 large, plastic trash containers along the left side of the property were found with very old, spoiled, infested and/or dried up pig food/slop. One of the storage receptacles contained a dried out pig carcass and others showed evidence of current or past heavy infestations of [cockroaches] or other food infesting insects.”
On February 12, Yoshikawa submitted an action plan to the Wastewater branch and wrote that he was working to meet DOH standards. The pond was cleaned, wastewater spills and overflows were corrected, and he had contacted Mike Bajinting of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) for help with an animal waste management plan. Yoshikawa told the DOH that Bajinting “advised that we were doing an adequate job to correctly mitigate the problem.”
Tomas See, an engineer with the Wastewater branch, visited the site around that time and noted improvements. The place was cleaned up and the odor of one of the ponds was “swamp like and earthy but typical of a well functioning wastewater pond,” he wrote.
But within days of See’s report on how well things were going at Eco-Feeds, one of its neighbors, Mark Phongsavath, complained to the Wastewater branch that the facility was “excavating/constructing a new wastewater pond along Pa`akea Road (close to the complainant’s house). He also alleged that ‘slops’ – food waste is being dumped into this new pond. Odor from the facility was ‘unbearable’.”
After being told of his violations and that he needed Wastewater branch approval for his system, Yoshikawa said he would work with the City & County to get permission to discharge his food waste to the Wai`anae Wastewater Treatment Plant. Yoshikawa began paying a hauler to take his wastewater there.
Ancillary or Primary?
With violations mounting, the DOH decided to spread the word about Eco-Feeds to other government agencies. In March 2001, it sent letters to the city’s Department of Planning and Permitting, the state Department of Agriculture’s Measurements and Standards Branch, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, asking each agency to review the matter. The letters described the wastewater and vector violations. “Of more importance to your agency is the fact that the feed being produced by this facility is being sold and/or distributed to other farmers. Information provided to us by Eco-Feeds indicates that feed distribution is not limited to area farmers but is distributed as far away as Maui.”
Following the DOH’s tip, city inspector Lester Hirano investigated and determined that Eco-Feeds’ operation violated the county Land Use Ordinance. He issued a violation that month.
Meanwhile, the DOH’s Office of Solid Waste Management had jumped into the fray, sending a letter on March 14 to Eco-Feeds and J&J notifying them that they should apply for a Solid Waste Management permit:
“Based on this information and the observations made by [other DOH branches], it appears as though the food waste processing activity at the subject site is the primary activity and not an ancillary activity to livestock productionÉ If our understanding is correctÉ then we will require a solid waste management permit for your facility.”
On March 28, Yoshikawa submitted a permit application for a solid waste facility, which was rejected by the OWSM as incomplete, along with a warning that state law requires a permit be obtained before the operation of a solid waste facility and that penalties for violating that law could be as much as $10,000 a day. A month later, Solid Waste branch chief Steven Chang ordered Eco-Feeds and J&J to “immediately cease accepting food waste at your facility in amounts greater than can be consumed by the pigs on the subject site.” Chang also ordered that the site be cleaned to DOH standards, as well.
On May 10, Yoshikawa responded. He did not agree with the Office of Solid Waste Management’s assertion that food waste recycling was the primary activity on the property. He was a pig farmer, first and foremost, he claimed. “The only reason I initially got into the food waste recycling business was to benefit my hog operation.”
He said he had 350 hogs on the farm, down from 2,000, most of which were sold during the peak holiday season to Hawai`i Food Products and Wong’s Meat Market. Two-thousand hogs, he wrote, will consume up to eight tons of finished feed a day.
In the end, the DOH Office of Solid Waste Management chose not to pursue the issue of whether Eco-Feeds is a primary or ancillary activity to J&J Livestock. Since Yoshikawa’s letter, no further action has been taken to require a solid waste permit for Eco-Feeds.
Why would the state require a solid waste permit from Unisyn and not Eco-Feeds? Gary Gill told Environment Hawai`i, “The distinction there is if solid waste is being processed for commercial use then they need a solid waste permit. The reason why Eco-Feeds is avoiding the solid waste permit is because they are taking material for their own use and not selling or distributing it.”
But as recently as November 8, a Clean Air branch inspection found that Yoshikawa had shipped two bags of kix (about 3,000 pounds total) to Maui in October. About 100 bags of kix sat in a warehouse, unusable because meat scraps had been used in the manufacturing process. (To prevent bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, state and federal laws prohibit the feeding of ruminants to other ruminants). Yoshikawa told the Clean Air inspector that he was going to give 40 bags away for a soil composting project. Also, he said, a bag of kix that had been seen being delivered to the Feed & Farm store was not sold, but was given to another farmer.
Despite the past evidence of off-site distribution, the DOH has decided to take Eco-Feeds at its word that it isn’t selling or distributing anything. Gill adds that if at any time there is evidence that undercuts Eco-Feeds’ work, the DOH will look into it.
As of early February, between what’s given away to other pig farmers and what’s processed at Eco-Feeds, “Everything we’re picking up is being utilized,” Yoshikawa says.
The Cost of Shaping Up
Since the investigations began roughly two years ago, Eco-Feeds has made several changes to accommodate regulatory agencies. By June 2001, Eco-Feeds reported it had increased the number of animals on the premises, reduced food waste entering the ponds, was feeding the processed feed only to the animals on the premises, and was not selling the feed to other farms. That month, Sandi Yagi, president of Eco-Feeds, told the DOH that Eco-Feeds’ entire Wai`anae work force had been fired (except for Yoshikawa), with workers from Sand Island moved out to take their place.
Months earlier, the biofilter on the cooker was overhauled. Stones in the dehydrator’s steel exhaust pipes were replaced and covered with a layer of wood chips in an effort to reduce the smell. Also, a 1-2-foot lip was added to the hopper’s mouth to reduce spillage. Eco-Feeds has also worked on pumps and tanks for the wastewater system over the last year.
But in August 2001, a DOH inspector noted a change in Eco-Feeds’ operations: “The manufacturing of animal feed by Eco-Feeds was reported to be recently switched from mostly 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, weekdays to mostly before 8:00 am and after 4:00 pm during the weekdays and all day on the weekends,” the Vector Control branch’s Mark Leong wrote. According to one source at the USDA, this change makes it difficult for the Department of Health, whose staff does not work nights or weekends, to conduct inspections during hours that the plant is in operation.
As to whether Yoshikawa and Eco-Feeds are complying with conditions set out by the city Department of Planning and Permitting, Yoshikawa says he is not selling kix.
“He [Yoshikawa] told me himself, if he were prevented from selling [the feed], he’d go out of business,” the city’s Lester Hirano says. In July 2001, Yoshikawa told DOH investigators he was losing $20,000 a month because he could not sell kix. Eco-Feeds’ president and general manager, Sandi Yagi, told Environment Hawai`i that the product may not be sold.
So how is Eco-Feeds able to survive if it can’t sell its product? Do hauling fees cover its costs?
“Not really,” Yoshikawa says. “We’re just barely making it.”
Rules and Fines
In addition to running the operation, Eco-Feeds now has to contend with fines and upgrades imposed by the DOH. So far, there is no evidence that the company has paid a dime toward the fines.
Earlier this year, the Clean Air branch entered into a consent agreement that gives Eco-Feeds the option of undertaking an environmental project in lieu of paying a fine. The company has until April 18 to come up with a project. Otherwise, its must pay the original fine of $11,100.
The outcome of negotiations with Eco-Feeds regarding vector and wastewater violations were had not been finalized as of early February. There have been additional vector violations since the original notice of violation, Leong says, and his branch can tack on more fines if it chooses to.
Even if Eco-Feeds paid all the proposed fines in the existing notices of violation, it would be getting off easy. Under Hawai`i Revised Statutes, the operator of an unauthorized wastewater system can be fined up to $25,000 a day. The operator of an unauthorized solid waste management facility can be fined up to $10,000 per day. Operating a boiler without a permit is subject to fines of up to $25,000 per day per violation. Vector Control fines could be as much as $1,000 a day.
Yoshikawa, Eco-Feeds and J&J Livestock currently have two formal enforcement actions pending with the Wastewater branch. The first order for wastewater violations, issued last July, imposed a fine of $600,000; the second one added a fine of $335,366. Yoshikawa has contested both, but public hearings on the matter were postponed to allow for further negotiation.
Over and above payment of fines, there is still the need for abatement. The most costly abatement measures have been proposed by the Wastewater branch. Its November 2001 order required Eco-Feeds to:
- Take action to prevent further violations with respect to wastewater spills, overflows, discharges, harborage of vectors, and foul and noxious odors from the wastewater system;
- Hire a licensed professional engineer to design an approvable wastewater system for the piggery operations and for the animal feed manufacturing operations;
- Submit wastewater system plans, engineering reports, animal waste management plan, and all other documents required for DOH approval;
- Hire a licensed contractor to construct an approved wastewater system, and,
- Submit monthly progress reports to the DOH documenting compliance.
What Next?
If Eco-Feeds goes under, what then? What would happen to all that food waste? Doesn’t Eco-Feeds have to survive? The city has a mandatory recycling program and that waste has to go somewhere, right?
“That’s what John Yoshikawa wants you to think.” Leong says. “The truth is they started up in the beginning of 2000, and have been in operation for a little over two years. Island Commodities was [already doing it] and they were handling the volume with no problem. What [happened was some] companies decided to go with Eco-Feeds. Apparently they were offering much lower rates.”
Leong offers Island Commodities as an example of how food waste recycling doesn’t have to be a nightmare. The company is located at Campbell Industrial Park and has been in business for more than 30 years.
But even Island Commodities has its detractors. Vector Control hasn’t received complaints about the company, but businesses surrounding Island Commodities have complained several times to the Clean Air Branch about foul odors. The company by no means smells like a rose. But Leong says that when the company was established, “They were smart and built on the makai-most area of Campbell Industrial, so when there is an odor, it goes out to sea. They had good foresight.” And unlike Eco-Feeds, which is prohibited from selling its product because it’s on restricted agricultural land, Island Commodities faces no similar restraint in selling its recycled cooking oil and tallow.
Yoshikawa told Environment Hawai`i that Eco-Feeds is looking at new technology for a project, located somewhere else, that should start up in a few months. While he won’t say yet what that project is, Yoshikawa hopes it will make up for the money he’s losing with the kix operation.
While moving the Eco-Feeds processor to Campbell Industrial Park might allow him to sell kix, transporting the operation would be “cost prohibitive,” Yoshikawa says.
It’s also not likely that Eco-Feeds will expand its food waste processing.
“As far as areas for growth, we need to look at different technology. What we got is a great thing,” Yoshikawa says of the kix product. But as for the expensive Australian food processor, “It’s not doing what the manufacturer told us it would doÉAt this point, the system itself, the particular pieces of equipment, if we try to go with more production, it’s not going to really be feasible. We took a big risk and lost a lot of moneyÉIf everything worked out the way we planned, the way the equipment was supposed to, we were anticipating a lot more volume.”
The unit’s processing capacity is 40,000 tons a year and Eco-Feeds’ is operating at only a fraction of that.
“Exactly. It’s frustrating,” Yoshikawa says. “I was so excited about it when we started. It was supposed to take out a lot more water, was quote-unquote environmentally friendly. It kind of let us down. The end product is a great product, butÉ” he worries over the constant equipment malfunctions.
“If I continue to have problems with equipment, I’ll shut it down,” he says.
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 12, Number 9 March 2002
See the related article, “The Closing Circle,” also in this issue.
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