Editorial

Something Smells in Central Maui — And It Isn’t the Landfill

The development of Phase IV of the Maui Central landfill has turned into an enormous mess. The Department of Health still doesn’t have enough confidence in the construction of the facility to issue it a permit, although work on the project is all but completed. Plans and contractor specifications for key aspects of the landfill changed on an almost daily basis during installation of the liner, which is perhaps the single most important element in landfill construction these days.

Troubling, too, is the way in which the design contracts have been awarded. For the first contract, all applicable procurement laws and processes were followed. The product of that contract was used as the basis for an environmental impact statement, the initial permit application to the Department of Health, and the bid package that was received by contractors.

That work, costing the county some $200,000, has been scrapped — on the advice of an engineering firm whose own proposal for the job lost out in a competition that no one has yet suggested was unfair.

And who is awarded the contract for redesign of the landfill? The same company that told the county the first design was without merit. This time, however, the contract is awarded without the least pretense of following procurement processes. No justification for a sole-source award, no publication of a request for proposals — nothing.

It is not at all clear that the original design was unworthy. Review by an independent consulting engineer found only “minor” problems, fixable within two or three weeks, his report said.

Moreover, if the county Public Works Department really felt the original design was so hopelessly flawed that redesign was required, why has the county not sought to recover costs from the engineers who prepared it? Is the county so flush it can afford to eat the $200,000 or so loss?

Actually, our suspicions lie in another direction: the county paid for and received a design developed by professionals in this area. Should it seek recovery from them, it would almost certainly lose in court.

Why, then, is the county paying a second engineering firm for a second design? That’s the $640,000 question.

One thing is certain. The “value engineering” element of the original contract has done nothing but cost the county money. Perhaps the county is getting a smaller but better landfill, as the designers claim. But enough irregularities have arisen in the process of building this facility to invite close review of the project by the County Council, the Department of Health, and, with respect to procurement, the Attorney General’s office.

With respect to lead in the environment, less is certainly more. Trends in recent decades have been in just one direction: to lower lead levels in the environment by removing it as an additive in gasoline, in paint, and in many other applications where use of lead can pose a health threat.

H-POWER wants to buck that trend. Its plans to use ash, containing elevated levels of lead, in roadbeds, construction materials, and landfill cover can only result in increasing the public’s exposure to lead in the environment.

H-POWER argues the lead levels in ash are not so high as to make it subject to regulation as a hazardous waste. That may be, but, as a Department of Health staffer has observed, just because the ash may fall short of that standard does not mean the ash is benign. In fact, levels of lead routinely measured in the ash exceed the contaminant levels that are targeted in Superfund cleanup sites for both residential and industrial uses.

H-POWER argues that incinerator ash is used elsewhere in these applications. As our article notes, European nations do allow the use of ash, but they require that the ash be exclusively bottom ash and that it not include the fly ash precipitated from the stack (which typically contains greater levels of lead). H-POWER does not want to separate bottom from fly ash.

In addition, European nations require the rigorous testing of all ash proposed for use in permitted applications. But H-POWER, at the same time it is pressing the Department of Health for permission to use ash, is also seeking to reduce the required frequency of ash tests. Where tests are required four times a year in the current permit, H-POWER wants to reduce that to just one test a year.

Driving these requests is the desire, on the part of the City and County of Honolulu and H-POWER’s operators, to reduce the costs of landfilling the ash. Placing the ash, with its high levels of lead, other heavy metals, and dioxins, in monofills was one of the terms under which H-POWER was approved. There the ash can be monitored and the exposure of the public to its hazards can be limited.

H-POWER’s operators now say its inconvenient and costly to keep trucking the ash to Waimanalo Gulch. That inconvenience and cost should properly be measured against the costs to public health and the environment that would be inflicted should the lead in the ash be redispersed into the streets on which the public travels, the water it drinks, and the air it breathes.

Environment Hawai`i is delighted to announce the formation of an editorial advisory board. The four members are William Kovach, curator of the Nieman Fellowship program at Harvard University and ombudsman for Brill’s Content magazine; Ben Bagdikian, author of The Media Monopoly and dean emeritus of the journalism school of the University of California at Berkeley; Frank Allen, former front-page editor of the Wall Street Journal and now head of the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources in Montana; and Michael Frome, former columnist for Defenders magazine, retired professor of environmental journalism at Western Washington University, and author of Green Ink, a textbook on environmental journalism.

Our advisors have graciously agreed to provide Environment Hawai`i guidance in matters dealing with the practice of journalism, the newsletter’s content, and our approach to the topics dealt with in these pages.

We are pleased to announce also that we have a new office: 282 Ululani Street in downtown Hilo. (Our phone and fax numbers are unchanged.) Also, if you want to reach us without incurring long-distance phone charges, please call us toll-free at 877 934-0130.

Finally, Environment Hawai`i welcomes Annie Szvetecz, our new administrative assistant.

These changes have been made possible in large part through the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. We are deeply appreciative.

Volume 9 Number 10 April 1999