by Ray Chuan 26 February 2006
Another committee to study Kauai County’s solid waste problem!
Let’s go back a decade or so to recall what all has been happening
with this perennial topic that seems to accompany the prelude to
the re-election campaign of our esteemed officials. A good point
to start is probably the time when this county ceased to have a
qualified person to manage or solid waste operation.
That would be near the end of the JoAnn Yukimura mayoralty and the
beginning of the Kusaka reign when the Young Untouchable took over
the SW operation, having been transferred from the job of anelectrical
engineer in the Public Works Department to fit the job of a civil
engineer for which he was not (and still isn’t) qualified,
although her majesty did promise to send the young man to school
(while on the job) to get qualified – which she never did.
Before JoAnn left office she paid out $150,000 for what became the
Kauai County Integrated Solid Waste Management Plan – 1994.
You get the impression that nobody in this government can do anything
substantive, but has to hire a consultant to do everything. I became
interested in the subject around 1997, when I went to the Young
Untouchable to borrow a look
at the 1994 Plan. As far as I could gather, there were just two
copies of the Plan extant at that time, one copy being the one I
borrowed from the Y.U. and the other copy was in the hands of then
County Council member Randall Valenciano. Of course, nothing was
done by the county to implement the Plan.
Mayor Kusaka had her appointed committee to study the SW problem.
It seems that the politicians believe that they must proclaim their
dedication to solving this island’s SW problem in order to
win at the next election. So it is almost formulaic at this time
of the election cycle to hear a lot about doing something about
SW.
Actually, Kusaka came closest to finding a solution by having the
Y.U. send out a significant number of requests for proposals in
1999 to have some company come in with a viable plan to divert a
large part of the 120 tons/day of waste away from going to the Kekaha
Landfill.The
procurement process actually went as far as having a well attended
public meeting at the Convention Center where five qualified bidders
presented their plans. Four of the five had established record of
building and operating the kind of facility the county was looking
for – two German, one Canadian and one American company.
The fifth one
was Gay and Robinson from Kauai which proposed using waste plant
material from cane harvesting along with municipal waste to generate
electricity while reducing the flow of waste to the landfill. The
beauty of the four off-island bids was that it would not cost the
county a penny to design and build the facility; the bidding company
would do all that, with a commitment from the county to take all
its solid waste to the completed facility which would charge the
county a fee based on the tonnage.
All four bidding
facilities would produce some by-product that would be sold. If
I remember correctly, two of them would produce energy as a by-product,
one would produce fertilizer and the fourth building material. The
emphasis was not on the by-product, but what percentage of the solid
waste input would be left at the end of the processing and would
have to be taken to the landfill. The by-products were never considered
the primary income-producing part of the facility. This is where
our county’s officials have always had it all wrong, by touting
the by-product as the primary benefit – hence always the talk
about waste-to-energy process.
It never penetrated their thick skulls that burning all the solid
waste on this island would produce about 5 megawatts of electric
energy, adding at best 5% to the electric generation on this island.
In the minds of our naïve officials there is always the Magic
Bullet that would dis-appear all the trash and produce all kinds
of energy; and that was what attracted the attention of an outfit
that at that time called itself Plasma Arc, a company that never
had an operating facility and no credible data to show that it would
accomplish the Magic it promises. But that’s how smart operators
can take dumb officials for a ride.
In our case in 1999 Plasma Arc was not selected to present its proposal
to the Kauai public, for the simple reason that it had nothing real
to present. Instead of just going away Plasma Arc threaten to sue
to the county for not including it as one of the qualified bidders.
Our County Attorney, as ignorant in technical matters as it is today,
got scared by the threat of lawsuit and cancelled the procurement.
That was as close as this county ever got to solving its SW problem.
The Administration then asked for another $165,000 to do another
procurement exercise which, as could be expected, attracted no bids.
How that $165,000 was
spent was, of course, never revealed. There then followed a couple
of rounds of “studies” (by consultants, of course, since
this county never seems to have anyone who can do anything) to find
a landfill to replace the about-to-be-topped-off Kekaha Landfill.
Only two sites studied were considered viable; but they were both
in private hands; and the county did not want to go through any
condemnation. Instead, there began talks about putting a new landfill
in Hanamaulu, which ran smack into the Environmental Justice doctrine
that had been proclaimed by Pres, Clinton in 1994 to stem the massive
migration of chemical plants from the East and Mid West to the South
to escape the mounting legislative opposition to dirty industries
in the North. Following is the statement regarding Environmental
Justice issued by the EPA:
“EPA defines Environmental Justice (EJ) as the ‘fair
treatment for people of all races, cultures, and incomes, regarding
the development of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.’
Over the past decade, attention to the impact of environmental pollution
on particular segments of our society has been steadily growing.
Concern that minority populations and/or low-income populations
bear a
disproportionate amount of adverse health and environmental effects
led President Clinton to issue Executive Order 12898 in 1994, focusing
Federal agency
attention on these issues. EPA responded by developing the Environmental
Justice Strategy which focuses on the Agency’s efforts in
addressing these
concerns.”
I mentioned this to some of the leaders in the Filipino community
in Hanamaulu. Some words got to the Council and the Administration;
and the idea of putting a landfill behind Hanamaulu was promptly
abandoned.
Kusaka spent some more money to buy another round of studies; and
formed a big committee headed by one John Love which did nothing,
and did not even issue a report.
Then came Mayor Baptiste who, of course, as he approaches the election
for his second term had to form his Committee to solve the SW problem.
As with the Kusaka SW Committee, there are very few members with
any knowledge of SW issues. As a matter of fact, of Baptiste’s
fifteen some members, only two can be
considered to be knowledgeable. One, Jeff Kaohi happens to be the
manager of the contracted operation of the Kekaha Landfill; the
other, Jean Camp, has a technical background on the Mainland before
she and her husband retired to Kauai where she became, for a while,
a consultant to Mayor Kusaka. But, hey, two is better than zero
with the Kusaka SW Committee. For this island anything more than
zero is cause for celebration! Turning the operation of the Kekaha
Landfill to a private contractor (in this case, the largest company
in the nation – Waste Management Inc) is probably the smartest
thing this county has ever done. A logical next step would be to
outsource the entire solid waste operation, while sending the Y.U.
back to electrical engineering. But what would our officials do
with their friends the Consultants?
The
Role of the “Consultants"
Consultants occupy an important position in the operation of our
state and county governments, probably more so than on the Mainland.
Here is a good example.
Our Y.U. Chief of the Solid Waste Division of the Public Works Department
of this county received a rather alarming communication (dated November
5, 2004) from one Steven Chang, Chief of the Solid and Hazardous
Waste Division of the State Department of Health.
Subject of the communication: Incomplete Permit Application Kekaha
Landfill Phase II Vertical Expansion to 85 feet
A little background material is needed here: By the fall of 2004
the earlier permit from the state to fill the Kekaha Landfill to
a height of 60 feet was expiring; and the county had applied for
a permit to add another 25 ft. It should be noted here that the
DOH had been extending the height of the Honolulu landfill time
after time until the city was recently fined $2.8 million for illegal
dumping. Prior to this, two officials from the DOH had been charged
with corruption about two years ago by the Environmental Crimes
Unit of the State Attorney General’s Office.
One had gone to trial, and had been given a light fine and probation,
which elicited a protest from an environmental organization, which
had initiated the investigation, that the sentence was too light.
The letter from Chang was rather alarming to two of the newer members
of the Kauai County Council – Mel Rapozo and Jay Furfaro,
who brought the matter up at a meeting of the Council, as it appeared
to these two members the state might shut down the Kekaha Landfill
if the county did not re-submit the permit application to remedy
all the defects. At the November 18, 2004 Council meeting a group
of five persons were invited to give testimony on this perceived
crisis. The five were: Kaohi, the manager of the Landfill, the Y.U.
chief of the Solid Waste Division, two members of the staff of Mr.
Chang of the DOH and a representative of Earth Tech, the consultant
to the SW Division. Records, including the Hoike video record of
that meeting, would show that Councilman Tokioka did almost all
the questioning of the witnesses. Those present at the meeting soon
noticed, as the deliberations proceeded, that the questions from
the Council were loaded and
that, upon hearing a question, the five witnesses would exchange
quick glances at one another, and one of them would give the answer.
Tokioka explained to
the witnesses that the Council was very concerned with the problem,
so much so that it had authorized an appropriation of $93,000 to
help remedy the deficiencies in the county’s application for
the permit to add another 25 feet to the Kekaha Landfill.
(Note: There was no record of Council action, prior to this meeting
or after this meeting, to authorize the spending of the $93,000.)
As the exchange between
Tokioka and the five proceeded there was a definite lessoning of
the tension or alarm among the Council members. Soon everything
seemed to be just fine;
everyone was relaxed; the Council thanked the five and went on to
other matters on the Agenda.
On January 13, 2005, the DOH published a legal ad in the Garden
Island noticing the DOH’s intent to issue a permit to Kauai
for the 25-ft expansion of the Kekaha
Landfill and asking for public comments. It turned out I was the
only person to submit a two-page letter of comments which the Kauai
County Deputy County
Engineer Ladye Martin (who, by the way, is not an engineer but was
a lawyer on loan to the Public Works Dept from the Office of the
County Attorney) summarily
dismissed as being irrelevant. Similar rejection of my comments
was issued, in a letter dated March 23, 2005, by Thomas Arizumi,
P.E., Chief of the Environmental Management Div of the State Dept
of Health. Mr. Arizumi further notified me that the DOH was proceeding
to issue the permit.
It is interesting to note at this point in the chronology of the
expansion of the Kekaha Landfill that the County of Kauai issued
an amendment to the contract with Earth Tech, the consultant to
the Solid Waste Division, on February 2, 2005, to add $287,000 to
Earth Tech’s contract. The purpose of the amendment was stated
as the “Close-out” of the Kekaha Landfill. (Not the
expansion of the landfill.) As far as I am able to search the records,
the appropriation of this sum was not acted upon at any County Council
meeting, nor does this item appear in the published Budget for the
Fiscal Year July 1, 2004 to June 30, 2005, or the Fiscal Year July
1, 2003 to June 30, 2004.
It is also interesting to note that the proposal, by Mel Rapozo,
for action by the County Council to perform an audit of the Solid
Waste operation was rejected by the Council last week.
I suppose it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out what
is going on here. What’s more, there is talk now to go further
with added still more trash to the
Kekaha Landfill by filling the space between the old Phase I Landfill
and the current Phase II Landfill. A stand-alone landfill looks
like a truncated pyramid.
When you put two of these side by side you’ve got an inverted
pyramid in the space between them! That should be interesting! With
something as novel as
this one can bet the DOH would certainly give another permit! Especially
with the help of a consultant.
On the other
hand, with the doubling of the investigative staff in the Attorney
General’s Environmental Crimes Unit, things could develop
differently. Until recently the ECU had only one Special Agent;
now there are two Special Agents. |
