Hawaii County urged to act on composting after landfill study
A county study found 26% of West Hawaii landfill waste is organic, renewing pressure for a composting plan that could ease hauling costs and landfill pressure.
A county waste study found that 26% of the material being buried at the West Hawaii landfill is organic, putting landfill space, hauling costs and disposal policy back at the center of Hawaii County’s composting debate. Justin Canelas planned to bring draft recommendations to the Environmental Management Commission in Kailua-Kona, pressing the county to move from discussion to a countywide system that keeps food scraps and yard waste out of the landfill.
The June 15 draft recommendation letter called organic materials the single largest component of waste being sent to county landfills. It urged the Hawaii County Department of Environmental Management to build a comprehensive island-wide composting plan around decentralized, community-based composting hubs rather than depending on one centralized facility. It calls for identifying potential sites and partnership opportunities with nonprofits, farms, schools and neighborhood associations, along with a phased implementation timeline. It also asks DEM to work with the State Department of Health to seek more flexibility for small- and medium-scale composting operations, which current rules constrain.
On the June 24 agenda, DEM was set to review backyard composting resources and collateral to identify gaps that could be filled, and commissioners had an unfinished business item on in-vessel composting and next steps for further study or development. The meeting was scheduled for 9 a.m. at Community Meeting Hale at the West Hawaii Civic Center in Kailua-Kona, with Zoom and phone access.
In 2016, the County Council unanimously approved a $10.6 million bond for Hawaii’s first full-scale county composting facility, designed to handle green waste, food-contaminated paper and restaurant waste. That plan called for a Hilo landfill compost facility and a West Hawaii receiving and mixing site, with material heated above 130 degrees Fahrenheit to kill pests and plant diseases including coqui frogs, little fire ants, coffee berry borers and ōhia wilt.
By February 2017, Mayor Harry Kim was seriously considering terminating the $10.3 million contract because of cost and scope concerns. The Keaukaha Panaewa Farmers Association objected to the Hilo-area site over health, noise and odor concerns, and the county later proposed a 2018 site in W.H. Shipman Business Park in Keaau, where three acres of a 40-acre property would have been developed. That plan projected 28,000 tons of compost in the first year and 35,000 tons by year 10.
By 2020, commissioners were weighing a distributed network of community compost sites instead of a single $10.5 million facility, as East Hawaii lacked enough feedstock for a large plant and West Hawaii mulch operations were costing the county almost $500,000 a year.
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