Kaua‘i eyes $43 million Kekaha landfill expansion as site nears capacity

Kaua‘i’s only permitted landfill in Kekaha is closing in on capacity, and county officials are again asking residents to accept a short-term fix: a $43 million vertical expansion that could buy about 12 more years of disposal space.

The county says the Kekaha Landfill could reach capacity around 2030, long before a new landfill on Mā‘alo Road in Hanamā‘ulu can be permitted, designed and built. County materials put that timeline at about 10 years, possibly longer, which is why the proposed Cell 3 expansion is being framed as a bridge between now and whatever comes next.

At an open house at the Kekaha Neighborhood Center last week, about 90 community members heard county Solid Waste staff walk through the project with poster-board stations covering landfill operations, the community-benefit structure for Kekaha, and the island’s recycling and trash-diversion rates. The format itself drew notice, with some residents expecting a more traditional presentation and question-and-answer session.

The expansion would stay within the landfill’s existing footprint rather than spread outward. It would be the seventh expansion since the site opened in 1953, and county officials say it is meant to keep waste disposal uninterrupted while the island continues to search for a permanent replacement site.

The technical changes are significant. A March 2026 draft solid-waste permit notice from the Hawaii Department of Health would allow Phase 2 of the landfill to rise from 120 feet to 171.5 feet above mean sea level and would raise the daily acceptance limit from 200 tons to 275 tons. The same draft would also allow the landfill to accept non-hazardous leachate and condensate from the closed Halehaka landfill.

The pressure is already visible. Earlier reporting in 2025 put the Kekaha landfill at about 90,000 tons of waste a year, and Civil Beat reported that the landfill receives about 500,000 pounds of trash every day. Kaua‘i diverts about 45% of its waste, but the county still says the landfill is needed for everything that cannot be reused, recycled or recovered.

The long-term answer remains unresolved. The proposed new landfill site on state-owned agricultural lands on the Mānā Plain has drawn concern from environmental groups, including tsunami-inundation risks raised by Earthjustice. The group has also pointed to the island’s roughly 73,000 residents and about 30,000 tourists a day, while noting that Kekaha residents make up about 4% of the island’s population. For now, the county is asking the public to live with a familiar tradeoff: a taller landfill in Kekaha, and a much longer wait for the next one.