After decades of trying to get a handle on the island’s growing garbage problems, county officials are taking a wait-and-see approach to a private company’s plan to step into the breach.
After decades of trying to get a handle on the island’s growing garbage problems, county officials are taking a wait-and-see approach to a private company’s plan to step into the breach.
BioEnergy Hawaii LLC plans to lease just less than 15 acres at the West Hawaii Concrete Quarry in Waikoloa to build an estimated $50 million waste separation and aerobic digestion facility that will produce methane and other gases, with byproducts to include soil amendments and fertilizer. A smaller, closed thermal gasification unit will generate electricity, under the plan.
The 200-ton-per-day facility could divert as much as 70 percent of its municipal solid waste from the West Hawaii landfill at Puuanahulu, sending 30 percent to the landfill as residual waste. It could be expanded to 400 tons per day, under the plan.
The West Hawaii landfill currently accepts about 300 tons of commercial and residential waste per day, and the soon-to-be-closed Hilo landfill accepts about 200 tons per day.
The waste separation and aerobic digestion facility is designed to be flexible, to grow as the county’s need grows, BioEnergy Vice President Clint Knox said Wednesday.
“Our whole strategy, we know the county is limited on what they can do, so we’re willing to work within those limitations,” Knox said.
The methane will power garbage trucks operated by Pacific Waste Inc., a sister company. Pacific Waste hauls about 80 percent of the commercial waste on the west side of the Big Island.
The project is scheduled to come online sometime in 2019, about the same time the county’s $10.6 million green waste composting facility should be operational. That project will collect green waste islandwide and turn it into compost that will be sold to consumers. The public will still be able to get free mulch under that plan.
The county signed a contract in April with Hawaiian Earth Recycling, a subsidiary of the county’s current mulch contractor, Hawaiian Earth Products.
Environmental Management Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd said Wednesday she’s neutral on the BioEnergy project.
On the one hand, she said, it could help divert more waste from the county’s landfills. With the Hilo landfill having an estimated lifespan of 36 months, the county’s working on closing it. It plans to truck garbage from East Hawaii to the Puuanahulu landfill. The trucks will return to Hilo with West Hawaii’s green waste to be composted at the new facility.
But on the other hand, Leithead Todd is concerned the BioEnergy Hawaii project could reduce the amount of green waste coming back to Hilo, requiring the garbage trucks to come back empty and possibly reducing the efficiency of the composting operation.
The Hilo landfill has reached a level where the county recently told contractors that truckloads of construction waste larger than a certain size now must be trucked to the West Hawaii landfill for disposal. Leithead Todd acknowledged to the Environmental Management Commission that could mean an increase in construction prices on the east side of the island.
“A lot of this is very difficult to predict,” Leithead Todd said about the many components that have to fit into place.
BioEnergy’s facility entrance will be located 2.7 miles east of the intersection of Queen Kaahumanu Highway and Waikoloa Road, with the facility itself 1 mile in along a dedicated roadway. That puts it 3 miles overland to the nearest development in Waikoloa Village, 3 miles from the Puuanahulu landfill and 4 miles from the Waikoloa Beach hotels.
The facility will emit no gas or smoke, and won’t be able to be seen from the roadways, the coast or the hotels, said planning consultant David Robichaux of North Shore Consultants in Honolulu.
“It’s a zero-cost project to the county,” Robichaux said. “BioEnergy Hawaii is doing this with their own money.”
Hawaii County twice solicited and then abandoned waste-to-energy incineration projects. Both times — once in former Mayor and now Mayor-elect Harry Kim’s administration and once in current Mayor Billy Kenoi’s administration — the cost became too prohibitive for taxpayers to shoulder.
The county apparently doesn’t produce enough garbage to make the big garbage-burning facilities cost-effective. But new technologies are making smaller garbage digesting units affordable.
The estimated $50 million BioEnergy Hawaii project includes backing from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s investment company Ulupono Initiative and other private equity with support from a $100 million special purpose revenue bond issued by the state.
County Planning Director Duane Kanuha anticipates a finding of no significant impact for the project.
The public has until Sept. 22 to comment about the project by mail or email. Send comments via the mail to the county Planning Department, attention Jeff Darrow, Aupuni Center, 101 Pauahi St., Suite 3, Hilo, HI 96720, with copies to applicant BioEnergy Hawaii, attention Clint Knox, Leed AP, Vice President, 74-5610 Alapa St., Kailua-Kona, HI 96740, and consultant North Shore Consultants LLC, attention David Robichaux, 2091 Round Top Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822. For those who want to email comments, the addresses are Jeff.Darrow@hawaiicounty.gov, Clint@komarinvestments.com and robichaud001@hawaii.rr.com, respectively.
The 170-page draft environmental assessment can be found at http://oeqc.doh.hawaii.gov/Shared%20Documents/EA_and_EIS_Online_Library/Hawaii/2010s/2016-08-23-HA-5E-DEA-Integrated-Resource-Recovery-Facility.pdf.
Email Nancy Cook Lauer at ncook-lauer@westhawaiitoday.com.