Comment: City wastewater settlement a victory?

HONOLULU—A 2004 lawsuit by the Sierra Club against the City and County of Honolulu brought to light the ugly truth about Oahu’s decrepit sewage infrastructure and warned about the potential dangers to the public. In 2006, a devastating sewage spill in the Ala Wai Canal directly resulted in Waikiki beachgoer illnesses and, in one tragic instance, the gruesome death of one individual due to septic shock. The federal government and State of Hawaii brought another lawsuit against the City in 2007.

Now, all our sewage problems, City officials insist, is water under the bridge.

Last month, the City, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Hawaii Attorney General’s Office, the Hawaii Department of Health, and three environmental groups announced an agreement addressing concerns about the island’s sewage system and settled a lawsuit brought against the City by the environmental groups.

The fact that a settlement has been reached is certainly encouraging. All sides, including the City, are claiming victory. But it seems that the victory is purely political. Former Mayor Mufi Hannemann deftly deflected blame for the sad state of Oahu’s wastewater system onto the previous administration of Jeremy Harris and fought the lawsuits with taxpayer money for long enough to ensure that the Hannemann administration would not have to foot the bill for required improvements.

The settlement is touted as a great leap toward improving Oahu’s wastewater treatment. It outlines a detailed compliance schedule, and all parties involved have given their approval. The City has agreed to upgrade the Sand Island and Honouliuli plants to secondary treatment plants (as has been required by federal law for years), and to make other badly needed improvements.

The estimated cost of upgrades to the treatment plants is $1.155 billion: $480 million for the Honouliuli plant and $675 million for the Sand Island plant.

Yes, the problem is in the process of being solved, but it will not be solved entirely (if at all) for another quarter century. The agreement allows 10 years for completion of work on Oahu’s wastewater collection system, 14 years for the Honouliuli plant, and up to 28 years for the Sand Island plant.

Ever since I was old enough to enjoy an evening bodysurfing session at Sandy Beach with my friends, back in, say, 1985, I’ve been possessed of an at-least peripheral awareness of the problems of Honolulu’s wastewater treatment system. It still stinks in the late afternoon on the Ka Iwi Coast, as sewage is pumped into the Molokai Channel from the privately operated East Honolulu Waste Water Treatment Plant, a partial-tertiary treatment plant. The residential wastewater undergoes that partial-tertiary treatment before being pumped into the ocean 1,400 feet off of Sandy Beach, at depths between 29 feet and 45 feet.

That same stink is pervasive in and around the other wastewater treatment facilities at Sand Island and Honouliuli, the two treatment plants slated for upgrade to secondary treatment facilities. The sewage treatment plant in Aikahi in East Oahu is infamous for the violent and ever-present stench it emits. How can 10 to 20 more years of that status quo, of dumping sewage onto our reefs, be considered a victory?