Honolulu holding onto its garbage

HONOLULU—The City and County of Honolulu has reached an agreement with Hawaiian Waste Systems that will require the company to dispose of 20,000 tons of municipal solid waste it had accumulated but was unable to ship to a Washington state landfill as planned.

The Yakama Nation and several environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court last month in Spokane to stop the Hawaii-to-Washington shipments to a landfill in the eastern part of the state.

The Yakama wanted to protect their lands against invasive plant species from Hawaii, as well as microbes, insects, and other pests. The tribe also pointed to potential damage to future fishing stocks, as well as to the gathering of plants and ceremonial objects such as porcupine quills, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Under the new agreement with the City, Hawaiian Waste Systems will transport most of the waste to the City’s HPOWER plant, where it will be combusted to produce electricity. Waste that is not suitable for combustion will be transported to the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill.

The waste consists mostly of bulky items and similar material that would normally be disposed of at the landfill. However, because Hawaiian Waste Systems has processed the waste—crushing and shredding it to make it amenable to baling for shipment—most of the material can now be accepted at HPOWER.

The disposal process will begin once a formal settlement agreement has been completed and signed within the next 15 days. So as not to overwhelm HPOWER or the landfill, the waste will be steadily added to the flow of material to those facilities over approximately 20 weeks.

The City had planned to have a portion of the waste collected on Oahu shipped to the continental United States to help reduce the amount of waste going to Waimanalo Gulch while the HPOWER plant is expanded. A third boiler under construction at the plant is expected to be completed in late 2011. The third boiler will allow HPOWER to convert another 300,000 tons of waste per year into electricity, according to the City.