hunterbishop.com

I totally agree.
An incinerator is unacceptable to me for the reason you cited and all the traditional environmental conerns.
There will be financial incentives as well for burning more, rather than less, garbage. This incinerator will be ineffecient at its small size and the operator will want to increase the burn, no matter how wasteful. These incentives will work against recycling programs islandwide.
You can't burn plastic safely. We need to drastically reduce our garbage output, instead, and take care of our own trash. It's not that hard, it's just a habit change.
And let's see...
Should we, the noble, exemplary County of Hawaii, take a giant step toward make global warming worse, or toward making it better?
Which way does the incinerator lead?

Thanks Hunter. Wonder how many extra BTU's we get from all that LocoMoco gravy on the polystyrene containers? ;)

In addition to the utter foolishness of burning resources our children will need, the issue of the smaller maw highlights a particular problem for the local situation. The proposed Hilo incinerator is smaller than any other commercial waste-to-energy incinerator in the good ole USA. For example, this one is about 200 tons/day. More typical are 1,000 to 5,000 tons and up. The larger the maw, the more economical the operation. This means Hawaii County could be up for extra co$t$ due to the uneconomic small size.
Some smaller facilities exist in Europe and rely on revenue not only from electricity, but also and most especially from generation and sale of steam.
As the debate heats up, lots, lots more bad news about incineration is to come.
Bad news notwithstanding, the most important point: INCINERATION IS NOT NECESSARY.

People are known by the last thing they do, not necessarily the best thing they do. What a shame if having the incinerator built is Harry Kim's last major action. Eight years ago, we went from darkness to light. Will this support of the incinerator taint Kim's legacy?

I don't see how an incinerator takes any more incentive out of recycling than a landfill or a barge.They're hungry for our waste too.

We should do whatever's neccessary to make recycling a part of our lifestyle. Maybe a combination of more HI-5 products and a tax on "over"packaged goods would help.

The natural food stores help by offering "bulk" food bins that minimize packaging. They also, however, sell little straws of honey that probably have as much plastic as food in them. Both consumers and retailers need to work on their recycling ethic.

As far as incineration goes; Sure it uses energy and pollutes to some degree. All forms of waste disposal do. Even recycling uses energy. The questions are: Does WTE save more resources than it uses? How about shipping it somewhere?

Solution: Tax packaging-sort-recycle-reuse-burn baby burn-monitor emissions!

"Personal responsibility" is a phase I will not give up. Stop with the blame game and each one of us look at what we have done, need to stop doing and start doing to save this Paradise (and planet). I'm pretty sure if we don't, Pele is going to give us a lesson in "respct of the Aina" (natures incinerator). NO INCINERATORS!

If the county does not enter into a contract for a WTE facility, the most probable outcome will be a contract to bale and barge trash to a landfill on the mainland. In order to make that contract happen, the county would probably be required to enter into an agreement to provide a similar amount of rubbish (200 tons a day) to the bale and barge contractor and contract for a minimum of 7-10 years in order to allow the contractor to recoup their investment in equipment. This of course assumes the closure of the Hilo landfill in August 2010 and continued opposition to trucking to Pu`uanahulu. Bale and barge contracts are anticipated to cost around $95 per ton. Assuming such a contract occurs and the prevailing sentiment on the council is to build a new, lined landfill in Hilo, that process would take the 7-10 years to get the required environmental and permit approvals. If the new landfill is operated like Pu`uanahulu with cells built by a private contractor and operations handled by civil servants, the contract would also require a per ton fee to be paid to the contractor with a minimum throughput of 100 to 200 tons per day. If you ship less or bury less under either contract, you still have to pay for the minimum guaranteed amount.

When you consider WTE, you also need to consider the electricity generated and the 19,000 barrels of diesel that will not need to be shipped to Hawaii to produce an equivalent amount of electricity. If you are talking about bale and barge, then you need to consider that while the landfill may not be in your backyard, the emissions from the landfill will still have an impact on global warming, which will impact us as we live on an island that is sinking. And what doyou do witht he rubbish if there is a shipping strike? If you go with a landfill in an area that has 126 inches of rain a year, you will need to build a leachate treatment system to deal with the anticipated leachate that will be generated. The landfill will also take up and use a lot more land than the WTE facility and render that land unusable for any other purpose for the foreseeable future.
Ultimately, the best answer is to reduce the rubbish we produce, and reuse and recycle as much as we can. However, we are years if not a generation away from moving to "zero waste".
Since we do not pick-up residential garbage and do not currently "inspect" or charge for the rubbish at the transfer stations, there is little or no incentive for people to recyle/reduce/reuse.

Kurihara (a.k.a. ?),

Your undocumented assertions fly like pigs.

"prevailing sentiment on the council" says who?

"years if not a generation away from moving to zero waste" says who?

"bale and barge trash to a landfill on the mainland..."
"...the county would probably be required to enter into an agreement..." -- 'PROBABLY' ?! says who?

You seem to have a handle on lots of numbers. Try a few more...
Do you know how many pounds of dry, combustible, non-hazardous 'waste' each person within the population area served by the incinerator would need to generate to feed the incinerator? and what proportion this is of the total per capta waste generation per day on the island?

Do you know how much nitorus oxide is emitted from an incinerator? Nitorus oxide is a greenhouse gas more serious than methane, though not as prevelant in nature.

Do you know how many communities in several countries have adopted Zero Waste as a policy? and do you know that within as little as five years of adotion that diversion has climbed from 35% (about where Hawaii County is) to 70%?

p.s.
Kurihara, the wording and rationalizations you use are very familiar to me and so are you, so I uderstand why you have to remain anonymous.
This blog is a good place for the community to discuss issues, including our problem with wastefulness.
However, the issue is very complex (as someone else in the County administration told me a few months ago).
For a more complete discussion, I would invite you or anyone else in the current Mayor's Administration to a formal, public debate, resolved that: THE PROPOSED WHEELABRATOR FACILITY IS THE BEST ALTERNATIVE FOR THE HAWAII COUNTY COUNCIL TO FUND. The Administration Representative in the affirmative, and me in the negative.
Any takers?

If the Hilo landfill closes as anticipated in August 2010, and assuming that no WTE contract is approved, the county has to do something with the trash. Closure of the landfill leaves the county with a number of alternatives that can be implemented in the short time between now and August 2010. Both the administration and the majority of council have repeatedly and publicly expressed opposition to trucking trash to Puuanahulu. So if there is no trucking to Puuanahulu, what can you do with the trash by the time closure occurs? You can try to put in place more aggressive recycling and reuse but it is extremely unlikely that you will come up with any program that will reduce or recycle all of the trash within the next two years. This is in part because sorting the trash into recyclables needs to occur before people put their rubbish in the trash, otherwise you have contaminated paper/recyclables which have to be put in a landfill or otherwise disposed. I believe that will require substantial public education and incentives (including advance disposal fees or residential fees) and it is unlikely that you wil have all of that in place and operational within two years. Despite a goal of 50% diversion that was set some time ago, the county has only reached a little more than half that goal over the past ten years. It is difficult to believe that in the next two years we can ramp up to zero waste. If the county manages to reach 50% diversion by 2010, that would still leave about 125 tons per day of trash on the east side (this assumes a total of 250 tons per day and 125 tons diversion and no further increase in the amount of trash produced). Unless the county is willing to truck to Puuanahulu the remainder, the trash has to be baled and barged while either an alternative method of disposal such as a landfill, or other form of disposal, or more aggressive reduction, reuse, and recycling is put in place. The problem is that if you take trucking to Puuanahulu off the table, since it will take years to get another technology, or a landfill, or down to zero waste, you have to do something with the trash. Trucking to Puuanahulu should be an option until another method of disposal is in place, or you will have to do a bale and barge contract. And no one will bid on a bale and barge contract unless it is sufficiently long enough to recover their investment. Now if you do truck to Puuanahulu, you need to be adding long haul trailers (this reduces the number of trucks that travel the road) to the county's list of equipment purchases for 08-09 and hope that you can do the procurement and get the trailers in by August 2010. It takes almost a year (sometimes longer) from the time something is approved in a budget to actual delivery of the equipment.
I personally don't care one way or another if the WTE plant is built, I just don't think that if you take hauling off the table you have many other options except the bale and barge within the next two years. There is no perfect answer to our trash problems, there is a down side to everything (other than reduction). WTE, plasma, gasification etal have one type of emission or another and are generally more expensive, landfills have emissions (whether they are here or on the mainland) and you need to be concerned about potential contamination of groundwater, leachate, disposal of hazardous waste and have controls in place to prevent or contain underground fires, bale and barge just puts our rubbish in someone else's backyard and has to be barged using fossil fuels to get there, and recycling has to be heavily subsidized at the present time because of our distance from end markets. Diversion/composting of green waste makes sense not only because we can do it on island, but because it is cost-effective. Trying to work on reduction (less packaging, buying local)works for the same reasons. But as long as we import the majority of our consumer products and food, we will have more trash per capita than other places.

I believe the stats about the incinerator as much as I believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the ones we will soon be told exist in Iran!

Have just returned from a landmark event in Kona re Island food. Hope anyone who wasn't there talks to someone who was.
(That is, unless that certain anyone does not eat food).

Kurihara,

My, how you do run on and on and write all manner of very interesting things; and still don't write your name. Alas, it is our loss.
Trucking? Not a popular notion. That is yet another reason that it is so bizarre for council members opposed to trucking to support incineration -- the ashes and rejected stuff (concrete, household hazardous waste, stuff too wet to burn, etc) from the incinerator would be HAULED TO KONA!

As I've said before, you proclaim to know an immense amount about the situation and have an amazing set of figures at your fingertips ... hmmm
Yet, there is your amazingly naive and daft view of Zero Waste Policy.
You are right that reduction, composting, et al are our best options. That is core to what zero waste is!

It is a bit of a worry that someone with so much responsbility as to have all that information at the fingertips -- and NO ONE ELSE WOULD but someone very close to the action -- and still be so uninformed about what the rest of the world is actually doing!

Why do you reckon the number of local and state jurisdictions with Zero Waste commitments is growing and the number with new incinerators is zero?!

On October 4, 2007 | kurihara wrote:

"Both the administration and the majority of council have repeatedly and publicly expressed opposition to trucking trash to Puuanahulu."

This statement and the bulk of this 'environmental specialists' rhetoric makes clear the attitude of the Mayor Kim era -arrogant and high all mighty.

I have no individual animosity. Just a general feeling of disappointment and a swelling sense of outrage.

Our county has become a full girth tax eating glutton.

Under Mayor Kim we have seen a expansion of county government that has put the retiree and non government wage earner into a special category for taxing.

For example:
If you came to these Islands less then 4 years ago and bought a house your property tax rate , house valuation calculation and rate of increase will cost you more then the thousands of "Hilo owned grandfathered" investment rental properties all around you. A considerable amount more.
And it that isn't enough insult........If you bought a vacant lot you are locked into a rate and pay about500% more tax today even though it was worth way more 12 months ago.

The weight of the Hilo centralized county, state and federal government influence has derailed more then 50 years of community grass root initiatives.

Town squares and community centers are 'planned' not to be incorporated into market places. I am disappointed by much of the discussion our elected officials are engaged in today concerning future programs.

Special interest groups and cronies have speedy resolve and fast track attention to county resolution regardless of the long term impact on the the impacted community.


Soon to pull a building or renovation permit a massive impact fee will be assessed ($5k-$15k). If it is contractor built house the buyer will simply pay it at closing. In the case of someone building their own home it will be due at the time of permitting.

It takes a full time advocate to raise even the most simple of points.

crosswalk, traffic lights, sidewalks, police, street lights,senior citizen activities,roundabouts, etc

Our county under Mayor Kim has become the blanket policy of not serving and the tax payers basic needs but rather the contrived input from the legions of 'planners' and facilitators'.

Wake up folks this is not about the county burning our rubbish this is simply about which way the smoke will blow.

Harry retire.