hunterbishop.com

The Fifth District's Emily Naeole held her ground against the waste-to-energy incinerator Wednesday while Councilman J Yoshimoto turned in favor of continuing to study the project. But it wasn't enough to change the result and the Wheelabrator project went down with a thud at the Council Council meeting.

Council chairman Pete Hoffman, Stacy Higa, Donald Ikeda and Yoshimoto voted to continue studying the project. But Naeole, Bob Jacobson, Brenda Ford, Donald Yagong and Angel Pilago had heard enough and their 5-4 majority killed the plan.

Now I get the sense that we could be hurtling toward a new East Hawaii landfill that could cost as much if not more than the waste-to-energy plant. If you listen to Bobby Jean Leithead-Todd, the county's Environmental Management chief, it sounds like time to put the transportation plan in place for hauling to Puuanahulu. From Rod Thompson's story in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin:

Kona residents have said they do not want Hilo trash trucked to the modern West Hawaii landfill, but Leithead-Todd has said that might be the only alternative. And the high price of gasoline would make trucking increasingly expensive.

True about the price of fuel, but the better we get at recycling, the fewer trucks will need to make the trip. Compare the cost of buying and fueling the trucks with the construction and maintenance costs of constructing a new incinerator or landfill. I don't know the answer but the detailed analysis needs to be done before rushing headlong into another big ticket item.

The county's plan for the incinerator was that its ash would be hauled to Puuanahulu anyway unless we built a landfill extension in Hilo. A lesser known part of the WTE plan was that if recycling was successful to the point that the incinerator was no longer working to its energy-producing capacity, rubbish from West Hawaii would have been hauled to Hilo! From the mayor's most recent public info sheet:

In addition, the County has control of its trash, meaning that it can direct waste from West Hawaii transfer stations to the waste-to-energy plant to make up the required tonnage if necessary as we maximize recycling.

We would have had trucks of ash and rubbish going both ways across the island under that mad and costly plan. I'm glad we're through with it -- at least I hope we are through with it.

I'd recommend plans that would dramatically reduce the amount of rubbish first, then truck what's left to our one good landfill which happens to be in Puuanahulu. But now the future of solid waste management in Hawaii County-- and for how many previous elections have we heard this? -- will be up to the next council and mayor. Sigh.