HILO — 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. ADVERTISING HILO — After decades of trying
HILO — 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 under 15 acres at the West Hawaii Concrete Quarry in Waikoloa to build an estimated $50 million waste separation and anaerobic 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 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 currently run by Pacific Waste Inc., a sister company. Pacific Waste currently hauls about 80 percent of the commercial waste on the west side of the Big Island.
The project is scheduled to come on line 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 east-side garbage to the Puuanahulu landfill.
The trucks will return to Hilo with West Hawaii’s green waste to be composted in the new facility, under the plan.
But Leithead Todd also had concerns that 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 over a certain size must now be trucked to the West Hawaii landfill for disposal. Leithead Todd acknowledged to the Environmental Management Commission that that could raise 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 one mile in along a dedicated roadway. That puts it three miles overland to the nearest development in Waikoloa Village, three miles from the Puuanahulu landfill and four 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 has 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 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 on the project by mailing or emailing the county Planning Department, attention Jeff Darrow, at Jeff.Darrow@hawaiicounty.gov, Aupuni Center, 101 Pauahi Street, Suite 3, Hilo, HI 96720, with copies to applicant BioEnergy Hawaii. attention Clint Knox, Leed AP, Vice President, Clint@komarinvestments.com , 74-5610 Alapa Street, Kailua Kona, HI 96740 and consultant North Shore Consultants, LLC., attention David Robichaux, robichaud001@hawaii.rr.com, 2091 Round Top Dr., Honolulu, HI 96822.
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
