The Kaua‘i County Council rejected a proposal to acquire land over concerns pesticide contamination.
The council on Wednesday discussed a $138 million capital improvement budget bill including allocations for projects ranging from bridge replacements to playground improvements.
Included among those projects was a proposal to purchase a 5.5-acre parcel in Puhi for about $5 million, where the county would build a vehicle repair shop and storage space for the county’s Transportation Agency.
But Council Chair Mel Rapozo put the brakes on that proposal on Wednesday, saying that the site’s previous life as a manufacturing site for industrial chemicals — county records indicate the site was previously owned by the Brewer Chemical Corp. — has made the area potentially hazardous.
“I’m a little concerned about purchasing the land without knowing up-front what the environmental issues are,” Rapozo said. “Who knows what is sitting in that?”
Rapozo cited a report by the state Department of Health’s Hazard Evaluation and Emergency Response Office, which found that a portion of the site to be purchased is considered to be at a medium risk for dioxin contaminants. Dioxins are toxic chemical compounds that are often byproducts of industrial manufacturing processes — including herbicides — that can pollute groundwater and surrounding soils.
One person who testified about the matter, Lonnie Sykos, claimed that Brewer Chemical sold herbicides in the 1970s that were chemically similar to Agent Orange, the herbicide infamous for its use in the Vietnam War — and the long-term health impacts for people exposed to it.
County Managing Director Reiko Matsuyama told the council that an environmental assessment of the site has not been conducted because the property owner — listed in county tax records as Kaua‘i Veterans Express Co. — had not committed to selling to the county until recently.
However, Matsuyama said that the county has reviewed previous environmental reviews of the site and said that none of them picked up anything “above industrial-level contamination.”
But Rapozo said that his own due diligence at the site suggests that the structures at the location contain asbestos, which means that they will be unusable without either an expensive asbestos remediation process or a total teardown and replacement of the structures, either one of which will inflate the cost of the project well above the $5 million initially planned.
Rapozo and other council members seemed blindsided by the entire proposal, saying that they hadn’t been informed of the county’s intent to purchase the land until around April.
“We’re being asked with a very short window to commit to spending the money to purchase the land,” Rapozo said. “Future councils down the road can say no to funding any future developments, but guess what? We’re stuck the land and the cleanup and the monitoring forever.”
Ultimately, the council voted to remove the land purchase from the capital improvement budget bill until the site can be thoroughly evaluated.
For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter.
