A plan by Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi to open a landfill in Kapa‘a Quarry has already spurred local opposition.
After a previous plan to build a landfill near Makakilo fell through in June when the Honolulu City Council didn’t approve funding, the entire island of O‘ahu was rendered unavailable for landfill development thanks to an overlapping series of land use restrictions — landfills cannot be built near airports, within tsunami evacuation zones, on federal lands, over protected aquifers, or near schools, hospitals or residential areas.
But this week, Blangiardi announced that he intends to work with the state Legislature to repeal Act 73, a 2020 measure that established some of the land use restrictions impeding landfill development.
That law includes a prohibition against waste disposal facilities being built in a conservation district, as well as a requirement that any such facility include a buffer zone of at least half a mile between the facility and the nearest residential, school or hospital property line.
But area legislators have already pushed back on the plan. A delegation of windward lawmakers — senators Jarrett Keohokalole and and Chris Lee, and representatives Lisa Marten and Mike Lee — made a joint statement Tuesday expressing disappointment that Kapa‘a Quarry has been chosen.
“Kapaʻa Quarry sits immediately adjacent to residential communities, critical watersheds, cultural resources, and environmentally sensitive areas,” read Marten’s statement. “A proposal of this magnitude demands transparency, scientific analysis, and genuine public engagement.”
Marten added that the Legislature should instead review Act 255, a bill passed last year that prohibits landfills from being built inland of the underground injection control line, a boundary that designates whether an aquifer is a protected source of drinking water.
Marten said that there exists improved mapping techniques that can provide more accurate evaluations of possible landfill sites, and that Act 255 should be revised “to reflect the best available science and data.”
The lawmakers said local communities — including people who might be within the buffer zones established by Act 73 — have not been properly consulted about the plan, and have already had to bear the brunt of six previous landfills since 1940.
But, the City and County is between a rock and a hard place: the last landfill on the island, the Waimānalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill, is scheduled to close in 2028 when a special use permit expires. Even if that permit is extended, at current waste generation rates, the landfill is expected to reach capacity by 2031.
The Council established earlier this year an “End Landfills Task Force” that will develop a transition plan for adopting long-term waste strategies to end the island’s reliance on landfills, but that plan is not expected to be completed until late 2027.
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