MRF-FREE'S LAW: There's a sure way to get our blood boiling- mention solid waste and Kaua`i county government in the same sentence.
Back in the early-mid 90's, when the term "zero-waste" was just a'bornin', Dr. Ray Chuan, activist extraordinaire, used to walk into the council chambers each week with stacks of papers and during the interstitial periods, start pawing through them.
Of course we couldn't resist looking over his shoulder and so much to our amazement we and eventually the rest of the "nitpickers" became experts on the last thing in which we wanted to stick our noses- literally or figuratively... trash.
It didn't take a genius to see that the costliest- and stupidest- thing that could be done was to dig a hole in the ground and bury valuable materials rather than recycle them. The solution was- and is- to make it as easy for folks to separate them out of their yucky trash, pick them up curbside and bring them to a place to separate them for shipment, as many places on the mainland were already either doing or planning to do at the time.
Now more than 15 years later and three administrations later Kaua`i not only doesn't have a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) but, according to the local newspaper- albeit buried mid-way through an article- Mayor Bernard Carvalho has no real plans to build one, making recycling as haphazard and costly as possible.
It's not like the money to plan and build a MRF hasn't been appropriated by the council at least four time we can think of since the turn of the century. Every single bond float- and restructuring of bonds- has included money for the facility which needs to be the first thing that is done in either a "zero-waste" program or the "integrated solid waste" strategy the county has embraced.
It has also been included in almost every capital improvement budget since then to no avail. If we didn't know better we'd think there was no one who knew how to both build a large warehouse and kick back money to the Department of Public Works' Solid Waste Division and the various mayors.
The article is, as usual when penned by Leo Azambuja, fairly useless in explaining why the heck a MRF is not in Carvalho's budget this year, preferring to concentrate on the reasons why the council refused to waste money by continuing to pay our state senator's brother an exorbitant rate to separate a small amount of curbside recycled materials, recovered through a now-canceled "pilot project."
It's just another textbook example of the county's "ready, fire, aim" modus operandi.
But further, the article fails to point out the massive costs of dumping most of our recyclable goods in our overflowing landfill to the point where some have suggested "mining" the old cells, not just to recover the materials discarded over the years but to open up space so as to delay for as long as decades the need to site a new one that nobody wants in their backyard anyway.
Instead Carvalho is still adamant about siting the MRF in the area in which he is proposing to put the new landfill even though planning and permitting for the dump could be a decade away. That means that in Carvalho's mind we will keep on doing what's wrong as long as we can, falling further behind the rest of the world in solid waste management.
Meanwhile the cart is not just before the horse, it's rolling down an endless hill and gathering speed with no equine activity on the horizon.
Of course if the planning and design had been done years ago the county might have even had the whole shebang paid for by the federal government when the they were looking for "shovel ready" public works projects a couple of years back- as they may be doing again next year.
Carvalho seems to have no trouble acting on a dime when it comes to hiring another suck-up crony to fill another new administration position. But when it comes to capital improvement projects the bungling seems almost intentional.
The old "is it incompetence or is in malfeasance?" question was seemingly made for the last three mayors. But the more Carvalho's administrative skills are on display, the more we have to believe it's the latter more than the former.
Showing posts with label Solid Waste. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Solid Waste. Show all posts
Monday, September 19, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
(PNN)AGREEMENT SHOWS COUNTY PAID SUNRISE SHRIMP FARM $250G TO MITIGATE SPREAD OF "WHITE SPOT" DISEASE FROM LANDFILL
AGREEMENT SHOWS COUNTY PAID SUNRISE SHRIMP FARM $250G TO MITIGATE SPREAD OF "WHITE SPOT" DISEASE FROM LANDFILL
(PNN) -- The County of Kaua`i paid the Kekaha shrimp farm $250,000 in Oct. 2009 to settle a claim that birds were libel to spread the "white spot" virus from the county landfill to the adjacent aquaculture project, according to a settlement agreement released by the county late last week.
The disease shut down a prior attempt at shrimp farming at that location but the landfill was never identified as the source of the virus.
The agreement between farm owners Sunrise Capitol and the county contained a stipulation that the settlement remain confidential unless the information release was prompted by a request under HRS 92F, the Uniform Information Practices Act (UIPA)- a request that was filed by community watchdogs Glenn Mickens and Ken Taylor last week.
The settlement came after "Sunrise Capital, requested a contested case hearing with the Hawaii Department of Health relating to the application filed by the county for a Solid Waste Management Permit for the Kekaha Landfill" and sought "the imposition of permit conditions on the basis of risks to Sunrise’s shrimp farm" according to the agreement.
Under the settlement the county recognized "the immense economic and community benefit that the aquacultural industry provides to the Kekaha area, the Island of Kaua`i, and the State of Hawai`i as a whole" and "the need for support toward securing agricultural and aquacultural activities on Kaua'i."
It goes on to state that:
In conjunction with the termination of the contested case hearing against county, and in consideration of Sunrise's other agreements herein, the Agreement Between Sunrise Capital, hie. and County of Kaua`i County shall provide and pay to Sunrise the sum of Two Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars And No/100 ($250,000.00) by way of reimbursement for costs and expenses incurred by Sunrise In risk mitigation measures to protect its shrimp farm from shrimp diseases.
The $250,000 is a cap to liability under the agreement meaning Sunrise cannot extract any more money from the county due to contamination from the landfill. Sunrise also had to provide the county with documentation and receipts to prove that the money was indeed spent for mitigation however no receipts were provided along with the settlement agreement released by a county council attorney, Legislative Analyst Peter Morimoto.
The agreement stipulated that:
Preliminary to the execution of this Agreement by the county and Sunrise, Sunrise has provided to the county documentation and studies related to the spread and outbreak of the white spot syndrome virus in shrimp. Sunrise has further represented to the county that Sunrise believes that the risk mitigation measures that Sunrise plans to undertake are appropriate given concerns with the expansion of the Kekaha Landfill and will help promote the security of Sunrise's shrimp aquaculture activities in Kekaha.
The settlement also calls for "an ordinance to ban commercial and nonresidential raw, uncooked shrimp from the Kekaha Landfill and landfills operated by the county concern with potential contamination."
An ordinance was passed shortly after the agreement was signed with that provision buried in an otherwise unremarkable bill dealing with the landfill and the county's Solid Waste Division under the Department of Public Works.
The agreement calls for the county to:
instruct its site controllers at the Kekaha Landfill and transfer stations to inspect and spot for incoming loads of raw, uncooked shrimp. Before disposal thereof, county site controllers will strongly urge a disposer to boil the raw, uncooked shrimp. Should a disposer decline, the site controllers will order a disposer to place the raw, uncooked shrimp in sealed containers and double bag them before it is accepted into the landfill. This process is similar to what county site controllers require for the disposal of asbestos, dead animals, and offal.
The county has however never publicized the disposal procedures or announced any "ban" on raw shrimp from the landfill.
The confidentiality section states that:
Unless disclosure is required by HRS Chapter 92F or other applicable law, the Parties agree and hereby acknowledge that the alleged facts and circumstances giving rise to any and all Claims being released herein and the fact that the Parties have agreed to forever resolve and compromise a dispute between them, and the terms and conditions of this Agreement shall, except as otherwise provided in this Paragraph 12, remain strictly confidential.
As to other information pursuant to the Mickens/Taylor request, "Council Services will be providing you with a written response within ten business days as required by 92F," according to an email from Morimoto accompanying the settlement.
The release of the document came last month after Taylor noticed a small blurb in the paperwork for a money bill, unrelated for the most part to the settlement that referred to the $250,000 "extracted" from the county using the word settlement, as reported (here here and here) by PNN over the past two weeks.
Taylor had to go to Lihu`e to retrieve the paperwork because, despite promises to the contrary by the county council, they still do not post the paperwork for agenda items on-line and rather require an in-person visit to obtain a paper copy.
(PNN) -- The County of Kaua`i paid the Kekaha shrimp farm $250,000 in Oct. 2009 to settle a claim that birds were libel to spread the "white spot" virus from the county landfill to the adjacent aquaculture project, according to a settlement agreement released by the county late last week.
The disease shut down a prior attempt at shrimp farming at that location but the landfill was never identified as the source of the virus.
The agreement between farm owners Sunrise Capitol and the county contained a stipulation that the settlement remain confidential unless the information release was prompted by a request under HRS 92F, the Uniform Information Practices Act (UIPA)- a request that was filed by community watchdogs Glenn Mickens and Ken Taylor last week.
The settlement came after "Sunrise Capital, requested a contested case hearing with the Hawaii Department of Health relating to the application filed by the county for a Solid Waste Management Permit for the Kekaha Landfill" and sought "the imposition of permit conditions on the basis of risks to Sunrise’s shrimp farm" according to the agreement.
Under the settlement the county recognized "the immense economic and community benefit that the aquacultural industry provides to the Kekaha area, the Island of Kaua`i, and the State of Hawai`i as a whole" and "the need for support toward securing agricultural and aquacultural activities on Kaua'i."
It goes on to state that:
In conjunction with the termination of the contested case hearing against county, and in consideration of Sunrise's other agreements herein, the Agreement Between Sunrise Capital, hie. and County of Kaua`i County shall provide and pay to Sunrise the sum of Two Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars And No/100 ($250,000.00) by way of reimbursement for costs and expenses incurred by Sunrise In risk mitigation measures to protect its shrimp farm from shrimp diseases.
The $250,000 is a cap to liability under the agreement meaning Sunrise cannot extract any more money from the county due to contamination from the landfill. Sunrise also had to provide the county with documentation and receipts to prove that the money was indeed spent for mitigation however no receipts were provided along with the settlement agreement released by a county council attorney, Legislative Analyst Peter Morimoto.
The agreement stipulated that:
Preliminary to the execution of this Agreement by the county and Sunrise, Sunrise has provided to the county documentation and studies related to the spread and outbreak of the white spot syndrome virus in shrimp. Sunrise has further represented to the county that Sunrise believes that the risk mitigation measures that Sunrise plans to undertake are appropriate given concerns with the expansion of the Kekaha Landfill and will help promote the security of Sunrise's shrimp aquaculture activities in Kekaha.
The settlement also calls for "an ordinance to ban commercial and nonresidential raw, uncooked shrimp from the Kekaha Landfill and landfills operated by the county concern with potential contamination."
An ordinance was passed shortly after the agreement was signed with that provision buried in an otherwise unremarkable bill dealing with the landfill and the county's Solid Waste Division under the Department of Public Works.
The agreement calls for the county to:
instruct its site controllers at the Kekaha Landfill and transfer stations to inspect and spot for incoming loads of raw, uncooked shrimp. Before disposal thereof, county site controllers will strongly urge a disposer to boil the raw, uncooked shrimp. Should a disposer decline, the site controllers will order a disposer to place the raw, uncooked shrimp in sealed containers and double bag them before it is accepted into the landfill. This process is similar to what county site controllers require for the disposal of asbestos, dead animals, and offal.
The county has however never publicized the disposal procedures or announced any "ban" on raw shrimp from the landfill.
The confidentiality section states that:
Unless disclosure is required by HRS Chapter 92F or other applicable law, the Parties agree and hereby acknowledge that the alleged facts and circumstances giving rise to any and all Claims being released herein and the fact that the Parties have agreed to forever resolve and compromise a dispute between them, and the terms and conditions of this Agreement shall, except as otherwise provided in this Paragraph 12, remain strictly confidential.
As to other information pursuant to the Mickens/Taylor request, "Council Services will be providing you with a written response within ten business days as required by 92F," according to an email from Morimoto accompanying the settlement.
The release of the document came last month after Taylor noticed a small blurb in the paperwork for a money bill, unrelated for the most part to the settlement that referred to the $250,000 "extracted" from the county using the word settlement, as reported (here here and here) by PNN over the past two weeks.
Taylor had to go to Lihu`e to retrieve the paperwork because, despite promises to the contrary by the county council, they still do not post the paperwork for agenda items on-line and rather require an in-person visit to obtain a paper copy.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
CROSS YOUR HEART AND HOPE TO LIE
CROSS YOUR HEART AND HOPE TO LIE: To no one's surprise the yes-it-happened, no-it-didn't, I-ain't-sayin', alleged $250,000 payoff to the Kekaha shrimp farm by the Solid Waste Division of the Kaua`i Department of Public Works Department will most likely fade into the perpetual darkness of the labyrinth after Council Chair Jay Furfaro refused to adhere to his own schedule for releasing information on the matter.
For those who haven't been following (here and here) the now-you-see-it. now-you-don't payment, it all started with a blurb in some paperwork for an appropriation of $417,000 in Bill #2397 that said:
The Shrimp Farm extracted approximately $250,000 to provide assurance that the white spot syndrome would be mitigated flying trash within there (sic) property and laying (sic) in their ponds that could potentially lead to the spread of the disease. The cost of mitigation beyond the settlement is questionable as well as the negative publicity that could have a direct impact on our future landfill siting efforts (emphases added).
That elicited a promise by Furfaro that he would look into it and let council watchers Ken Taylor and Glenn Mickens know what the heck that meant and whether, in fact, the county paid the shrimp farm that's adjacent to the Kekaha landfill a quarter million dollars.
He first promised to reveal the info when the bill came back on the agenda "in seven days".
But in seven days he distributed copies of three past agenda items for executive sessions that didn't mention anything about any claim or settlement. Then he promised an answer in 10 days, conveniently three days after the bill was scheduled to pass final reading and disappear forever from public purview- at least at council meetings.
And sure enough, seven days after the "10 days" promise Wednesday, when badgered by Taylor and Mickens, Furfaro said of the three days left for him to fulfill his promise to reveal what really happened, "If I don't fulfill it in three days, I don't fulfill it in three days" telling Taylor and Mickens to see staff attorney Peter Morimoto who would help him fill out a public document request.
And of course the three days have passed and guess what- shockingly (for the impossibly naive) no info has been forthcoming from Furfaro.
Mickens says he still hasn't filed anything because he hasn't quite figured out what he is asking for- executive session minutes? settlement documents? administration communications? Not filing is apparently the sign of someone who has experience with the runaround given when the council and their clerk are committed to keeping information under wraps.
The only new thing revealed last Wednesday about those executive sessions is that the stated purpose on those agenda's back in 2009- on Sept. 23rd , Oct. 7th and Oct. 14th- was "relating to the expansion of the landfill and related matters."
The Office of Information Practices (OIP) which administrates the sunshine law says that agenda items must be specific in listing the purposes for matters discussed, which quite obviously would make these agenda items insufficient were a $250,000 claim settlement been discussed.
The one clue came from Councilperson Tim Bynum who said that he was "concerned about the secrecy" at the time and that "I put it in writing and I'm trying to get permission to share (it)."
Mickens says he's perplexed and wary of council staff which he says is apparently very eager for him to file for the information. He says he still intends to file for the documents but is trying to make sure that he covers all the bases so that if there is information or are documents that are allowed to be released his request will cover them.
In the past this kind of "put it in writing" demand for requests for documents has led to stonewalling and eventual denials with lengthy appeals to OIP which have on occasion resulted in an OIP demand to release the documents and the county's refusal to do so.
Meet the new minotaur- same as the old minotaur.
For those who haven't been following (here and here) the now-you-see-it. now-you-don't payment, it all started with a blurb in some paperwork for an appropriation of $417,000 in Bill #2397 that said:
The Shrimp Farm extracted approximately $250,000 to provide assurance that the white spot syndrome would be mitigated flying trash within there (sic) property and laying (sic) in their ponds that could potentially lead to the spread of the disease. The cost of mitigation beyond the settlement is questionable as well as the negative publicity that could have a direct impact on our future landfill siting efforts (emphases added).
That elicited a promise by Furfaro that he would look into it and let council watchers Ken Taylor and Glenn Mickens know what the heck that meant and whether, in fact, the county paid the shrimp farm that's adjacent to the Kekaha landfill a quarter million dollars.
He first promised to reveal the info when the bill came back on the agenda "in seven days".
But in seven days he distributed copies of three past agenda items for executive sessions that didn't mention anything about any claim or settlement. Then he promised an answer in 10 days, conveniently three days after the bill was scheduled to pass final reading and disappear forever from public purview- at least at council meetings.
And sure enough, seven days after the "10 days" promise Wednesday, when badgered by Taylor and Mickens, Furfaro said of the three days left for him to fulfill his promise to reveal what really happened, "If I don't fulfill it in three days, I don't fulfill it in three days" telling Taylor and Mickens to see staff attorney Peter Morimoto who would help him fill out a public document request.
And of course the three days have passed and guess what- shockingly (for the impossibly naive) no info has been forthcoming from Furfaro.
Mickens says he still hasn't filed anything because he hasn't quite figured out what he is asking for- executive session minutes? settlement documents? administration communications? Not filing is apparently the sign of someone who has experience with the runaround given when the council and their clerk are committed to keeping information under wraps.
The only new thing revealed last Wednesday about those executive sessions is that the stated purpose on those agenda's back in 2009- on Sept. 23rd , Oct. 7th and Oct. 14th- was "relating to the expansion of the landfill and related matters."
The Office of Information Practices (OIP) which administrates the sunshine law says that agenda items must be specific in listing the purposes for matters discussed, which quite obviously would make these agenda items insufficient were a $250,000 claim settlement been discussed.
The one clue came from Councilperson Tim Bynum who said that he was "concerned about the secrecy" at the time and that "I put it in writing and I'm trying to get permission to share (it)."
Mickens says he's perplexed and wary of council staff which he says is apparently very eager for him to file for the information. He says he still intends to file for the documents but is trying to make sure that he covers all the bases so that if there is information or are documents that are allowed to be released his request will cover them.
In the past this kind of "put it in writing" demand for requests for documents has led to stonewalling and eventual denials with lengthy appeals to OIP which have on occasion resulted in an OIP demand to release the documents and the county's refusal to do so.
Meet the new minotaur- same as the old minotaur.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
STICKIN’ IT TO YA
STICKIN’ IT TO YA: The cover-up of the mishandling of medical waste in Honolulu that was exposed by the flood that released all sorts of solid waste into the ocean from the Waimanalo Gulch Landfill is only getting worse, according to Adrienne LaFrance’s latest article in Civil Beat today.
Though officials continue to claim that all procedures were properly followed for making the waste harmless LaFrance has been getting the runaround from them when she asks them to show that it’s true.
Today she writes:
"Just trying to ascertain whatever facts we can collate together," (Director of the Health Department's, Safe Drinking Water Branch Steve) Yamada said. "There's a pretty firm idea what kinds of violations did occur, but obviously to make a case, you have to have all the information. The landfill was required to perform (water quality) tests, and a lot of those test results have yet to be submitted."
Officials still can't say exactly what was in the trash-filled stormwater that flooded from the landfill into the Pacific Ocean.
"At this point, that's the main crux of the tests we're waiting for," Yamada said.
Residents know well that some of the garbage was medical waste because they helped remove it from their neighborhood beaches and saw it on TV news. Officials were quick to explain that the waste was non-infectious because only treated medical waste is allowed in the landfill. Department of Health officials said they had documents from the landfill proving the waste had been sanitized.
But although LaFrance details the lack of documents and information from the state, the landfill operator Waste Management or the companies that sanitize the waste, it’s obvious from visual inspection that at least two violations of federal standards for handling of medical waste occurred.
As we wrote Tuesday pictures of the collected waste include intact vials of blood and urine which, according to previous statements had only been autoclaved when proper procedure involved either chemical sterilization or incineration.
But even worse is what nurses addressing a Honolulu City Council meeting described- something that indicates that the problem with medical waste in Honolulu may go well beyond just the post generation handling of infectious materials.
Many of the pictures inexplicably show syringes with the needles still attached to them. As any medical professional- as a matter of fact as anyone who works in a medical facility, including housekeeping and even trash collection personnel- knows, needles are required to be cut off syringes immediately after use.
Wherever needles are used special boxes are required to be provided with cutting devices that remove the needles from syringes or intravenous tubing and deposit them in a closed box.
What exactly does this say for the medical procedures followed in some O`ahu medical facilities that this most basic handling of needles isn’t followed?
The big question for officials is whether they are independently investigating the trail of waste back to, not just the waste companies but to the facilities that generated it themselves.
The release of waste into the ocean is bad enough. The release of apparently mishandled medical waste is worse.
The incident should lead minimally to a review of the system of recordkeeping which LaFrance's piece indicates is severely lacking.
Though the Department of Health claims it’s administrative rules assure medical waste is handled “in accordance with U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommendations, Environmental Protection Agency guidelines, U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards and the nonprofit Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute's waste management guidelines” that quite obviously is not the case, not just “post production” but at the very source.
Though officials continue to claim that all procedures were properly followed for making the waste harmless LaFrance has been getting the runaround from them when she asks them to show that it’s true.
Today she writes:
"Just trying to ascertain whatever facts we can collate together," (Director of the Health Department's, Safe Drinking Water Branch Steve) Yamada said. "There's a pretty firm idea what kinds of violations did occur, but obviously to make a case, you have to have all the information. The landfill was required to perform (water quality) tests, and a lot of those test results have yet to be submitted."
Officials still can't say exactly what was in the trash-filled stormwater that flooded from the landfill into the Pacific Ocean.
"At this point, that's the main crux of the tests we're waiting for," Yamada said.
Residents know well that some of the garbage was medical waste because they helped remove it from their neighborhood beaches and saw it on TV news. Officials were quick to explain that the waste was non-infectious because only treated medical waste is allowed in the landfill. Department of Health officials said they had documents from the landfill proving the waste had been sanitized.
But although LaFrance details the lack of documents and information from the state, the landfill operator Waste Management or the companies that sanitize the waste, it’s obvious from visual inspection that at least two violations of federal standards for handling of medical waste occurred.
As we wrote Tuesday pictures of the collected waste include intact vials of blood and urine which, according to previous statements had only been autoclaved when proper procedure involved either chemical sterilization or incineration.
But even worse is what nurses addressing a Honolulu City Council meeting described- something that indicates that the problem with medical waste in Honolulu may go well beyond just the post generation handling of infectious materials.
Many of the pictures inexplicably show syringes with the needles still attached to them. As any medical professional- as a matter of fact as anyone who works in a medical facility, including housekeeping and even trash collection personnel- knows, needles are required to be cut off syringes immediately after use.
Wherever needles are used special boxes are required to be provided with cutting devices that remove the needles from syringes or intravenous tubing and deposit them in a closed box.
What exactly does this say for the medical procedures followed in some O`ahu medical facilities that this most basic handling of needles isn’t followed?
The big question for officials is whether they are independently investigating the trail of waste back to, not just the waste companies but to the facilities that generated it themselves.
The release of waste into the ocean is bad enough. The release of apparently mishandled medical waste is worse.
The incident should lead minimally to a review of the system of recordkeeping which LaFrance's piece indicates is severely lacking.
Though the Department of Health claims it’s administrative rules assure medical waste is handled “in accordance with U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommendations, Environmental Protection Agency guidelines, U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards and the nonprofit Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute's waste management guidelines” that quite obviously is not the case, not just “post production” but at the very source.
Friday, June 25, 2010
WHERE NEVER IS HEARD A DISCOURAGING WORD
WHERE NEVER IS HEARD A DISCOURAGING WORD: When we reported on April 7 that Mayor Bernard Carvalho said he would announce the siting of the new landfill by April 15th according to some- or by “the end of the month” according to the county’s spokesperson- we weren’t too surprised when the deadline came and went without comment by the administration.
It’s been impossible to find out what’s happening in hizzonah’s super-secret world since apparently his selection of the Kalaheo “Umi” site- one that sits smack in the middle of the coffee plantation- was received dead-on-arrival.
We reported that, to the surprise of many, a large number of people in Kekaha including prominent community leaders were actually, if not in favor of, at least resigned to, having the “new” site nearby the current one.
That’s what makes Carvalho’s statements last night on PBS’ Island Insights regarding the new siting even more perplexing and eyebrow raising than they would normally be.
After claiming that the Umi site was, so to speak, dumped in his lap when he came into office- an odd contention considering he made the announcement and took credit for making the long delayed decision at the time- he told of a new super-secret and faceless cabal that is re-reviewing the options.
“We collectively brought a whole team together to see how we’re going to do this” he told host Dan Boylan who asked a question from “Carol on the Westside” regarding when he would make a decision.
Who this “team” consists of is unknown but as anyone who has followed Carvalho’s tenure in county government knows, forming secret decision-making committees has been his modus operandi since his days as Community Assistance Director when he did the same for a few projects including the then nescient bike path.
But there were surprises a plenty from Carvalho last night.
He also said that the “team” was now talking about siting not just a landfill but what he called a “resource recovery park”.
Though he didn’t really explain it fully except to say it would include “education... composting (and) greenwaste”- features of the current and proposed landfills all along- it is presumed that it would include the materials recovery facility (MRF).
In the county’s typical cart-before-the-horse “fire, ready, aim” fashion the MRF will not be built before the new curbside recycling program goes into effect in September leaving the carefully separated recyclables without a destination for sorting, evoking visions of Honolulu’s long delayed trash-shipping bundles stacked up somewhere on Kaua`i awaiting disposition.
And, showing that we’re really no closer to a decision than we were in April- or even in April of 2008 when Mayor Bryan Baptiste was still alive- he announced two things.
First was that “what we really need is a willing land owner (and) a willing community”- something that has actually plagued the new landfill siting process for around two decades showing we’re no closer than we were in the ’90’s.
Then came the stunner. Despite the willingness of Kekaha to accept the new site- as long as the number of dollars contributed to the “community benefit program” currently designed to bribe them into not complaining over the existing landfill was increased- it may not get sited there afterall... despite what Carvalho said to many last April.
He told Boylan that he was seeking “a centrally located area hopefully where this park concept can benefit the island”.
Those who have followed the process lo these many years will remember that the only “centrally located” site designated in past consultant studies is in Kapaia where the decision to site it there in the 90’s blew up in Mayor Maryanne Kusaka’s face when the nearby Hanama`ulu resident claimed “environmental discrimination” based on the then-new power plant also sited in Kapaia plus the predominantly Filipino ethnic makeup of the town.
The upshot seems to be that since Carvalho apparently is facing no serious opposition to reelection this November the massive solid waste problems that have plagued the island since, well, seemingly forever, are now back on the back burner- a place they will remain for, most likely, another four years while we build Mt. Kekaha to the sky, probably spending the time begging the state Department of Health for another “expansion”.
Oh- and Carvalho also said he now favors reviving the interisland ferry concept but this time with “resonating positive energy- forget the negative energy”, describing his vision of a united island community with everyone dancing happily on the conga line to automotive invasion of our roads parks and facilities.
Keep dreamin’- We got ya positive energy right hea, B’nard.
It’s been impossible to find out what’s happening in hizzonah’s super-secret world since apparently his selection of the Kalaheo “Umi” site- one that sits smack in the middle of the coffee plantation- was received dead-on-arrival.
We reported that, to the surprise of many, a large number of people in Kekaha including prominent community leaders were actually, if not in favor of, at least resigned to, having the “new” site nearby the current one.
That’s what makes Carvalho’s statements last night on PBS’ Island Insights regarding the new siting even more perplexing and eyebrow raising than they would normally be.
After claiming that the Umi site was, so to speak, dumped in his lap when he came into office- an odd contention considering he made the announcement and took credit for making the long delayed decision at the time- he told of a new super-secret and faceless cabal that is re-reviewing the options.
“We collectively brought a whole team together to see how we’re going to do this” he told host Dan Boylan who asked a question from “Carol on the Westside” regarding when he would make a decision.
Who this “team” consists of is unknown but as anyone who has followed Carvalho’s tenure in county government knows, forming secret decision-making committees has been his modus operandi since his days as Community Assistance Director when he did the same for a few projects including the then nescient bike path.
But there were surprises a plenty from Carvalho last night.
He also said that the “team” was now talking about siting not just a landfill but what he called a “resource recovery park”.
Though he didn’t really explain it fully except to say it would include “education... composting (and) greenwaste”- features of the current and proposed landfills all along- it is presumed that it would include the materials recovery facility (MRF).
In the county’s typical cart-before-the-horse “fire, ready, aim” fashion the MRF will not be built before the new curbside recycling program goes into effect in September leaving the carefully separated recyclables without a destination for sorting, evoking visions of Honolulu’s long delayed trash-shipping bundles stacked up somewhere on Kaua`i awaiting disposition.
And, showing that we’re really no closer to a decision than we were in April- or even in April of 2008 when Mayor Bryan Baptiste was still alive- he announced two things.
First was that “what we really need is a willing land owner (and) a willing community”- something that has actually plagued the new landfill siting process for around two decades showing we’re no closer than we were in the ’90’s.
Then came the stunner. Despite the willingness of Kekaha to accept the new site- as long as the number of dollars contributed to the “community benefit program” currently designed to bribe them into not complaining over the existing landfill was increased- it may not get sited there afterall... despite what Carvalho said to many last April.
He told Boylan that he was seeking “a centrally located area hopefully where this park concept can benefit the island”.
Those who have followed the process lo these many years will remember that the only “centrally located” site designated in past consultant studies is in Kapaia where the decision to site it there in the 90’s blew up in Mayor Maryanne Kusaka’s face when the nearby Hanama`ulu resident claimed “environmental discrimination” based on the then-new power plant also sited in Kapaia plus the predominantly Filipino ethnic makeup of the town.
The upshot seems to be that since Carvalho apparently is facing no serious opposition to reelection this November the massive solid waste problems that have plagued the island since, well, seemingly forever, are now back on the back burner- a place they will remain for, most likely, another four years while we build Mt. Kekaha to the sky, probably spending the time begging the state Department of Health for another “expansion”.
Oh- and Carvalho also said he now favors reviving the interisland ferry concept but this time with “resonating positive energy- forget the negative energy”, describing his vision of a united island community with everyone dancing happily on the conga line to automotive invasion of our roads parks and facilities.
Keep dreamin’- We got ya positive energy right hea, B’nard.
Monday, April 19, 2010
BIN THERE, DUNCE THAT
BIN THERE, DUNCE THAT: The news that the mayor’s proposed budget contains a provision to start charging for curbside trash collection in 2012 is certain to cause the knee-jerked feet of the “I don’t want to pay for the services I demand” crowd to start up their usual dance of the demented dimwits.
But for anyone who’s paid attention to the last few years of council wrangling over the final R.W. Beck report’s solid waste plan it’s yet another “can’t anyone here play this game” moment from Bernard the Big Babooze’s “ready, fire, aim” compatriots.
Although much to it’s discredit it ain’t no “Zero Waste” study, the final Beck report did manage to include at least one Zero Waste concept on recycling- one that was changed after almost two years of recent community and council criticism that spurred the consultants to go back and recommend a curbside recycling and central sorting process for waste stream reduction.
After endless hours the final report called for the county to first build what’s called a MERF – a materials recycling facility- and then implement a curbside recycling program with separate bins for all recyclables.
Then and only then- once citizens are given the opportunity to easily reduce their and the county’s waste stream- was a plan to implement a fee system for curbside trash pickup to be started.
But one of the council’s recommendations was that the fees should be collected only on a second bin each week in order to incentivize recycling.
The savings in this system are well established. Not only is the trash stream greatly diminished due to the decreased need for landfilling- including all the ancillary operations such as transportation- but the process yields a commodity in the recycled materials.
It’s call a "integrated” process for a reason- each element is based on the other with each one dependant on doing it in the right order- first the facility, then the recyclables collection, then the fees.
But the ever-incompetent Department of Public Works dunderheads first went out and bought a half a million dollars worth of recycling bins and set up a “pilot project” in Lihu`e with no place to bring the collected recyclables. Then instead of using the process to give people a cash reason to recycle they are not only going to charge everyone for the first bin but are going to further remove it from the users’ consciousness by adding it onto the real property tax of the property owners.
While a MERF and island wide curbside recycling is on the horizon they surely won’t be ready by the time the fees kick in.
But why should this time be any different than the others in a series of ignored and un-acted-upon Beck reports we’ve paid for over and over for the past decade or so?
But for anyone who’s paid attention to the last few years of council wrangling over the final R.W. Beck report’s solid waste plan it’s yet another “can’t anyone here play this game” moment from Bernard the Big Babooze’s “ready, fire, aim” compatriots.
Although much to it’s discredit it ain’t no “Zero Waste” study, the final Beck report did manage to include at least one Zero Waste concept on recycling- one that was changed after almost two years of recent community and council criticism that spurred the consultants to go back and recommend a curbside recycling and central sorting process for waste stream reduction.
After endless hours the final report called for the county to first build what’s called a MERF – a materials recycling facility- and then implement a curbside recycling program with separate bins for all recyclables.
Then and only then- once citizens are given the opportunity to easily reduce their and the county’s waste stream- was a plan to implement a fee system for curbside trash pickup to be started.
But one of the council’s recommendations was that the fees should be collected only on a second bin each week in order to incentivize recycling.
The savings in this system are well established. Not only is the trash stream greatly diminished due to the decreased need for landfilling- including all the ancillary operations such as transportation- but the process yields a commodity in the recycled materials.
It’s call a "integrated” process for a reason- each element is based on the other with each one dependant on doing it in the right order- first the facility, then the recyclables collection, then the fees.
But the ever-incompetent Department of Public Works dunderheads first went out and bought a half a million dollars worth of recycling bins and set up a “pilot project” in Lihu`e with no place to bring the collected recyclables. Then instead of using the process to give people a cash reason to recycle they are not only going to charge everyone for the first bin but are going to further remove it from the users’ consciousness by adding it onto the real property tax of the property owners.
While a MERF and island wide curbside recycling is on the horizon they surely won’t be ready by the time the fees kick in.
But why should this time be any different than the others in a series of ignored and un-acted-upon Beck reports we’ve paid for over and over for the past decade or so?
Monday, December 21, 2009
INDECISIVE DREAMIN’
INDECISIVE DREAMIN’: We’re not skilled in dream interpretation but you don’t have to be to figure out the one we had last night right after watching the administration and their consultants’ presentation to the council on the “proposed” new dump location in the middle of the island’s most productive ag land in Kalaheo.
In it, we were having coffee with Mayor Bernard Carvalho and, as he blathered on about what a great mayor he was and how, as he said in his last campaign, “it’s all about leadership”, we stopped hearing him speak and suddenly focused on his moving mouth.
And slowly beyond the gums, over the teeth and through the tonsils and adenoids there it was- the slowly emerging image of Beth Tokioka spinning a silk purse out of a sows ear.
OK not really... but it coulda happened.
For those who haven’t watched the meeting yet, what stood out was the amazing backtracking and finally actual denial- done through the mouth of County Engineer Donald Fujimoto- that the “Umi” site had actually been “selected” by the mayor.
This bit of convoluted 180 could only have come from Tokioka in a desperate attempt to quell the outrage that’s built since Carvalho put his stamp of approval on his task force’s site selection, even touting how he had “done it” where other mayors had failed.
Now that the shibai has hit the fan everyone is running for cover, including Bernard who apparently just “supported the recommendation of his task force” but wasn’t really “selecting” anything... in fact. all the other potential sites are still in play.
That came after, upon council questioning, the consultant admitted that
1) They didn’t really know what was going to be effected or usurped at each potential site due to existing uses- all they did was check the tax maps and zoning.
2) No one even asked the land owners what the availability of their property was and
3) The fact that coffee was growing on the Kalaheo site was not part of the information considered in the “scoring” of each site in their supposed “double-blind” site selection process, one purportedly used to avoid any “NIMBY”- “not in my backyard”- conclusions.
But that “double blind” methodology was a complete joke according to one of the participants we spoke to who said that the members would have had to be total idiots to not know what they were scoring and in fact all of them scored the site(s) in the areas they represented the lowest.
In addition of course, as we could have predicted, their report began with the “fact” that no matter how much reuse, recycling and “transshipment” we will need a new landfill.
But as usual the “why” was conveniently skipped.
So, to get out the old baseball bat and deceased equine, they now have moved from totally ignoring the option of shipping out all the crap we ship in, to acknowledging the possibility but claiming they’ve invented some new kind of opala that can’t be “transshipped” to one of those readily available mainland dumps that are just begging for our discards.
In doing so they’ve moved from “why” we can’t ship it out- especially now that “cost” is not a good answer since Honolulu is doing it for less than it’s costing us per ton now- to “what” exactly is that substance that can’t be shipped out?
Watching the session one can’t help but do what councilmembers did- see a string of those little dollar signs with wings flying away as they listed all the hidden costs of just siting a new landfill, much less opening, running and closing one.
Yet for all the council’s concerns, none of them questioned the consultant’s brief “because I said so” premise for why we need a new dump at all, essentially saying that even with a good zero waste, Max-3R program the shipment of the last few drops to the mainland is impossible for some unstated reason and we still need to dig a hole somewhere and bury all the crap we bring in.
If you buy that, well, we have a bike path to sell ya.
In it, we were having coffee with Mayor Bernard Carvalho and, as he blathered on about what a great mayor he was and how, as he said in his last campaign, “it’s all about leadership”, we stopped hearing him speak and suddenly focused on his moving mouth.
And slowly beyond the gums, over the teeth and through the tonsils and adenoids there it was- the slowly emerging image of Beth Tokioka spinning a silk purse out of a sows ear.
OK not really... but it coulda happened.
For those who haven’t watched the meeting yet, what stood out was the amazing backtracking and finally actual denial- done through the mouth of County Engineer Donald Fujimoto- that the “Umi” site had actually been “selected” by the mayor.
This bit of convoluted 180 could only have come from Tokioka in a desperate attempt to quell the outrage that’s built since Carvalho put his stamp of approval on his task force’s site selection, even touting how he had “done it” where other mayors had failed.
Now that the shibai has hit the fan everyone is running for cover, including Bernard who apparently just “supported the recommendation of his task force” but wasn’t really “selecting” anything... in fact. all the other potential sites are still in play.
That came after, upon council questioning, the consultant admitted that
1) They didn’t really know what was going to be effected or usurped at each potential site due to existing uses- all they did was check the tax maps and zoning.
2) No one even asked the land owners what the availability of their property was and
3) The fact that coffee was growing on the Kalaheo site was not part of the information considered in the “scoring” of each site in their supposed “double-blind” site selection process, one purportedly used to avoid any “NIMBY”- “not in my backyard”- conclusions.
But that “double blind” methodology was a complete joke according to one of the participants we spoke to who said that the members would have had to be total idiots to not know what they were scoring and in fact all of them scored the site(s) in the areas they represented the lowest.
In addition of course, as we could have predicted, their report began with the “fact” that no matter how much reuse, recycling and “transshipment” we will need a new landfill.
But as usual the “why” was conveniently skipped.
So, to get out the old baseball bat and deceased equine, they now have moved from totally ignoring the option of shipping out all the crap we ship in, to acknowledging the possibility but claiming they’ve invented some new kind of opala that can’t be “transshipped” to one of those readily available mainland dumps that are just begging for our discards.
In doing so they’ve moved from “why” we can’t ship it out- especially now that “cost” is not a good answer since Honolulu is doing it for less than it’s costing us per ton now- to “what” exactly is that substance that can’t be shipped out?
Watching the session one can’t help but do what councilmembers did- see a string of those little dollar signs with wings flying away as they listed all the hidden costs of just siting a new landfill, much less opening, running and closing one.
Yet for all the council’s concerns, none of them questioned the consultant’s brief “because I said so” premise for why we need a new dump at all, essentially saying that even with a good zero waste, Max-3R program the shipment of the last few drops to the mainland is impossible for some unstated reason and we still need to dig a hole somewhere and bury all the crap we bring in.
If you buy that, well, we have a bike path to sell ya.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
ROOTING OUT THE RUBBISH
ROOTING OUT THE RUBBISH: Although the article in today’s local paper announcing that Mayor Bernard Carvalho will be supporting- and presumably signing- the bill banning plastic grocery bags set for council approval next Wednesday, it doesn’t mention what anyone following the bill knows... that this is a major flip flop for hizzonah.
But anyone who thinks that this is some kind of decision resulting from a studied change of heart borne of a concern over the environmental degradation caused by these scurrilous sacks either isn’t paying attention or is on the mayor’s payroll.
Reporter Michael Levine, who penned today’s story, can be excused if he missed Coco Zickos’ story last May before the bill was introduced where she wrote
(A)t Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr.’s office, the administration says it remains concerned about the environment but seems to favor incentivizing the behavior as opposed to banning the sale of plastic bags.
“The mayor has no immediate plans to introduce legislation banning plastic bags, however, efforts like that of some Kaua`i retail outlets to incentivize the use of reusable grocery bags via discounts or rebates is a great first step in reducing the number of plastic bags on Kaua`i,” said Beth Tokioka, the mayor’s executive assistant, in an e-mail Wednesday.
Carvalho has publicly remained silent on his intentions, although PNN has heard from two different advocates for the bill who were told by him that he opposed the bill and did not intend to sign it.
The “letter” to the council that Levine cited came not in a press release from county spokesperson Mary Daubert but in an email from Carvalho’s mouthpiece and chief political advisor Tokioka who distributed the announcement of the Mayor’s new stance yesterday afternoon in a "reply all" response to a widely distributed email containing an article from local activist Ken Taylor.
The letter was actually a copy of “testimony” sent to the council and doesn’t mention the Carvalho’s former apparent opposition to the ban nor does it of course offer an explanation or any of Carvalho’s thinking on why he changed his mind at the last minute- or more precisely, in a way, after the last minute since the council was poised to pass the bill last Wednesday until testimony from the Chamber of Commerce and the Retail Merchants of Hawai`i opposing the bill caused a deferral for two weeks in order to “consider” the testimony from potential big campaign contributors.
As an aside, we’ve got to say that in 30 years of council watching we’ve never seen any council defer a bill just prior to “second reading” to consider the testimony from an individual community member asking them to reconsider a vote they were about to take.
Well, so what? Well, let us fill in Carvalho’s assessment of his - or should we say Tokioka’s- options... politically that is.
The delay was simply a “consideration” for the all powerful CofC, but not because anyone on the council was going to be changing their mind and voting against the bill two weeks hence.
To do so would be political suicide, as has become apparent during the month or so the bill has been before the council with virtually no testimony opposing it and an island-wide- or more precisely world wide- movement to end the era of plastic grocery bags.
Indeed, as they say, the whole world is watching due to the huge plastic bag patch in the Pacific Ocean, right on our doorstep.
At one point Tokioka- er, Carvalho- must have thought he could garner the votes to sustain a veto. But when it became apparent that all six councilmembers hearing the bill- with Derek “Mr. Big Save” Kawakami recusing himself- were going to vote for the bill Tokioka rightly saw the potential political fallout in November of 2010 and the opportunity that an overridden veto would present to Carvalho’s opponents.
On Kaua`i where people generally want to see the mayor and council working together to address issues, any veto would be a blot on the record of a mayor. Indeed there hasn’t been one that we can recall in the last decade or so.
And an override would stick out like a sore thumb and be not just a meaningless gesture but a meaningful one to his detractors.
Carvalho will certainly be challenged next year and needs to make sure he doesn’t hand any potential opponents- especially ones with superior environmental credentials and endorsements- an issue that would resonate with the powerful environmental protection constituency.
He also can’t afford to be seen as favoring the Chamber of Commerce position among the same constituency that would see it as kow-towing to the fat cats that will no doubt fill his campaign coffers. He can’t hide many of his contributions this time like he did last election when he used the sudden election- and his lack of any past contributions- as well as the laws allowing late filing to delay revealing many of his contributors until after the election was over.
While some may be duped into thinking that this was something that came from a concern for environment on Carvalho’s part they would do well to look at the politics involved and figure out what the real reason is for Carvalho’s 180.
But anyone who thinks that this is some kind of decision resulting from a studied change of heart borne of a concern over the environmental degradation caused by these scurrilous sacks either isn’t paying attention or is on the mayor’s payroll.
Reporter Michael Levine, who penned today’s story, can be excused if he missed Coco Zickos’ story last May before the bill was introduced where she wrote
(A)t Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr.’s office, the administration says it remains concerned about the environment but seems to favor incentivizing the behavior as opposed to banning the sale of plastic bags.
“The mayor has no immediate plans to introduce legislation banning plastic bags, however, efforts like that of some Kaua`i retail outlets to incentivize the use of reusable grocery bags via discounts or rebates is a great first step in reducing the number of plastic bags on Kaua`i,” said Beth Tokioka, the mayor’s executive assistant, in an e-mail Wednesday.
Carvalho has publicly remained silent on his intentions, although PNN has heard from two different advocates for the bill who were told by him that he opposed the bill and did not intend to sign it.
The “letter” to the council that Levine cited came not in a press release from county spokesperson Mary Daubert but in an email from Carvalho’s mouthpiece and chief political advisor Tokioka who distributed the announcement of the Mayor’s new stance yesterday afternoon in a "reply all" response to a widely distributed email containing an article from local activist Ken Taylor.
The letter was actually a copy of “testimony” sent to the council and doesn’t mention the Carvalho’s former apparent opposition to the ban nor does it of course offer an explanation or any of Carvalho’s thinking on why he changed his mind at the last minute- or more precisely, in a way, after the last minute since the council was poised to pass the bill last Wednesday until testimony from the Chamber of Commerce and the Retail Merchants of Hawai`i opposing the bill caused a deferral for two weeks in order to “consider” the testimony from potential big campaign contributors.
As an aside, we’ve got to say that in 30 years of council watching we’ve never seen any council defer a bill just prior to “second reading” to consider the testimony from an individual community member asking them to reconsider a vote they were about to take.
Well, so what? Well, let us fill in Carvalho’s assessment of his - or should we say Tokioka’s- options... politically that is.
The delay was simply a “consideration” for the all powerful CofC, but not because anyone on the council was going to be changing their mind and voting against the bill two weeks hence.
To do so would be political suicide, as has become apparent during the month or so the bill has been before the council with virtually no testimony opposing it and an island-wide- or more precisely world wide- movement to end the era of plastic grocery bags.
Indeed, as they say, the whole world is watching due to the huge plastic bag patch in the Pacific Ocean, right on our doorstep.
At one point Tokioka- er, Carvalho- must have thought he could garner the votes to sustain a veto. But when it became apparent that all six councilmembers hearing the bill- with Derek “Mr. Big Save” Kawakami recusing himself- were going to vote for the bill Tokioka rightly saw the potential political fallout in November of 2010 and the opportunity that an overridden veto would present to Carvalho’s opponents.
On Kaua`i where people generally want to see the mayor and council working together to address issues, any veto would be a blot on the record of a mayor. Indeed there hasn’t been one that we can recall in the last decade or so.
And an override would stick out like a sore thumb and be not just a meaningless gesture but a meaningful one to his detractors.
Carvalho will certainly be challenged next year and needs to make sure he doesn’t hand any potential opponents- especially ones with superior environmental credentials and endorsements- an issue that would resonate with the powerful environmental protection constituency.
He also can’t afford to be seen as favoring the Chamber of Commerce position among the same constituency that would see it as kow-towing to the fat cats that will no doubt fill his campaign coffers. He can’t hide many of his contributions this time like he did last election when he used the sudden election- and his lack of any past contributions- as well as the laws allowing late filing to delay revealing many of his contributors until after the election was over.
While some may be duped into thinking that this was something that came from a concern for environment on Carvalho’s part they would do well to look at the politics involved and figure out what the real reason is for Carvalho’s 180.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
THE AXE AIN’T ALL THAT’S TOO DULL
THE AXE AIN’T ALL THAT’S TOO DULL: Don’t you just love the tone deaf way the county does things. Last week a press release announced that:
The latest edition of the “Kaua`i Recycling Guide” is now available free of charge at all public libraries, HI-5 bottle redemption centers, Kaua`i Resource Center, and the mayor’s office.
Individuals and groups can also contact the County Recycling Office for copies of the recycling guide.
Now the next thing you would expect to read is where to get this valuable information on line- after all, we are talking about keeping trash out of the landfill.
But such intuitive leaps of thought are something Kaua`i county apparently needs to hire a consultant to figure out. A search of the county web site shows no such booklet exists. Instead, the release continues:
“I encourage everyone to pick up a free copy of the Kaua`i Recycling Guide for comprehensive information on the 3Rs and composting,” said Mayor Bernard Carvalho, Jr. “If we all do our part to minimize waste and maximize resource recovery, it will help preserve landfill space and conserve our natural resources and energy.”...
The 22-page recycling guide highlights all local waste diversion opportunities with detailed information on how to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost through a variety of county programs as well as other options.
So in order to “minimize waste and maximize resource recovery, (and) help preserve landfill space and conserve our natural resources and energy” we’re killing who knows how many trees and spending who knows how many taxpayer bucks to print up a bunch of presumably quality 22 page brochures (if it’s on plain white paper we’ll eat one) that people will pick up and possibly read before throwing it in the rubbish where it will no doubt become grist for the landfill.
And if people do keep them we can just imagine conversations that will no doubt ensue.
“Honey, can we recycle this piece of crap we don’t need or want anymore”
“I don’t know, check that recycling guide we picked up six months ago”
“Where is it”
“Oh- It must be here somewhere in this mess- don’t you have it”
“Oh I thought you had it”
“I think we recycled it”
The release doesn’t not say whether the brochures themselves are even recyclable- much less made from recycled materials- since on Kaua`i there actually are paper goods that are not recyclable... along with all sorts of other things you’d normally be able to recycle anywhere else like all plastics 1-7 and steel cans... which is the reason we need such a pamphlet so people will know what recyclables they can throw in the landfill.
There’s a hole in Kekaha dear Liza dear Liza
Can’t anyone here play this game?
The latest edition of the “Kaua`i Recycling Guide” is now available free of charge at all public libraries, HI-5 bottle redemption centers, Kaua`i Resource Center, and the mayor’s office.
Individuals and groups can also contact the County Recycling Office for copies of the recycling guide.
Now the next thing you would expect to read is where to get this valuable information on line- after all, we are talking about keeping trash out of the landfill.
But such intuitive leaps of thought are something Kaua`i county apparently needs to hire a consultant to figure out. A search of the county web site shows no such booklet exists. Instead, the release continues:
“I encourage everyone to pick up a free copy of the Kaua`i Recycling Guide for comprehensive information on the 3Rs and composting,” said Mayor Bernard Carvalho, Jr. “If we all do our part to minimize waste and maximize resource recovery, it will help preserve landfill space and conserve our natural resources and energy.”...
The 22-page recycling guide highlights all local waste diversion opportunities with detailed information on how to reduce, reuse, recycle, and compost through a variety of county programs as well as other options.
So in order to “minimize waste and maximize resource recovery, (and) help preserve landfill space and conserve our natural resources and energy” we’re killing who knows how many trees and spending who knows how many taxpayer bucks to print up a bunch of presumably quality 22 page brochures (if it’s on plain white paper we’ll eat one) that people will pick up and possibly read before throwing it in the rubbish where it will no doubt become grist for the landfill.
And if people do keep them we can just imagine conversations that will no doubt ensue.
“Honey, can we recycle this piece of crap we don’t need or want anymore”
“I don’t know, check that recycling guide we picked up six months ago”
“Where is it”
“Oh- It must be here somewhere in this mess- don’t you have it”
“Oh I thought you had it”
“I think we recycled it”
The release doesn’t not say whether the brochures themselves are even recyclable- much less made from recycled materials- since on Kaua`i there actually are paper goods that are not recyclable... along with all sorts of other things you’d normally be able to recycle anywhere else like all plastics 1-7 and steel cans... which is the reason we need such a pamphlet so people will know what recyclables they can throw in the landfill.
There’s a hole in Kekaha dear Liza dear Liza
Can’t anyone here play this game?
Monday, August 17, 2009
BAG O’ CATS
BAG O’ CATS: The gushing over Sunday’s piece by Mayor Bernard Carvalho’s “Five magic words: I don’t need a bag” commentary in the local newspaper- one we suspect was ghost-written by his top aide and mouthpiece Beth Tokioka- flooded cyberspace yesterday.
“Ditto!!” wrote one environmental activist. “To all of us, we ARE making a difference and this mayor is an example of together, we can!! I'm bowled over!!”
Another couldn’t contain herself saying “OMG thank you thank you thank you thank you and thank you!”.
And of course refusing those nasty and often deadly non-biodegradables floating petro-products is something anyone with a cloth bag can and should do as Diana LaBedz letter today reiterates.
But for the politically astute it’s what Carvalho didn’t say that sticks out like a shearwater’s plastic-distended belly- a promise to support and sign the bill set for public hearing on Wednesday that would ban stores from distributing those nasty pollutants.
As a matter of fact for the more cynical among us it might seem like Carvalho is indeed saying that the real solution is not in the legislation introduced by Tim Bynum and Lani Kawahara but solely in people refusing to accept them and instead bringing their own bags.
Yeah- that’ll work... it’s worked so well that despite years of campaigns by groups like LaBenz’s Surfrider Foundation the bags are more ubiquitous and causing more destruction than ever.
Gee, it couldn’t be because businesses who filled Carvalho’s campaign coffers last November are howling over the prospect of spending a few cents more on the biodegradable bags that are now or soon to be required on Maui, in San Francisco and in any growing number of jurisdictions across the country.
The suspicions are well founded. Carvalho recently has been accused of trying to sabotage the curbside recycling part of the county’s solid waste reform efforts using the county’s standard “fire, ready, aim” operating procedure to institute a “pilot” curbside recycling program in Lihu`e despite the fact that there is no materials recovery facility or MRF yet to accommodate the separation of those collected recyclables.
Why? Well that’s because, according to the administrations solid waste coordinator Troy Tanegawa, purchasing the bins with already appropriated monies was “the low hanging fruit” of recycling efforts.
Of course the crop was nowhere near ripe but politically it will provide a good sounding half truth during November 2010 campaign when Carvalho claims he “instituted curbside recycling”.
While the naive and easily duped might at best see it as the usual county incompetence others see it as a cynical attempt to make sure the pilot program fails so the county can build it’s long-desired “silver bullet” incinerator to burn all our rubbish (supposedly for energy) and in addition build a new landfill- two insanities that result from their refusal to hire a “zero waste” consultant and rather go with good old boy’s favorite consultants R.W. Beck that has been behind the failure to properly deal with solid waste on the island for over 20 years now.
We- and Zero Waste Kauai- been proponents of a full curbside recycling preceded by the construction of a MRF, a “hard to recycle good” facility, composting of green waste and other trash stream reduction measures.
We’ve even suggested shipping the small amount of waste that’s left (some say as low as 10% or less although 20-25% is commonly cited) off island where mainland landfills are fighting over who will get Honolulu’s waste.
We’ve even been proponents of a “ship it in, ship it out” law requiring that larger businesses whose products generate huge amounts of waste to deal with the aftermath.
While some say it’s “unethical” to foist our opala on others they forget that we are in a unique situation where all but our green waste is already shipped in and shipping that stuff out is only the fulfillment of the ecosystem we’ve created.
And, despite 15 years of asking, Beck has never done a full cost analysis of shipping trash including all the secondary and even tertiary expenses of our current land filling adventures although this time they have a brief dismissive paragraph in their latest report.
We can “do” zero waste here- as a matter of fact we’re uniquely situated and circumstanced to make it work. But that would take some vision and ability to grasp a changing paradigm for dealing with solid waste- a can of worms that our politically motivated elected officials have kicked down the road for decades.
Watch out for the Trojan Horse- let the mayor know that telling people to “just say no” is an ineffective substitute for banning the non-biodegradable plastic bags entirely by law.
You can do so at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday (8/19) in the council chambers at the historic county building when bill 2321 is up for pubic hearing . If you can’t make it you can email testimony to counciltestimony@kauai.gov ... and make sure you email a copy to hizzonnah and let him know you expect him to support and sign the bill when it lands on his desk.
“Ditto!!” wrote one environmental activist. “To all of us, we ARE making a difference and this mayor is an example of together, we can!! I'm bowled over!!”
Another couldn’t contain herself saying “OMG thank you thank you thank you thank you and thank you!”.
And of course refusing those nasty and often deadly non-biodegradables floating petro-products is something anyone with a cloth bag can and should do as Diana LaBedz letter today reiterates.
But for the politically astute it’s what Carvalho didn’t say that sticks out like a shearwater’s plastic-distended belly- a promise to support and sign the bill set for public hearing on Wednesday that would ban stores from distributing those nasty pollutants.
As a matter of fact for the more cynical among us it might seem like Carvalho is indeed saying that the real solution is not in the legislation introduced by Tim Bynum and Lani Kawahara but solely in people refusing to accept them and instead bringing their own bags.
Yeah- that’ll work... it’s worked so well that despite years of campaigns by groups like LaBenz’s Surfrider Foundation the bags are more ubiquitous and causing more destruction than ever.
Gee, it couldn’t be because businesses who filled Carvalho’s campaign coffers last November are howling over the prospect of spending a few cents more on the biodegradable bags that are now or soon to be required on Maui, in San Francisco and in any growing number of jurisdictions across the country.
The suspicions are well founded. Carvalho recently has been accused of trying to sabotage the curbside recycling part of the county’s solid waste reform efforts using the county’s standard “fire, ready, aim” operating procedure to institute a “pilot” curbside recycling program in Lihu`e despite the fact that there is no materials recovery facility or MRF yet to accommodate the separation of those collected recyclables.
Why? Well that’s because, according to the administrations solid waste coordinator Troy Tanegawa, purchasing the bins with already appropriated monies was “the low hanging fruit” of recycling efforts.
Of course the crop was nowhere near ripe but politically it will provide a good sounding half truth during November 2010 campaign when Carvalho claims he “instituted curbside recycling”.
While the naive and easily duped might at best see it as the usual county incompetence others see it as a cynical attempt to make sure the pilot program fails so the county can build it’s long-desired “silver bullet” incinerator to burn all our rubbish (supposedly for energy) and in addition build a new landfill- two insanities that result from their refusal to hire a “zero waste” consultant and rather go with good old boy’s favorite consultants R.W. Beck that has been behind the failure to properly deal with solid waste on the island for over 20 years now.
We- and Zero Waste Kauai- been proponents of a full curbside recycling preceded by the construction of a MRF, a “hard to recycle good” facility, composting of green waste and other trash stream reduction measures.
We’ve even suggested shipping the small amount of waste that’s left (some say as low as 10% or less although 20-25% is commonly cited) off island where mainland landfills are fighting over who will get Honolulu’s waste.
We’ve even been proponents of a “ship it in, ship it out” law requiring that larger businesses whose products generate huge amounts of waste to deal with the aftermath.
While some say it’s “unethical” to foist our opala on others they forget that we are in a unique situation where all but our green waste is already shipped in and shipping that stuff out is only the fulfillment of the ecosystem we’ve created.
And, despite 15 years of asking, Beck has never done a full cost analysis of shipping trash including all the secondary and even tertiary expenses of our current land filling adventures although this time they have a brief dismissive paragraph in their latest report.
We can “do” zero waste here- as a matter of fact we’re uniquely situated and circumstanced to make it work. But that would take some vision and ability to grasp a changing paradigm for dealing with solid waste- a can of worms that our politically motivated elected officials have kicked down the road for decades.
Watch out for the Trojan Horse- let the mayor know that telling people to “just say no” is an ineffective substitute for banning the non-biodegradable plastic bags entirely by law.
You can do so at 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday (8/19) in the council chambers at the historic county building when bill 2321 is up for pubic hearing . If you can’t make it you can email testimony to counciltestimony@kauai.gov ... and make sure you email a copy to hizzonnah and let him know you expect him to support and sign the bill when it lands on his desk.
Monday, November 17, 2008
A HOLE IS NOT TO DIG
A HOLE IS NOT TO DIG: One of the results of the defeat of JoAnn Yukimura in the mayoral election is that the idea of a garbage-to-electricity incinerator remains on the table at least as far as the administration of Mayor-Elect Bernard Carvalho is concerned.
But whether that sits well with the new county council- who will make the final decision- is up for grabs.
The council still hasn’t signed off on the R.W,. Beck study that recommends a waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerator-as we discussed in June- but that hasn’t stopped Carvalho from declaring “we have a plan and we need to follow it”.
The Beck report doesn’t make clear how the competing schemes it now contains will work. Originally the plan called for the incinerator only. But the council asked Beck to go back and include a plan for a massive recycling effort including curbside pickup and moreover a “MERF”- Materials Recovery Facility- where the whole trash stream goes through a sorting process to remove the recyclable and reusable materials.
The problem is that it really is a one or the other situation especially because it’s doubtful the waste stream on Kaua`i is really big enough to support a “waste- to energy” facility even with the whole trash stream, including recyclables.
It especially doesn’t make economic sense when viewed with an eye toward “economies of scale”. Unlike say, Honolulu we just don’t create enough trash to make the costly pollution spewing facility work here- and even more so after ¾ of the stream is taken out for recycling and reuse..
Those issues are unaddressed in Walter Lewis’ column in the local paper this Saturday which attempts to start fabricating the bandwagon leading to an incinerator.
He couches the issue of the facility as one of that “would result in significantly lower electric rates on Kaua`i.” but ignores the cost of the facility itself and how we would feed the beast.
And in today’s paper is a letter from another Princeville resident seemingly ready to jump aboard Lewis’ bandwagon- destination: Fool’s Paradise.
Well who can blame them? Because it’s doubtful that Princeville is on the list of possible sites for the plant. Which raises the question of just where would this monstrosity- which has a price tag some have estimated at more than $125 million- be situated?
Given the fact that Kaua`i county has been trying to find a place for a new landfill for the last 20 years without success the real question is whether there is going to be one community saying “give us the dump” and another town that will “accept” an incinerator- even if we start paying them off like we’re doing in Kekaha, as we discussed last month.
The article in last Friday’s newspaper hardly did justice to the breadth of the issue in covering last week’s contentious council meeting regarding the $650,000 bribe to Kekaha to get them to stop complaining about the dump that’s being expanded there
Although it pointed out how the county and the community had apparently settled their differences over the county trying to control the process for deciding how to spend the money, what it left out was the fact that the $.65 million was a low-ball figure according to outgoing Councilmember Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho.
“We originally wanted to start at a million” and that wasn’t even “nearly enough” she told those gathered for last week’s council meeting saying a million dollars was a low-end figure that the council had asked be included in the mayor’s budget. But when the Baptiste administration only offered $100,000 she said the $650,000 figure was “a compromise... for now”.
She said the payment is just a start and only for this year. She said it didn’t make up for 50 years of “putting up with” the landfill nor did it pay for “inconveniences” over the next who-knows-how-many years until a new dump is opened and the Kekaha one goes through the 30-year EPA mandated process of closing a landfill.
And of course this is just for a dump that already exists. The real question is how much “hush” money taxpayers are going to have to come up with to get a community to put a new one in their midst and what the yearly payments for that one will be.
And of course the same can be said about an even more disgusting incinerator because although trucks rumble up to each one, the rubbish stays in one place with a dump while an incinerator spews poisons all over the place.... and yes, even the new “EPA approved” WTE incinerators do that.
How many millions- or perhaps tens of millions- are we talking about? And for how many years? And in how many places?... once the trend starts what other types of facilities like power plants – or even windmills or solar farms- will require pay-offs.
The issue of payments aside and concentrating just on the cost, the whole WTE idea makes little sense. Our only hope might be something Carvalho- in his inimitable “I’ll lead the people by doing whatever they say they want me to do” way- said during the statewide TV debate.
“Maybe we’ll even ship it out” he told viewers when challenged as to the whole landfill siting, recycling waste-to-energy/incinerator debate.. right after he committed to the WTE in the Beck “plan”.
And although he was grasping at political straws, even a broken clock is right twice a day and Carvalho verbally stumbled onto the only sensible cost effective way there is to deal with our waste as we detailed last June.
Using a Zero-Waste program’s principles we can require curb-side recycling, set up a MERF to separate the rest and ship the last small amount- estimated to be a high of 30% but a low of less than 10% of our waste stream- and ship it to any one of a number of landfills in the mainland-northwest that are ready, willing, able and in fact eager to take it off our hands.... all at a comparable cost to what we are paying today
For a small island to ship-in virtually all of it’s consumer goods and then, when we’re done with them, bury them in the ground is insanity and unsustainable.
Though there is a line of thought that sending a community’s trash to a far away place is ecologically irresponsible- as former Councilperson JoAnn Yukimura has stated- that is a concept that might be appropriate where regional landfills are widely available and goods are grown and manufactured nearby, not on an island that imports all it’s “stuff” from 2000 miles away..
To throw that stuff in a hole in the ground makes the least ecological sense of all.
“Ship it in-ship it out” has got to be our garbage future. And apparently if we all demand it, the broken-clock-born program will be instituted before the one that’s ticking on our solid waste crisis strikes midnight and we’re overrun by mice and rotten pumpkins.
But whether that sits well with the new county council- who will make the final decision- is up for grabs.
The council still hasn’t signed off on the R.W,. Beck study that recommends a waste-to-energy (WTE) incinerator-as we discussed in June- but that hasn’t stopped Carvalho from declaring “we have a plan and we need to follow it”.
The Beck report doesn’t make clear how the competing schemes it now contains will work. Originally the plan called for the incinerator only. But the council asked Beck to go back and include a plan for a massive recycling effort including curbside pickup and moreover a “MERF”- Materials Recovery Facility- where the whole trash stream goes through a sorting process to remove the recyclable and reusable materials.
The problem is that it really is a one or the other situation especially because it’s doubtful the waste stream on Kaua`i is really big enough to support a “waste- to energy” facility even with the whole trash stream, including recyclables.
It especially doesn’t make economic sense when viewed with an eye toward “economies of scale”. Unlike say, Honolulu we just don’t create enough trash to make the costly pollution spewing facility work here- and even more so after ¾ of the stream is taken out for recycling and reuse..
Those issues are unaddressed in Walter Lewis’ column in the local paper this Saturday which attempts to start fabricating the bandwagon leading to an incinerator.
He couches the issue of the facility as one of that “would result in significantly lower electric rates on Kaua`i.” but ignores the cost of the facility itself and how we would feed the beast.
And in today’s paper is a letter from another Princeville resident seemingly ready to jump aboard Lewis’ bandwagon- destination: Fool’s Paradise.
Well who can blame them? Because it’s doubtful that Princeville is on the list of possible sites for the plant. Which raises the question of just where would this monstrosity- which has a price tag some have estimated at more than $125 million- be situated?
Given the fact that Kaua`i county has been trying to find a place for a new landfill for the last 20 years without success the real question is whether there is going to be one community saying “give us the dump” and another town that will “accept” an incinerator- even if we start paying them off like we’re doing in Kekaha, as we discussed last month.
The article in last Friday’s newspaper hardly did justice to the breadth of the issue in covering last week’s contentious council meeting regarding the $650,000 bribe to Kekaha to get them to stop complaining about the dump that’s being expanded there
Although it pointed out how the county and the community had apparently settled their differences over the county trying to control the process for deciding how to spend the money, what it left out was the fact that the $.65 million was a low-ball figure according to outgoing Councilmember Shaylene Iseri-Carvalho.
“We originally wanted to start at a million” and that wasn’t even “nearly enough” she told those gathered for last week’s council meeting saying a million dollars was a low-end figure that the council had asked be included in the mayor’s budget. But when the Baptiste administration only offered $100,000 she said the $650,000 figure was “a compromise... for now”.
She said the payment is just a start and only for this year. She said it didn’t make up for 50 years of “putting up with” the landfill nor did it pay for “inconveniences” over the next who-knows-how-many years until a new dump is opened and the Kekaha one goes through the 30-year EPA mandated process of closing a landfill.
And of course this is just for a dump that already exists. The real question is how much “hush” money taxpayers are going to have to come up with to get a community to put a new one in their midst and what the yearly payments for that one will be.
And of course the same can be said about an even more disgusting incinerator because although trucks rumble up to each one, the rubbish stays in one place with a dump while an incinerator spews poisons all over the place.... and yes, even the new “EPA approved” WTE incinerators do that.
How many millions- or perhaps tens of millions- are we talking about? And for how many years? And in how many places?... once the trend starts what other types of facilities like power plants – or even windmills or solar farms- will require pay-offs.
The issue of payments aside and concentrating just on the cost, the whole WTE idea makes little sense. Our only hope might be something Carvalho- in his inimitable “I’ll lead the people by doing whatever they say they want me to do” way- said during the statewide TV debate.
“Maybe we’ll even ship it out” he told viewers when challenged as to the whole landfill siting, recycling waste-to-energy/incinerator debate.. right after he committed to the WTE in the Beck “plan”.
And although he was grasping at political straws, even a broken clock is right twice a day and Carvalho verbally stumbled onto the only sensible cost effective way there is to deal with our waste as we detailed last June.
Using a Zero-Waste program’s principles we can require curb-side recycling, set up a MERF to separate the rest and ship the last small amount- estimated to be a high of 30% but a low of less than 10% of our waste stream- and ship it to any one of a number of landfills in the mainland-northwest that are ready, willing, able and in fact eager to take it off our hands.... all at a comparable cost to what we are paying today
For a small island to ship-in virtually all of it’s consumer goods and then, when we’re done with them, bury them in the ground is insanity and unsustainable.
Though there is a line of thought that sending a community’s trash to a far away place is ecologically irresponsible- as former Councilperson JoAnn Yukimura has stated- that is a concept that might be appropriate where regional landfills are widely available and goods are grown and manufactured nearby, not on an island that imports all it’s “stuff” from 2000 miles away..
To throw that stuff in a hole in the ground makes the least ecological sense of all.
“Ship it in-ship it out” has got to be our garbage future. And apparently if we all demand it, the broken-clock-born program will be instituted before the one that’s ticking on our solid waste crisis strikes midnight and we’re overrun by mice and rotten pumpkins.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
BURYING THE BONE OF CONTENTION
BURYING THE BONE OF CONTENTION:Dr. Ray Chuan used to say he probably knew more about garbage any other nuclear physicist because it’s the Rosetta Stone of incompetence and corruption in Kaua`i County government and the Department of Public Waste- er, Works- which, guided by the pols that ignore their scams, literally can’t seem to crap or get off the pot..
That was in the 90’s after years of yack-yack-yack- about the yuck yuck yuckiest of all subjects- solid waste.
At the time our landfill was full, we had paid for another useless R.W. Beck study on what to do with it all and people were proposing trash-to-energy projects, recycling and stream separation and the pressing need to open a new dump.
And 15 years later nothing has changed except that we have a third Beck report and Kekaha’s Mount `Opala is getting higher every day.
Beck is a company stuck in the middle ages of solid waste consulting. Their ideas always come down to incrementally more recycling and a new landfill- the latter being the words that strike fear in the hearts of politicians worldwide but especially on little tiny Kaua`i-. oh and maybe an incinerator.
But the national trend in solid waste across the nation is a concept called “Zero-Waste” (ZW) and we actually have a Zero Waste-Kaua`i (ZWK) group that sometimes feels like it’s talking to the wall- the wall resulting from a presentation to the Council from professional Zero-Waste consultants who had instituted ZW systems across the mainland. It was met with enthusiasm for all of five minutes before the Council went back to Beck for the same old same old.
As the consultants say ZW is really “almost” zero because even with a mandatory curbside recycling combined with a facility that sorts the rest of the trash stream into recyclables, reusables, green waste/compost and all the other components there is still going to be a small amount- some say 5-10%, some say even less is practically achievable - that is going to be an unsortable disgusting mess, although with developing technologies it can and will approach zero.
And even if we burn that last tiny amount in an incinerator (an unnecessary and costly process usually sold to the public as a waste-to-energy plant such as H-Power in Honolulu) we’d have to do something with the “ashes”.
If the Council and County had contracted with a Zero Waste consultant we could now have a useful plan. To be fair the Beck report does include many of the recycling and sorting proposals and some on the Council have stated that having a “MERF”- the sorting facility- is their top solid waste priority. But it is still the old “coordinated” or piecemeal approach that was popular in the 80’s but has seen it’s day.
So if we did go with the Zero Waste concepts we’d still have a little bit left and the question is what to do with that.
We really have two choices on what to do with it- bury it or send it back to where it came from.
Which is why it’s unfathomable that our top two protectors of the environment in Hawai`i are condemning the smartest and most sustainable plan for that last little bit – ship it out.
According to an article in Monday’s Honolulu Advertiser Director of the Hawai`i Sierra Club Jeff Mikulina apparently has it backward in saying "(s)hipping off trash is an absolute waste. There is this overarching environmental ethic about the trash that we produce. It's antithetical to ... taking care of our own to send our 'opala thousands of miles away. We have to deal with our problems here at home."
This argument ignores the one pertinent fact- 100% of the materials in our non-greenwaste and mined (such as gravel, sand or concrete materials, all of which is recyclable) waste stream originated elsewhere- most of it on the mainland.
Another tireless environmental defender Henry Curtis of Life of the Land apparently agrees saying in the article "(w)e have to support an intensive recycling program. If material has to be disposed of, Life of the Land strongly believes that it should be done in a way that minimizes greenhouse gas emissions. Exporting trash to a large and cheap Mainland landfill is not the answer."
Shipping it out is not an alternative to recycling and it’s a disingenuous straw man to argue such. As is the greenhouse gas argument. How much greenhouse gas is produced by the diesel trucks running back and forth to and over the current landfills Henry?
If the answer is not a cheap Mainland landfill is it a more expensive and energy wasteful bunch of local ones?
The article notes “(o)thers say that the exporting of trash to another state absolves citizens of the responsibility for cleaning up after themselves.”
Exactly what citizen responsibility is that? To import pre-disposal-stage waste and then dig a hole to throw it in? Does that sound responsible much less sustainable?
Government already wipes our figurative butts for us already- we’re just arguing about how many sheets of toilet paper it’s going to take.
The bigger bugaboo for the politicians and taxpayers has rightly or wrongly been cost. And that’s where shipping whatever isn’t usable to a central location –even if it’s to await the day when it has value if that’s what Mikulina is suggesting- is certainly a more economically viable alternative than paying the amount we pay now all else being equal. And if it’s efficiently coordinated statewide it is more environmentally sustainable and less damaging too.
The Article states that “(t)he plan assumes the cost to ship trash to the mainland will be between $70 and $75 per ton”, which is about the current “tipping fee” on Kaua`i- the amount paid to dump stuff at the dump. But that figure is widely admitted to be a low-end cost underestimate used for many years by our befuddled Pubic Works Department to charge commercial haulers.
Most estimates for actual costs are well over a hundred- $135 has recently been used in council discussions. And those estimates don’t count the costs of transport to the landfill site even before the price of oil went through the roof, nor things like the capital improvement costs to site, construct, monitor and close a new landfill (and keep an eye on it for the required 30 years after closing), estimated at $35-50 million or more just to open it... which also doesn’t include things like the recent half-a-million-dollar bribe for Kekaha to not complain about the current dump being there.
Oh and by the way, despite repeated requests and promises by the Council and administrations ever since Ray Chuan’s day the new Beck report does not evaluate the “shipping it out” option and it’s dismissed as unviable without any detailed examination.
The myriad hidden costs of landfilling aside, what Mikulina, Curtis and Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura have always tried do is argue is that shipping it back would be done in lieu of a zero-waste plan- or even the “good-enough” Beck approach- with no recycling, no diversion and no other plan other than bringing it to the docks and waving bye-bye.
It has been impossible to have a rational discussion of the matter because of these kinds of disingenuous arguments for many years, where they go back and forth between the straw men of the cost and responsibility that they created out of whole cloth.
The oddest thing is that even in Honolulu shipping it back is seen as a “temporary solution” although no one has ever addressed why that is. Is it because their whole system is unsustainable to begin with or something to do with the concept? We don’t know because no one will say but wonder if it could be because there are thousands of government jobs at stake in dealing with the trash inefficiently in burning and burying it after it’s picked up?
Mikulina, Curtis and Yukimura would all agree that our consumerist mainland-style lifestyle through the use of the products physically delivered here is essentially unsustainable all by itself. Yet those goods comprise most of what we need to “do something with” after we’ve taken out what we can use and re-use and they came from across the ocean in the first place.
If we’re thinking about sustainability how is it sustainable to keep importing and burying our “stuff” when we’re done with it? To take care of the rear end by burying it is the height of irresponsibility because if the front end is dealt with sustainably there would be no rear end to deal with.
To use the analogy we seem to rely upon way too often in “Ready-Fire-Aim” Hawai`i and Kaua`i, it’s the old story about people too busy taking the bodies out of the river- and in this case burying them- to go upstream and try to stop whomever is throwing the bodies in.
We’d certainly welcome hearing how keeping it here is more “responsible” or even “lower cost” (when all cost factors are factored in) then sending it back but all we’ve ever heard is skewed numbers and vague generalities- and that’s been going on for at least 20 years here on Kaua`i.
We’re talking the last remains of the day- that gook or even the ashes after burning it- and what we’re going to do with it. Sweep it under the rug or ship it back where it came from are the choices. From that perspective the “responsible” option should be clear.
That was in the 90’s after years of yack-yack-yack- about the yuck yuck yuckiest of all subjects- solid waste.
At the time our landfill was full, we had paid for another useless R.W. Beck study on what to do with it all and people were proposing trash-to-energy projects, recycling and stream separation and the pressing need to open a new dump.
And 15 years later nothing has changed except that we have a third Beck report and Kekaha’s Mount `Opala is getting higher every day.
Beck is a company stuck in the middle ages of solid waste consulting. Their ideas always come down to incrementally more recycling and a new landfill- the latter being the words that strike fear in the hearts of politicians worldwide but especially on little tiny Kaua`i-. oh and maybe an incinerator.
But the national trend in solid waste across the nation is a concept called “Zero-Waste” (ZW) and we actually have a Zero Waste-Kaua`i (ZWK) group that sometimes feels like it’s talking to the wall- the wall resulting from a presentation to the Council from professional Zero-Waste consultants who had instituted ZW systems across the mainland. It was met with enthusiasm for all of five minutes before the Council went back to Beck for the same old same old.
As the consultants say ZW is really “almost” zero because even with a mandatory curbside recycling combined with a facility that sorts the rest of the trash stream into recyclables, reusables, green waste/compost and all the other components there is still going to be a small amount- some say 5-10%, some say even less is practically achievable - that is going to be an unsortable disgusting mess, although with developing technologies it can and will approach zero.
And even if we burn that last tiny amount in an incinerator (an unnecessary and costly process usually sold to the public as a waste-to-energy plant such as H-Power in Honolulu) we’d have to do something with the “ashes”.
If the Council and County had contracted with a Zero Waste consultant we could now have a useful plan. To be fair the Beck report does include many of the recycling and sorting proposals and some on the Council have stated that having a “MERF”- the sorting facility- is their top solid waste priority. But it is still the old “coordinated” or piecemeal approach that was popular in the 80’s but has seen it’s day.
So if we did go with the Zero Waste concepts we’d still have a little bit left and the question is what to do with that.
We really have two choices on what to do with it- bury it or send it back to where it came from.
Which is why it’s unfathomable that our top two protectors of the environment in Hawai`i are condemning the smartest and most sustainable plan for that last little bit – ship it out.
According to an article in Monday’s Honolulu Advertiser Director of the Hawai`i Sierra Club Jeff Mikulina apparently has it backward in saying "(s)hipping off trash is an absolute waste. There is this overarching environmental ethic about the trash that we produce. It's antithetical to ... taking care of our own to send our 'opala thousands of miles away. We have to deal with our problems here at home."
This argument ignores the one pertinent fact- 100% of the materials in our non-greenwaste and mined (such as gravel, sand or concrete materials, all of which is recyclable) waste stream originated elsewhere- most of it on the mainland.
Another tireless environmental defender Henry Curtis of Life of the Land apparently agrees saying in the article "(w)e have to support an intensive recycling program. If material has to be disposed of, Life of the Land strongly believes that it should be done in a way that minimizes greenhouse gas emissions. Exporting trash to a large and cheap Mainland landfill is not the answer."
Shipping it out is not an alternative to recycling and it’s a disingenuous straw man to argue such. As is the greenhouse gas argument. How much greenhouse gas is produced by the diesel trucks running back and forth to and over the current landfills Henry?
If the answer is not a cheap Mainland landfill is it a more expensive and energy wasteful bunch of local ones?
The article notes “(o)thers say that the exporting of trash to another state absolves citizens of the responsibility for cleaning up after themselves.”
Exactly what citizen responsibility is that? To import pre-disposal-stage waste and then dig a hole to throw it in? Does that sound responsible much less sustainable?
Government already wipes our figurative butts for us already- we’re just arguing about how many sheets of toilet paper it’s going to take.
The bigger bugaboo for the politicians and taxpayers has rightly or wrongly been cost. And that’s where shipping whatever isn’t usable to a central location –even if it’s to await the day when it has value if that’s what Mikulina is suggesting- is certainly a more economically viable alternative than paying the amount we pay now all else being equal. And if it’s efficiently coordinated statewide it is more environmentally sustainable and less damaging too.
The Article states that “(t)he plan assumes the cost to ship trash to the mainland will be between $70 and $75 per ton”, which is about the current “tipping fee” on Kaua`i- the amount paid to dump stuff at the dump. But that figure is widely admitted to be a low-end cost underestimate used for many years by our befuddled Pubic Works Department to charge commercial haulers.
Most estimates for actual costs are well over a hundred- $135 has recently been used in council discussions. And those estimates don’t count the costs of transport to the landfill site even before the price of oil went through the roof, nor things like the capital improvement costs to site, construct, monitor and close a new landfill (and keep an eye on it for the required 30 years after closing), estimated at $35-50 million or more just to open it... which also doesn’t include things like the recent half-a-million-dollar bribe for Kekaha to not complain about the current dump being there.
Oh and by the way, despite repeated requests and promises by the Council and administrations ever since Ray Chuan’s day the new Beck report does not evaluate the “shipping it out” option and it’s dismissed as unviable without any detailed examination.
The myriad hidden costs of landfilling aside, what Mikulina, Curtis and Councilwoman JoAnn Yukimura have always tried do is argue is that shipping it back would be done in lieu of a zero-waste plan- or even the “good-enough” Beck approach- with no recycling, no diversion and no other plan other than bringing it to the docks and waving bye-bye.
It has been impossible to have a rational discussion of the matter because of these kinds of disingenuous arguments for many years, where they go back and forth between the straw men of the cost and responsibility that they created out of whole cloth.
The oddest thing is that even in Honolulu shipping it back is seen as a “temporary solution” although no one has ever addressed why that is. Is it because their whole system is unsustainable to begin with or something to do with the concept? We don’t know because no one will say but wonder if it could be because there are thousands of government jobs at stake in dealing with the trash inefficiently in burning and burying it after it’s picked up?
Mikulina, Curtis and Yukimura would all agree that our consumerist mainland-style lifestyle through the use of the products physically delivered here is essentially unsustainable all by itself. Yet those goods comprise most of what we need to “do something with” after we’ve taken out what we can use and re-use and they came from across the ocean in the first place.
If we’re thinking about sustainability how is it sustainable to keep importing and burying our “stuff” when we’re done with it? To take care of the rear end by burying it is the height of irresponsibility because if the front end is dealt with sustainably there would be no rear end to deal with.
To use the analogy we seem to rely upon way too often in “Ready-Fire-Aim” Hawai`i and Kaua`i, it’s the old story about people too busy taking the bodies out of the river- and in this case burying them- to go upstream and try to stop whomever is throwing the bodies in.
We’d certainly welcome hearing how keeping it here is more “responsible” or even “lower cost” (when all cost factors are factored in) then sending it back but all we’ve ever heard is skewed numbers and vague generalities- and that’s been going on for at least 20 years here on Kaua`i.
We’re talking the last remains of the day- that gook or even the ashes after burning it- and what we’re going to do with it. Sweep it under the rug or ship it back where it came from are the choices. From that perspective the “responsible” option should be clear.
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