After more than 150 people spoke out last week against building a landfill in Wahiawā over an aquifer, a Honolulu official said the administration doesn’t want it there, either. But a state law gives them no other choice, he said.
Now some state lawmakers, including House majority leader Sean Quinlan, are planning to give the city some choices. Quinlan drafted a bill to reduce the minimum distance between a landfill and homes, schools and hospitals from a half-mile to a quarter-mile, though he said the proposed new limit could change. The bill also would bar landfills over a “significant aquifer.”
The half-mile buffer was created in 2020 through Act 73. “To be fair to the city,” Quinlan said, “because we passed Act 73, we’ve put them in quite a bind.”
The Honolulu Board of Water Supply, meanwhile, recommends against placing a landfill where porous, volcanic rock would allow contaminants to seep into the island’s drinking water supply. That “no pass zone” covers the interior 77% of the island. Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi also has promised not to place the new landfill on the Waiʻanae Coast, a lower-income community with the highest concentration of Native Hawaiians on Oʻahu…