In 1981, R.M. Towill prepared an Environmental Impact Statement for a new sewage treatment plant at Kealakehe. Plans called for constructing an ocean outfall to get rid of treated wastewater.
Charlie and Jan Biltoft of Kealakekua thought this was inappropriate and suggested that the treated effluent could be used to water the nearby park, to irrigate roadway plantings, or even to fight fires at the city dump. The sludge could be used in fertilizer, they said, noting that Milwaukee does that and is able to market the resulting product, called Milorganite. “Water is a limiting factor in progress so we must not waste it,” the Biltofts wrote. “Recycle it to help make our island more productive, more beautiful, and do not add to the ocean’s pollution.”
The county’s summary response (drafted by the consultant on the project, R.M. Towill) was: The studies of sewage treatment options “thoroughly considered the environmental and economic concerns… Aerated lagoons are recommended as the preferred method of treatment with deep ocean outfall as the preferred means for effluent disposal.”
Three years later Rep. Virginia Isbell echoed the Biltofts’ concerns in a letter to Dante Carpenter February 6, 1985. The new sewage treatment plant could be a “great asset and savings of water if the secondary waste water were to be used for irrigation… It seems to be more sensible trying to save water than to have an outfall in the ocean where it may have a very detrimental effect — especially on the aquaculture and high-technology park” at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai`i.
She got the same pat dismissal as the Biltofts.
By August 1990, however, R.M. Towill finally came around, filing an amendment to the Revised Environmental Impact Statement for the Kailua-Kona sewer system. The amendment proposes using effluent for irrigation (“land reclamation”), citing “a growing demand” for water for irrigation as well as “growing scientific community concerns about the potential adverse impacts of the deep ocean outfall effluent discharge on the pure ocean requirements of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai`i.”
“Based on these recent issues,” the Revised EIS states (with our emphasis added), “the need to reevaluate effluent disposal by ocean outfall is justified. An attractive effluent disposal alternative to the ocean outfall is to recycle the effluent for irrigation of golf courses, parks, and landscaping. Potable water is not necessary for these uses and this alternative will alleviate some of the demand on the municipal water system.”
Volume 1, Number 5 November 1990