The Supreme Court’s April decision in a case involving effluent from the Lahaina, Maui, sewage treatment plant may have ramifications for a host of other facilities in Hawai‘i.
That ruling found that where there was a close connection between the source of pollution and nearshore waters, a permit under the Clean Water Act would be needed. In Maui alone, the county’s two other sewage treatment plants – in coastal areas of Kahului and Kihei – rely on injection wells to dispose of partially treated effluent. In fact, a study of pollutants in ocean water off the Kihei plant turned up many of the same indicators of sewage effluent as were found off Lahaina.
In Hawai‘i County, county-run sewage treatment facilities at Honoka‘a, on the Hamakua Coast, and at Kaloko, near the Kona Coast, rely on injection wells to dispose of effluent. The county’s sewage treatment plant at Kealakehe does not use injection wells but rather runs effluent through a series of aerated lagoons just a few hundred yards from the coast and the state’s small boat harbor at Honokohau. Finally, the treated effluent is pumped to an unlined pond immediately mauka of Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway, where it percolates into the ground.
So are the two counties preparing to apply for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Permits (NPDES) for these facilities, as the court’s decision would seem to require? Environment Hawai‘i posed the question to Scott Rollins, acting head of the Maui County Department of Environmental Management’s Wastewater Reclamation, and William Kucharski, administrator of Hawai‘i County’s Department of Environmental Management.
Rollins said that although the high court remanded the issue to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which would ultimately decide whether a NPDES permit would be required, the county was trying to avoid the need for that.
“The mayor, the County Council, and our department decided to go forward with minimizing injection well use,” Rollins said. He noted that substantial capital improvement funds had been appropriated for upgrades to all three county sewage treatment plants.
At Lahaina alone, $13 million had been appropriated for improvements to that facility, including adding pump stations that would elevate reclaimed R1 water, acquiring land from Maui Land and Pine for a storage reservoir that would allow 24-hour-a-day draw-downs on treated water, and expansion of the service area, among other things, Rollins said. (R1 is water that has undergone oxidation, filtration, and disinfection; it may be used for irrigation, dust control, some cleaning, and other purposes.)
At Kihei, he said, the county had just recently brought online a second million-gallon storage tank for reclaimed water and would be upgrading its ultra-violet treatment capacity, allowing all effluent to be treated to R1 standards. Also, the county would be upgrading and replacing lines that carry water to the Maui Research and Technology Park and beyond, he added.
The Kahului wastewater plant treats only to the R2 level, which is of limited use. “We’re going to build a treatment basin in Waikapu,” Rollins said, acknowledging that a basin relatively distant from the wastewater plant would require installation of force mains and pump stations. Potential users of the reclaimed water from the Kahului plant could include Mahi Pono, which owns most of the former Alexander & Baldwin cane land, and the Maui Lani golf course. As to the site for the treatment basin, he said, “Mahi Pono may give us the land.”
Hawai‘i County’s Kucharski noted that the 9th Circuit’s standard for requiring an NPDES permit – the standard that the high court rejected – was that discharges be “fairly traceable” to a given source.
“From my perspective, until such time as the 9th Circuit determines the conditions” under which permits are required, he added, the county will sit tight.
Steve Holmes, former Honolulu City council member, has had a long-term interest in the proper management of wastewater treatment plants. In comments to Environment Hawai‘i, he noted that the Lahaina plant was supposed to be a water recycling plant, as its very name – the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility – denotes.
“By not throwing away the water resource into injection wells and polluting the coast in the process, the need for a permit goes away,” Holmes said.
“Recycling water pays for itself, dumping does not. Recycled water is drought-proof and frees up potable water, extending sustainable yield in the aquifer,” he said. The point of the lawsuit brought against Maui County was not to force the county to obtain a permit, but to require it to use water wisely, he added.
“The same is true at Kealakehe in Kona,” Holmes continued, “which has been dumping wastewater into a hole in the ground for 25 years and polluting the coast.”
“We don’t want them to get a permit – we want them to do recycling and to end the pollution. … Dumping literally flushes tax-payers’ dollars down the drain,” he said.
Hawai‘i County’s plans to upgrade Kealakehe plant’s wastewater treatment to R1 standards and increase its storage and distribution capabilities have been delayed – the result, Kucharski said, of backlogs in compliance reviews by the state’s Historic Preservation Division. —Patricia Tummons
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