Since the 1980s, the County of Hawai‘i has operated a “convenience center” at Miloli‘i, a small, remote fishing village in South Kona. For many years, it was a dump by another name. More recently, residents have been able to toss their bags of rubbish into a trailer, which is then hauled up the narrow, winding road to state Highway 11. The rubbish is then trucked north along Highway 11, itself pretty narrow and winding in South Kona, ending up in the county’s landfill near Waikoloa.
But the present system is problematic. For one thing, the trailer site is state-owned Con servation District land. The county has never bothered to obtain either a Conservation Dis trict permit or a land-use permit from the state Board of Land and Natural Resources.
For another, there’s the cost. According to Barbara Bell, head of Hawai‘i County’s De partment of Environmental Management, the county pays $7,000 a month to a private trucker to haul up the trailer, a cost that works out to about $10 for every man, woman, and child in the village. It’s expensive, she acknowledges, but that was the lowest bid. Then there’s the fact that the trailer is too near the coast – a safety issue — and not far enough from homes – a nuisance issue.
Finally, there’s the state Department of Health, which has been threatening the county with fines if it does not obtain a solid-waste permit to operate the facility.
To address the problem, the county’s De partment of Environmental Management has proposed opening up a new transfer station in the nearby area of Honomalino that would serve not only the Miloli‘i residents, but people in Ka‘u and South Kona as well. (A transfer station is where residents can take their refuse and dump it, free of charge, into receptacles that when filled are hauled by the county to a larger landfill.)
But that approach also has its problems. The two sites most favored by the county are both owned by the state. One site, in the ahupua‘a of Okoe, consists of about 9 acres bounded by the Belt Road (Highway 11) on the mauka (upland) side and the Old Mamalahoa Highway makai (seaward). The land is in the state Agricultural District, in an area dominated by macadamia farms. The other site is nearby, on the mauka side of the Belt Road and in the ahupua‘a of Honomalino. It is part of a much larger parcel of 2,700 acres in the state Conservation District. That land lies within an area designated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as critical habitat for two endangered species: a tree, Flueggea neowawraea, or mehamehame, and a small fern, Diellia erecta.
The proposal has drawn opposition from nearby residents. The higher site, they note, is inappropriate given the proximity of mehamehame trees. The lower site, in the middle of the mac-nut orchards, raises the prospect that the green-waste recycling center, proposed to be built along with the transfer station, could bring new agricultural pests to the doorstep of the farmers.
According to Roger Imoto, the Big Island chief of the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Forestry and Wildlife, the county has proposed to use mehamehame as landscape screening for the facility.
Imoto and Lyman Perry, DOFAW botanist for the island, agree that the trees’ long-term survival is in doubt under current conditions. In 2002 and 2003, Perry said, one of the older trees produced fruit, and from the seeds the endangered plant nursery at Volcano was able to grow seedlings. However, when the young shoots are outplanted, they quickly succumb to damage from the black twig borer.
“I’m even more concerned about the ‘ohe makai,” says Imoto, referring to a tree, Reynoldsia sandwicensis. While not on the official endangered species list, it is a species of concern. Two ‘ohe makai are closer to the Honomalino site than is the closest living mehamehame, which is over a kilometer dis tant. “I just don’t know why the county is choosing this site,” he said.
Nelson Ho, deputy director of Environ mental Management for the county, says the county will be preparing an environmental assessment, both for the new transfer station site and for the Miloli‘i site, even though the county is not intending to keep the Miloli‘i center operating.
“We’re signaling everybody that we’re go ing to shut this down,” he told Environment Hawai‘i, “but we’re doing an EA to fulfill the Department of Health requirements.”
The DOH had given the county a mid-April deadline to either close the Miloli‘i facility or get the needed landowner approval. On April 13, the county responded by request ing a 12-month time extension. By press time, the state had not responded.
The state has known about the county’s use of its land at Miloli‘i for some time, but so far has not received any direct request from the county for use of the land, says Harry Yada, the Hawai‘i land agent for the Department of Land and Natural Resources. “Nobody’s asked me for a disposition.”
Ho acknowledged the county had not made a formal request to the state, “but we copied them on our letter to the DOH.”
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 15, Number 11 May 2005
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