If Lyle Wong is nothing else, he is persistent. For thirty-plus years, Wong, who is the head of the Plant Industry Division of the state Department of Agriculture, has been a true believer in the power of irradiation to cure whatever ails the state’s agricultural sector. By and large, those ailments have been of the six-legged kind. Fruit-fly infes tation of many of Hawai‘i’s most important commercial fruit crops has meant that those crops must be treated before they can be exported to the continental United States. While for most fruits, growers’ coops were able to develop quarantine protocols that do not involve irradiation, Wong has long lobbied for irradiation as a more effective treatment.
In the 1990s, Wong was behind efforts to have a private company build a radioactive-source irradiation facility on the island of Hawai‘i. The culmination of that cam paign was construction in 2000 of an elec-tron-beam irradiator in Kea‘au, a few miles south of Hilo.
No sooner was that built, however, than Wong began pushing for a second irradia tion facility – this time to be built at or near the Honolulu International Airport.
And now, it seems, Wong is about to see his vision realized. In July, the Nuclear Regula tory Commission announced that a newly formed company, Pa‘ina Hawai‘i, had filed an application to build an irradiation facility in Honolulu. Although the press release and application itself, available in redacted form on the NRC’s web page, do not mention the source of the ionizing radiation, information obtained by Environment Hawai‘i indicates that the source will be cobalt-60.
On March 29, Michael Kohn, the princi pal of Pa‘ina Hawai‘i, informed the O‘ahu airport district manager that five days ear lier, he had “signed a purchase agreement with Gray Star, Inc., for a category 3 irradia tor” and had made a down payment of 10 percent of the total price.
“On my behalf,” Kohn continued, “Gray Star has begun the application for an NRC license. I am also talking to several archi tects to come up with a detailed facility design. For the license as well as the design, I will need to come up with a definite location. My choice would be lot #011109 plus an additional 3,000 square feet of lot #011108 located on Palekona Street.”
Both lots front Palekona Street, a small lane off the end of Lagoon Drive, which separates the airport from the Pacific Ocean.
Where’s the Brief?
The Honolulu airport sits on state land. Any use of state land normally triggers the provisions of Chapter 343, Hawai‘i Revised Statutes, which require preparation of an environmental assessment or a more de tailed environmental impact statement. Although Kohn has applied for the NRC license and has put a down payment on an irradiator, he has yet to prepare an environ mental assessment.
When asked when an EA would be pub lished, Kohn replied: “We will do whatever is required by law. We are working with airport authorities, Ben Schlapak.”
Had Schlapak, O‘ahu District airports manager for the Department of Transpor tation, informed him he needs to prepare an EA?
“No,” Kohn said.
In July, Environment Hawai‘i asked Schlapak whether, in his view, an EA would need to be prepared. After a long pause, he replied: “We have a valid EIS for airport development as a whole, particularly that part of the airport” – referring to the industrial area off Lagoon Drive. Still, he said, “we anticipate they’d do at least an environmental assessment,” given the nature of the proposed activity.
By mid-August, however, Schlapak had changed his tune. “It appears there’s a cat egorical exclusion for this kind of irradiator,” he said, clarifying when questioned that he was referring to an NRC rule, which exempts irradiation facilities from having to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act.
But does the federal NEPA exemption mean that the facility need not comply with the state’s environmental disclosure law, which has no such exemption?
“I’m not sure about that,” Schlapak re plied after a very long pause. “People at the Airports Property Management Division are looking at that.”
Last fall, the division had answered in the affirmative to the question of whether the irradiation facility developer would need to comply with state law and prepare an EA or EIS. Schlapak had forwarded to the division a list of 10 questions posed by Kohn, the last of which had to do with Chapter 343 requirements. Glenn Abe replied in an email to Schlapak that, “at a minimum, an environ mental assessment (EA) is required pursuant to Chapter 343… If the EA filed with the Department of Health, Office of Environ mental Quality Control, does not result in a Negative Declaration [a finding of no signifi cant impact to the environment], a full-blown environmental impact statement would be required.” Also, wrote Abe, “a special man agement application will need to be filed with the City and County of Honolulu Planning Department,” unless the Airports Division has a special exemption from the county excluding airport lands from all SMA requirements. (According to Eileen Mark at the Honolulu Department of Planning and Per mitting, no such blanket exemption exists.)
In attempting to explain the uncertainty about the need to prepare an EA that has arisen in the months since Abe’s memo, Schlapak said that the memo was written “before we knew about the exclusion.” Now the question is going back to property man agement people for further review, he said. He had no timetable for when a decision would be made: “It takes a while to find out these things,” he said.
While the state Attorney General’s office might be expected to provide some expert legal guidance to the DOT on this issue, Schlapak has not taken that approach. Sonia Faust, deputy attorney general overseeing the land and transportation division, said she had not been informed of any aspect of this project.
With Pa‘ina Hawai‘i having plunked down $11,000 with its NRC license applica tion and 10 percent of the price of a Gray*Star irradiator (about $1.5 million, in the case of a 2003 installation built in Penn sylvania), would the time be ripe for an EA?
Faust responded by noting that state law does require an EA or EIS to be made at the earliest practicable time. Beyond that, she said she knew nothing of the planned irra diation facility.
As of last month, Kohn also lacked a lease on the airport land he intends to use. He seemed unfazed by that. “I’m pretty sure it will happen,” he said, referring to execution of a lease. “I’ve been in business since 1987, and it’s just my take on things. Given the support I’ve been receiving,… I feel pretty strong about it.”
Schlapak told Environment Hawai‘i that long-term leases of 20 years or longer, such as the one Kohn is requesting, “must be approved by the Department of Trans portation and the Land Board.” They also had to be “approved as to form” by the state Department of Attorney General, he said.
In mid-August, Kohn said he was in the process of filling out the papers. Neither he nor Schlapak could say when the lease would be executed, but Kohn said he hoped to be up and running by February 2006.
Health, Environment, Safety Issues
Elsewhere, the construction of irradiation facilities has generated substantial community protest. When a virtually identical irradiator was proposed for construction in Milford Township, Pennsylvania, a strong community group attempted to stop the project, going so far as to petition the Bucks County Court to stop the company, CFC Logistics, from bringing any radioactive material to the township. While the irradia tor was ultimately built and began opera tions in 2003, CFC Logistics shut it down in April of this year, citing a lack of “consumer acceptance and cost and other alternative technologies for food safety.”
Earlier, when Lyle Wong was pushing for an irradiation facility on the Big Island in the mid-1990s, opposition was strong and vocal to any facility using a radioactive source. (For details, see the February 1997 edition of EnvironmentHawai‘i.)
Response from Hawai‘i’s environmen tal community to news of the latest pro posal for an irradiation facility has been muted, however. Henry Curtis, director of the group Life of the Land, told Environment Hawai‘i that he had reservations about the project.
“It’s a shame that so much of the appli cation” – available online at the NRC’s web site – “is redacted and edited out,” Curtis said. “It’s difficult to figure out what’s being proposed and what the safety con straints are. From our understanding, the company involved is not doing any irradia tion elsewhere, so what are their qualifica tions? We are definitely going to ask for a public hearing.” (A notice in the Federal Register of August 2, 2005, triggered a 60 -day period within which interested parties could file a request for a public hearing with the NRC. The deadline expires October 3. Additionally, the NRC has announced it will hold several informational meetings. The first was to have been held August 31.)
Curtis also expressed concerns about the nutritional quality of irradiated fruit. “When it is irradiated, new chemicals are created in papayas that are not found in any other processing of the papaya,” he said. “I haven’t seen any study that these chemicals have been tested for safety.”
Proponents of irradiation insist that the treated fruits are safe, but some studies sup port Curtis’ contention that the process creates free radicals that can diminish nutri tional value.
Tony Corbo, a lobbyist with the Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program of Public Citizen, the consumer group founded by Ralph Nader, was more emphatic. “We’re absolutely opposed to what is being planned there,” he told EnvironmentHawai‘i.“And for a number of reasons. First are safety concerns. Last spring, the University of Hawai‘i got rid of an irradiator with about 1,000 curies of cobalt-60, which the univer sity worried might be used for a ‘dirty bomb.’ This facility would have more than 70 times that amount in an accessible site near the airport.”
“Second,” Corbo continued, “there just doesn’t seem to be a market for irradiated food in the United States. The irradiation facility that’s already built there” – Hawai‘i Pride – “is on life support…. We think this is going to be a boondoggle.”
Another concern – raised by Kohn him self – is whether the area is in a tsunami inundation zone. On May 4, Kohn asked Schlapak whether the lots he wanted to build on “are in a tsunami flood evacuation zone or if any other natural disaster, e.g., hurricanes, could flood these areas.”
Schlapak replied: “The answer is no, de spite the phone book evacuation guide, which is an overly conservative plan to minimize loss of life anywhere near a coastline.”
But the tsunami maps are out of date and possibly inaccurate, according to Kwok Fai Cheung, the chairman of the Ocean and Resources Engineering Department at the University of Hawai‘i, who is preparing updated maps for the state. Last January, Kwok told the Honolulu Advertiser that the effects of tsunami, especially those gen erated by local events, could be under estimated on existing maps.
“The official flood delineation docu ment is the Federal Emergency Management’s [Agency’s] Flood Insurance Rate Map, Panel 335,” Schlapak continued. “Honolulu International Airport (HNL) is shown in Zone D, [where flooding poten tial is] undetermined but flooding pos sible.”
“The eastern edge of lot 011108 is located at an elevation of 7.7’above mean sea level and 450′ west of the edge of Ke‘ehi La goon,” he wrote. “The Reef Runway at elevation +10′ MSL is protecting all of South Ramp, HNL.” Schlapak assured Kohn that the south shore of O‘ahu “has never sustained more than a 3′ wave from any tsunami since 1837.” Hurricane vul nerability studies predicted a worst-case scenario in the event of a hurricane from the southwest, which, Schlapak wrote, “gener ated a significant storm surge at the en trance to Pearl Harbor and flooding in Hickam [Air Force Base] and the runway safety area of the Reef Runway.”
“Our Environmental Impact Statement of August 1991,” he continued, “concludes a section on Natural Hazards with the statement that ‘it is not likely that high waves, a tsunami or a hurricane would affect the project sites covered within this EIS.’ The project sites included the South Ramp Development,” where Kohn pro poses to build.
Other Uses
The DOA’s Wong appears to recognize that an irradiator will not live on fruit alone and has been attempting to line up other pos sible uses for an airport irradiator.
Chief among them is the U.S. Depart ment of Agriculture, which irradiates fruit-fly pupae for shipment to the mainland. (The breeding cycle of fruit flies in infested areas is broken when females mate with the sterilized males from Hawai‘i.) At present, the USDA’s irradiation facility in Waimanalo is out of commission and will require extensive repairs before it is once more operational. Wong is trying to get the USDA to agree to use a privately built Honolulu irradiation facility and thus avoid the cost of refurbishing the Waimanalo plant. (A Freedom-of-Information-Act re quest to the USDA to learn more about the status of USDA fruit-fly operations in Hawai‘i is pending.)
Kohn said that he had no agreement with the USDA. The state of California, which operates a facility similar to that of the USDA, “has expressed an interest” in using his irradiator, he said.
Wong has also argued that foreign ship ments of produce coming into the state, now subject to visual inspection, could instead be irradiated to ensure that any hitch-hiking pests would be sterilized, if not killed outright. (The USDA used to inspect these shipments; that responsibility has been transferred now to the Depart ment of Homeland Security.)
Kohn was asked if he planned to irradi ate imported produce. “That may be a possibility,” he said. “It has certainly not been the core of my planning. But should there be invasive species on some product that is being imported, the option certainly will be given to importers to treat by irra diation.”
Yet another possible customer of the private irradiation facility, Wong has sug gested, are shippers of produce from other countries or states en route to destinations other than Hawai‘i. This, Wong has ac knowledged, would first have to get past the obvious objections that such commerce would needlessly expose Hawai‘i to pos sible pests.
Finally, Wong has been attempting to devise additional uses for an irradiation facility, including irradiation of orchids and other horticultural products. As he has learned, however, not everything responds well to the treatment. For example, orchids passed through an irradiator tend to lose their blooms faster than those left untreated.
The Pa‘ina Hawai`i license application may be viewed on the NRC’s Electronic Read ing Room at: [url=http://www.nrc/gov/read-ing-rm/adams.html]http://www.nrc/gov/read-ing-rm/adams.html[/url] From this site, link to the NRC’s Agencywide Document Access and Management System, which provides text and image files of public records. The Pa‘ina Hawai‘i license application is ADAMS Accession No. ML052060372.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 16, Number 3 September 2005
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