Wednesday, February 26, 2 a.m. The Little Annou, a Maltese-registered freighter, pulls into the Port of Hilo. The hatches to its huge holds open and its cranes unfold. The first of dozens of freight trucks that are queued up along the dock’s perimeter noisily grinds its gears and rolls under the hopper. Within minutes, its trailer is filled with a couple of tons of coal and the truck is on its way to Pepe`ekeo, some 10 miles north of Hilo. There the coal is dumped at the Hilo Coast Power Company and the truck rumbles back to port.
For the next three days, the cycle continues around the clock, broken only by the visit of the Norwegian Wind on Friday. Within minutes of the cruise ship sailing out of the harbor, the Little Annou is once more pushed against the pier. Five hours later, it has finished unloading its cargo of Queensland coal. At 12:45 a.m. on March 1, the empty ship sets sail.
Until the mid-1990s, the freighters that most frequently visited the Port of Hilo carried off the sweet products of Hawai`i’s cane fields. But since sugar’s demise, the power that was once supplied by bagasse (what’s left over after sugar is pressed out of cane) has been replaced by power from coal, and ships carrying high-quality, low-sulfur washed Australian coal now make regular port calls to Hilo.
In contrast to the economic wounds inflicted by sugar’s demise, which were immediate and deep, the changes brought about by the transition to a coal-fueled power plant have been slower to manifest themselves. Today, perched on 10 acres along the coast next door to the power plant at Pepe`ekeo is a mound that by now probably holds some 80,000 tons of coal ash, roughly 10 to 12 percent of the total volume of coal that has been burned at the plant for more than a decade, first as a supplementary fuel, and since about 1995, as the primary fuel. At 1.7 tons per cubic yard of compacted dry ash, that comes to around 50,000 cubic yards of ash. At its highest point, the pile is more than 50 feet high. Trees and weedy plants, crisscrossed by cow paths, grow along its slopes and on its flat summit. On a recent sunny day, a herd of cows and their calves had ascended the artificial pu`u, seeking relief from the heat in the shade of a spindly albizia grove.
Each month that the plant is in operation, between 500 and 1,000 tons of coal ash are added to the heap, now clearly visible as a landmark on flights in and out of Hilo. And while deposits mount, there are virtually no withdrawals. Although the Department of Health has issued HCPC a permit that would allow it to sell or otherwise distribute the ash for uses including ground cover for a bicycle track, raw material in cement manufacture, soil amendment, and landfill cover, no one on the Big Island seems willing to take it in volumes that could make a dent in the growing pile.
An Expired Permit
Whether the ash heap poses a risk to the environment is a question that is up for debate. Tests conducted on the ash show that its content of metals and other possible chemicals of concern is comparable to that in surrounding soils. Tests intended to show the potential for those metals leaching out (through rainwater infiltration, for example) and entering surface or ground water suggest that this, too, is an unlikely pathway of exposure, either to the public or the environment.
Still, the state Department of Health has determined that the site should be regulated as a waste facility, which entails regular tests of the ash pile to make sure nothing about its chemical profile changes in a way that might impact human or environmental health.
And it is in this area that the HCPC operations have been most controversial.
For one thing, there is no current permit regulating the ash heap. The most recent permit expired March 3, 2002. Not until November 20, 2002, did the DOH receive an application for a permit renewal.
The expired permit was issued not with DOH-approved regulations on operations, but rather by default, since the state department’s Solid and Hazardous Waste Branch was unable to process the permit application within 180 days of its having been submitted.
Under the default permit, HCPC was supposed to run the waste pile in accordance with an operation plan it had submitted – a plan that, among other things, placed the maximum capacity at 40,000 tons of ash. A July 1999 inspection by representatives from the DOH Office of Solid Waste Management, acting on a complaint, found no berm or other containment system had been built to keep runoff from the waste pile from entering the ocean. Also, the company had not conducted testing and monitoring, as it had committed to do in the operating plan, may have distributed some of the coal ash to the public without conducting necessary waste characterization tests, and had long ago exceeded the 40,000-ton limit.
Following the inspection, a warning letter was sent to HCPC in October 1999. It ordered HCPC to conduct a site investigation to determine the true extent of the stockpile and conduct waste characterization tests on the ash. “Depending on the results of the site investigation and risk assessment,” wrote Steven Chang, chief of the Solid and Hazardous Waste Branch, “your options may include É (a) removal of the waste material to a permitted disposal facility; (b) capping the waste material in place É; and/or (c) reuse of the ash residue.”
Despite the stern tone of Chang’s letter and his demand for an answer within 30 calendar days, it went unanswered for months. In May 2000, after HCPC had inquired about obtaining a permit for use of the coal ash, Chang raised once more the issues brought out in the earlier demand for corrective action.
On May 30, Richard T. Hill, vice president of Brewer Environmental Industries, owner of HCPC, responded to Chang: “With regard to the October 28, 1999 DOH letter, HCPC did not respond in writing to this letter, as it was our understanding that the DOH was to rescind, revise, and reissue this letter. This understanding was based on the meeting between DOH and HCPC representatives É which was held on November 10, 1999 at the DOH office in Honolulu. We were awaiting receipt of the revised letter from your office.”
Over the next two years, HCPC assembled the reports needed to address Chang’s demands. Still, by the end of 2001, the Department of Health was not satisfied with progress made by HCPC toward addressing outstanding violations. On December 18, 2001, deputy Health director Gary Gill forwarded to HCPC a “consent agreement,” which, if signed by the company’s representatives, would bring to a resolution the matter of ongoing violations, which included: exceeding by more than 35 percent the permitted storage capacity of 40,000 tons of coal ash; failing to provide a berm to prevent surface runoff, and failure to conduct regular testing and monitoring. In addition to corrective actions, the consent agreement provided for fines totaling $18,300.
More than a year later, the agreement has not yet been signed by HCPC or Brewer Environmental Industries. Lene Ichinotsubo, head of the Solid Waste Branch, says that if the agreement isn’t in the file (and Environment Hawai`i did not find it there), then it has not been completed. She would not provide additional information.
As to what oversight ability the DOH has with respect to a site that has no permit, Ichinotsubo was vague: “State regulations would apply,” she said. As to the timetable for processing the pending application, she had no timetable, but said last month that a site visit was planned in connection with the permitting process.
Take a Number
The proposed consent agreement from the Office of Solid Waste Management landed at HCPC on top of a similar demand from the Environmental Protection Agency Region IX that the company address problems associated with its discharges of water from the plant into the ocean. The EPA’s “Findings of Violation and Order for Compliance” of March 15, 2001, alleged that for the previous five years, HCPC had violated conditions of its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit in regard to temperature limits on effluent, maximum daily flows, managing storm water runoff, prohibitions against unpermitted discharges, and a host of requirements for sampling and monitoring.
Under permit terms, the plant can discharge to the ocean no more than 21 million gallons a day of water (most of it cooling water used in the generating plant). In the 60 months between January 1996 and December 2000, the EPA alleged, the average daily maximum flows, calculated on a monthly basis, had been violated 50 times.
In every one of those 60 months, the daily maximum temperature of 32¡ C (89.6¡F) for discharge water had been exceeded, at times by as much as 13.9¡ C. (This occurred in March 1996, when a daily maximum temperature hit 114.6¡ F.) For most months, the average temperatures of discharges exceeded the permitted limit of 30.0¡ C (88¡ F).
The compliance order had grown out of a site visit in January 2001. In August, Jeremy Johnstone of the EPA and Paul Nielsen of the Department of Health Clean Water Branch visited the plant again to assess progress that HCPC had made toward coming into compliance with Clean Water Act requirements. On the day of their visit, August 10, the plant was not operating. Still, “inspectors observed several NPDES violations and other areas of concern,” according to an October modification to the March 2001 “Findings of ViolationÉ”
“In particular,” the modification states, “the inspectors observed unpermitted, non-storm water discharges as well as poor housekeeping practices associated with ongoing maintenance shutdown activities. They observed a complete lack of storm water Best Management Practices (BMPs) for these activities which resulted in the discharge of pollutants along with the non-storm water discharges.” A Storm Water Pollution Control Plan that HCPC had submitted just a few weeks earlier, in response to the March “Findings,” “must be further revised to include appropriate BMPs for use” during periods of maintenance, the EPA found.
The EPA demanded another revision to the storm-water control plan within 30 days and implementation of all identified best-management practices no later than 60 days.
Finally, the agency required HCPC either to submit an application to modify its existing NPDES permit to allow for discharge of runoff from the ash settling ponds and the “temporary” coal ash stockpile, or to take “all steps necessary” to make sure that no storm-water runoff from these areas ended up in the ocean.
On yet another front, HCPC was finding itself under critical scrutiny from DOH regulators. In September, a month before the EPA’s modification to its Clean Water Act order, the Department of Health’s Clean Air Branch gave the company “informal written notice that a violation” of its emissions permit has occurred. The September 19, 2001, letter from Clean Air Branch manager Wilfred Nagamine cited two violations observed on a June 29 inspection: first, the discharges from the plant’s stack were darker than allowed during two consecutive six-minute periods; and second, semi-annual reports for the second half of 2000 were submitted about three months later than the required deadline of 60 days past the end of the reporting period.
Changing Hands, Washing Hands
To comply with the EPA order that HCPC amend its NPDES permit, HCPC submitted a permit modification request in November 2001. By August 2002, the Department of Health had provided Brewer Environmental Industries, parent company of HCPC, with a draft permit for comment.
One of the issues of concern to the EPA was the lack of any system to control runoff from the ash pile. The draft permit proposed including runoff from this area under the HCPC permit. A year earlier, however, the ash pile and the land under it had been transferred to Continental Pacific, LLC, a company that is subdividing much of the former cane land around the plant into upscale residential-agricultural lots.
In commenting on the proposed changes to the draft NPDES permit, BEI president Stephen W. Knox argued that HCPC should not have any responsibility for runoff from two of the identified outfalls numbered 002 and 003. Outfall 002 had not been used since the plantation folded, but HCPC has proposed to reopen it to drain stormwater from the ash stockpile. Outfall 003, which had not been permitted before, also conveys runoff from the ash pile in a fashion that seems improvised rather than engineered. According to HCPC’s “Storm Water Pollution Control Plan, “Runoff is conveyed down the asphalt road and concrete swale to an open area that consist [sic] of light grass, brush, and broken pavement. Prior to reaching the cliff, the runoff in [sic] intercepted by a trench which conveys the runoff to an old foundation that overhangs the cliff. The foundation is designated as Outfall 003.”
Both outfalls are on property now owned by Continental Pacific. “As a result of the sale of the property and coal ash, HCPC is only considered the generator of the ash and is not responsible for the disposition of the ash,” Knox wrote in a letter commenting on the draft NPDES permit modification. “Therefore, we believe the new property owner and operator, that is Pacific Continental [sic], should be responsible for the discharge from its operations.”
The DOH didn’t buy it. “The Department recognizes that the property under the coal ash pile is owned by Pacific Continental [sic], however HCPC is currently considered the operator of the facility and therefore subject to coverage under the draft modified permit,” the DOH wrote in response.
In late February, the period for public comment on the draft permit modification closed with no substantive objections having been received, said Mark Tomomitsu of the DOH Clean Water Branch. He expected that the final permit would be issued by the end of March.
Temporary?
Both the Department of Health and HCPC continue to call the ash pile temporary. However, with the pile growing daily and no sign of any ash takers on the horizon, the coal ash pile may well be permanent, by any reasonable standard.
This wasn’t quite what Jere Henderson, managing member of Continental Pacific, had in mind when he bought the land. “We had to agree to let Brewer continue dumping the coal ash on that pile.” Under terms of the agreement between the two companies attached to the permit application, Brewer has the right to continue to dump coal ash from the HCPC plant, “and no other substances,” for up to 20 years. In return, the agreement gives Continental Pacific the right to “move or remove Coal Ash at any time.”
“The Department of Health refers to it as a temporary stockpile, but I don’t know how temporary it is,” Henderson told Environment Hawai`i. He said he had been researching the uses for coal ash, such as in road beds, but had not found a market for the ash yet.
Note: By press time, HCPC had not responded to questions submitted in writing.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 13, Number 10 April 2003