A recent audit by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of the Inspector General for Audits (Western Division) questioned Maui County’s use of $1,094,241 in federal funds for work associated with construction of the Lahaina sewage treatment plant from 1975 to 1992. In addition, the auditors withheld their approval of an expenditure of $1,219,909 for an unused effluent storage and disposal system built at the Lahaina plant. The federal share of that system comes to $914,932.
Double Billing
Total costs claimed by Maui County for design and construction of the Lahaina sewage treatment plant are $17,094,631, the audit states. Of that amount, auditors disallowed $1,458,988, the federal share of which comes to $1,094,241.
Specifically, the auditors disallowed $27,011 for engineering fees “claimed in excess of actual costs” and $1,431,977 of “ineligible construction costs.” This included costs for building a solids handling facility over and above costs for that purpose allowed by the state Department of Health, and costs amounting to $434,200 used for installation of unused aerobic digesters and sludge drying beds.
The digesters and drying beds, installed in 1975, “failed to perform as designed,” the audit report notes. “The county and its consultant were unable to correct the problems. Subsequently, the failed solids handling facilities, consisting of the digesters, DAFT [dissolved air flotation thickener], and sludge drying beds, were replaced with a new DAFT and EPA-funded belt filter presses. Consistent with EPA’s one-time funding policy, there is no reason to pay for the original digesters, DAFT and sludge drying beds, as well as the replacement DAFT and filter presses.”
Reclamation Awaits
When the Lahaina sewage treatment plant was built, the treated effluent was to have been used for agriculture irrigation. Instead, practically all the effluent has been shot down injection wells, which were intended to be used only as an emergency back-up means of effluent disposal.
The EPA inspector general did not specifically disallow the $1.2 million spent on the effluent storage and disposal system. Neither, however, did the inspector general allow these costs. “We are unable to accept the costs claimed … at this time because the county has not used the system as intended by the grant.”
Recently, Maui County has indicated that it intends to replace the unused facilities. For this reason, the inspector general recommended “that the costs only be disallowed if the county does not complete the reclamation facilities by the projected date. If the replacement facilities are completed as planned, and the county reclaims the effluent as originally intended by the grant, the costs claimed would be considered eligible for grant funding.”
According to Eassie Miller of the Wastewater Reclamation Division of the county’s Department of Public Works and Waste Management, he’s not aware of any fixed timetable for bringing the reclamation facilities on line. “We have a program in place for re-use of effluent in West Maui and South Maui,” he told Environment Hawai`i. “That schedule has been provided to EPA. That timetable is the only one I’m aware of.”
Central to the county’s plans for effluent re-use is the huge Villages of Leali`i project, planned by the state Housing Finance and Development Corporation. With that project held up in litigation over the state’s right to alienate ceded lands, the county’s effluent re-use plans could be in trouble, Miller acknowledged. “The EPA is aware of this,” he said.
Other elements in the county’s plans for effluent re-use include getting Amfac to use the treated effluent — up to 3 million gallons a day — at its Ka`anapali golf courses, Miller said. The county is also going to be pursuing re-use options with Maui Land and Pine, he said.
Miller said the county was undertaking to develop a rate structure to determine what the county would charge for delivery of treated effluent. The county would be selecting a consultant to do a rate study and assist in the development of rules and regulations concerning effluent re-use.
Construction contracts for work at the Lahaina plant covered by the audit span the years 1976 through 1988. As the audit notes, the plant was substantially expanded in 1985 “to accommodate growth in the Lahaina area.” This expansion, bringing its capacity up to 6.7 million gallons a day, was financed mostly by local developers. By the time that work was completed, “only the aeration basins, primary clarifiers, and chlorine contact chamber built by the original grant were used.”
The plant is undergoing a second expansion — this time to allow it to handle up to 9 million gallons per day.
Approval Hinges On Water Reclamation
As indicated above, original design plans for the Lahaina plant called for all of the effluent to be reclaimed. However, in early 1989, what little re-use of effluent there was stopped completely, and the four existing injection wells have since then taken all effluent — 5.7 million gallons a day on average. (Perhaps coincidentally, the first significant algae blooms off the Lahaina coast occurred in 1989.)
To provide 100 percent backup to peak flows (calculated at just over 10 million gallons a day), Maui County has sought the EPA’s approval to drill more injection wells. At first, the county sought approval for six new wells. More recently, the county has not asked for a specific number of wells, but rather wants to drill only as many as may be needed to bring the plant into compliance with the state’s 100 percent backup requirement.
The EPA, which must approve all requests for underground injection wells in Hawai`i, has tentatively granted its permission, with the reservations that the use of the new wells “is limited to emergency status conditions” and their use as “backup for daily operations is prohibited” — in other words, the same reservations that applied to the original four wells. The draft permit allows the first four wells to continue to be used as the primary means of effluent disposal, but limits the average daily injection rate, over a month’s time, to 6.7 mgd.
In an effort to allay concerns that the new injection wells, like the original ones, will be routinely used for effluent disposal, the EPA has attached a special condition to the Lahaina construction grant. That grant will not be closed out, nor will the $1.2 million spent on reclamation facilities be considered an allowable expense, until the county submits a reclamation schedule, which will result in no increase in effluent being discharged to the wells.
Enhanced Capacity?
Underlying Maui County’s request for new injection wells is the assumption that the wells in present use are incapable of handling more than approximately 10 million gallons a day of injectate. However, on January 31 — the same day that the EPA held a hearing on the draft permit in Lahaina — the county released new estimates of the existing wells’ capacity. Whereas before the combined capacity of the four wells had been thought to be about 13 million gallons a day, the county was now saying that recent flow tests conducted by their consultant indicated existing wells could handle up to 18 mgd — or, in other words, almost twice the calculated peak dry-weather flows.
Mike Ratte, an engineer with the county’s Wastewater Reclamation Division of its Department of Public Works and Waste Management, said that further flow testing will probably need to be done to verify the new capacity rating. The wells themselves have not changed, but Ratte said that improvements to the Lahaina plant made during its recent expansion — including installation of an effluent sand filter — have increased the quality of effluent. “Possibly due to that, the wells seem to have a little greater capacity,” he told Environment Hawai`i.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 5, Number 9 March 1995
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