After a yearslong search filled with pivots and delays, Honolulu city leaders announced on Tuesday plans to place Oʻahu’s new municipal landfill on land belonging to Dole Food Co. outside of Wahiawā.

The decision goes against the recommendation of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply, which opposes placing the landfill above the island’s drinking water. Other officials say technological advances make it feasible to place a landfill above the island’s aquifer with no risk of contamination.

Oʻahu’s only current landfill, in Nānākuli’s Waimānalo Gulch, opened in 1989. It’s scheduled to close in 2028, per a condition in the state permit that allows the landfill to operate.

That puts a tight timeline on the city’s effort to find a new location, which has been bogged down by an array of restrictions. Tuesday’s announcement of the site selection came ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline.

Roger Babcock, Honolulu’s director of environmental services, estimated the cost of opening the new landfill would be about $200 million. Babcock said he didn’t have an estimate for the cost of closing the existing landfill, a process governed by federal rules.

The Dole Foods parcel under consideration is more than 2,000 acres. Honolulu said it needs about 150 acres for the landfill, so it’s possible the city could target a small subdivision of the overall parcel. It’s unclear how much this specific area of land will cost.

It’s also unclear whether Dole, which Mayor Rick Blangiardi said he called Tuesday morning, would be open to selling it. Blangiardi said the discussion was “cordial.” If they’re not willing, Babcock said the city could work to condemn and seize the land under eminent domain.

Dole Food Co. did not respond to a request for comment.

The landfill would be in council member Matt Weyer’s district. In an interview after the press conference announcing the site selection, Weyer said he opposes this location because of the potential threat to the island’s drinking water, despite assurances from the mayor and Babcock.

“The Titanic was ‘unsinkable,’” Weyer said. Rep. Sean Quinlan, who represents the district in the Legislature, issued a press release also opposing the decision out of concern for the water supply.

“I respect the mayor and administration for going through the analysis,” Weyer said. “But in terms of all the options on the table, as I’ve stated, protecting our drinking water should be the number one.”

Blangiardi said the new landfill wouldn’t be like the landfills of yesteryear.

“Dumps were dumps — with seagulls all over the place, and a smell a half a mile away. Cats and rats running rampant, whenever you went out to the site,” the mayor said. “This is the antithesis of that.”

He said it would instead be like the current landfill, which is mostly composed of buried ash from the city’s waste-to-energy plant H-Power. That ash sits above a liner to prevent contamination, and Babcock said there hasn’t been a leak since it opened in 1989.

The new location would have two layers of liner and sit about 800 feet above the aquifer, and the liquid that oozes out of trash — leachate — would be pumped to the surface for delivery to a wastewater treatment plant. The city would also check water supply quality through nearby monitoring wells.

“There’s really nothing to leak,” Babcock said.

But Ernie Lau, manager and chief engineer of the Board of Water Supply, said during Tuesday’s press conference that, in the past, pesticides and herbicides used to help grow pineapples weren’t thought of as threats.

“The experts at the time felt that it would never reach the groundwater aquifer,” he said. “Fast forward about 40 years later, we’re still treating for some of those contaminants.”

The process to site the new landfill has been hampered by an array of regulations, including federal restrictions that prohibit landfills from being too close to airports, in floodplains or in tsunami zones.

State restrictions, imposed by a 2020 law known as Act 73, prohibit landfills from being within a half-mile of schools, residences and hospitals. It also prohibits them from being within conservation districts.

In 2022, a mayor-appointed citizens advisory board rejected six proposed locations between Central Oʻahu and the North Shore after officials from the Board of Water Supply said they were concerned the sites could contaminate the island’s drinking water aquifer.

That was a blow to the city’s deadline to name a site by the end of the year. When the deadline came, Blangiardi requested a two-year extension to the end of 2024. Despite the Waiʻanae Coast’s dryer climate — an advantage when it comes to siting landfills — Blangiardi has promised not to consider it, citing environmental justice. That region has hosted the island’s trash for more than 30 years.

Federal land was the next idea. It included military-controlled areas like Waimānalo’s Bellows Air Force base, Ewa’s Iroquois Point and the Waipiʻo Peninsula. 

By April, the city’s top choice was Waipi’o. But that would have displaced Waipi’o Soccer Complex, and it fell through anyway when the U.S. Navy, which controls the land, declined to let the city use it for trash.

Opening a new landfill takes about eight years, according to testimony from managing director Mike Formby at a March City Council meeting. But the current landfill’s permit requires it to close in less than four years, meaning officials need to figure out where to put trash in the meantime.

The city is considering shipping trash off island, but Blangiardi said Tuesday that path likely wouldn’t be pursued because it could raise costs for residents. Instead, he said the city may apply to extend the current permit another few years until the new landfill is operational.

Civil Beat’s community health coverage is supported by the Cooke Foundation, Atherton Family Foundation and Papa Ola Lokahi.