Senate approves bond issue for waste-to-energy plant
Pacific Business News (Honolulu) - by Ben DiPietro
Even though Hawaii County has yet to decide on a plan to replace the soon-to-be-closed Hilo landfill, one island company has secured approval from lawmakers for $25 million to build a waste-to-energy conversion facility north of Hilo.
Brewer Environmental Services Inc. wants to build a plant that uses waste that would be normally dumped in a landfill to generate electricity, in much the same way Honolulu uses trash to create energy at its H-Power plant along the Leeward Oahu coast.
The measure won approval last week from the Senate Ways and Means Committee and now heads to the Senate for a full vote.
"This brand new state-of-the-art facility will be designed to incinerate up to 300 tons per day of municipal solid waste and will be able to handle all of the projected solid municipal waste of East Hawaii for the next 30 years," says Richard Hill, executive vice president of Brewer Environmental Industries.
The thermal energy produced through incineration will be sold to Hawaii Electric Light Co. Inc. for distribution to its customers islandwide, Hill says.
"A renewable resource will be recycled, avoiding the use of nonrenewable fuel oil," Hill says, adding the new facility would create 12 new jobs and would be situated on the site of the current Hilo Coast Power Company power generation plant in Pepeekeo.
County zoning laws already allow for the facility.
"We do not anticipate any problems with environmental compliance," Hill says.
The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism supports the intent of the bond issuance, saying waste-to-energy power plants can provide economic and environmental benefits to the state and are consistent with the state's energy objectives.
"Waste-to-energy facilities as proposed by Hilo Coast Power will alleviate solid waste disposal problems while converting biomass to usable energy," says department Director Seiji Naya.
The county is required by the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to close the Hilo landfill by 2003, says Sen. Lorraine Inouye, D-N. Kona-Hawi-Waimea, chairwoman of the Senate Water, Land, Energy and Environment Committee.
"The Hilo proposal is to take all the waste and do like the H-Power," Inouye says. "They're speaking with the mayor about assisting the county to get rid of the waste stream."
The landfill also is too small to handle future needs and is not lined, which is an EPA requirement, and that is leading to fears of possible groundwater contamination, Hill says.
He says it's impractical to haul east Hawaii's waste to the Puuanahulu landfill in Kona.
The proposed plant could provide an opportunity not only to dispose of the East Hawaii municipal waste in an environmentally acceptable manner, but the incineration process itself will produce "substantial electric energy that otherwise would have to be generated by burning fuel oil," Hill says.
"We believe a project of this nature will provide the most economic and environmentally friendly resolution of the county's solid waste disposal problem in east Hawaii," Hill says.
Hawaii County has no deal with Brewer Environmental Industries, and has not given approval for the company's plan, says Andy Levin, legislative adviser to Mayor Harry Kim.
"There is no project that's even been approved by the county. We are not taking a position on that bill," Levin says.
The county will wait for the results of a study looking into ways to deal with the landfill issue.
"We have no idea what the results of that study will be," Levin says. "We haven't even started hiring a consultant."
Former Mayor Steve Yamashiro issued a request for proposals in November, but new Mayor Kim wants to review all the possibilities before deciding on a course of action, says Inouye, a former mayor of the island who developed a waste recovery plan during her tenure in the early 1990s.
"Had the mayor that succeeded me [Yamashiro] used that plan to get rid of the waste and to close the Hilo landfill, we would not have this problem," Inouye says.
Reach Ben DiPietro by e-mail bdipietro@ bizjournals.com or by phone at 955-8039.
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