The day after a man was sentenced to prison in connection with a federal raid last year of an illegal dump site on the Wai'anae Coast, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it had completed its cleanup of the site and removed more than 1,000 tons of solid and hazardous waste materials at a cost of more than $500,000.

"It was a large cleanup," Dean Higuchi, EPA spokesman, said yesterday. "What you're looking at is waste oil, paints, solvents and grease. There were a lot of different things out there — from propane cylinders to pallets of old lead acid car batteries. It's just a lot of stuff."

That stuff included abandoned cylinders and leaky 55-gallon oil drums, chemical containers, contaminated soil, commercial food scraps, various metals and heavy equipment.

Tons of nonhazardous waste have yet to be removed by the state.

Armed federal agents raided the 10-acre site at 87-1161 Hakimo Road on May, 13, 2008. Agents with the EPA's Criminal Investigation Division, along with officers from a number of other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, executed a search warrant and took over the property.

Arrested at the scene were convicted felons Richard Allen Botelho and Dwayne Luis Dano. Both later pleaded guilty to federal fire arms violations. Botelho was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release. Dano was sentenced last Nov. 10 to 18 months in prison plus three years of supervised release.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall Silverberg yesterday said no further charges are expected in the case. Although neither Botelho nor Dano was charged with illegal dumping, Botelho's sentencing ended the case.

"The two people who were living there were both prosecuted for serious federal firearms violations. And they've both been sentenced to prison. The site has been cleaned up and at this point our intent is to close out the matter," Silverberg said.

He said any potential sentence the two would have faced for illegal dumping would have been less than the prison terms they received for the firearms violations.

"Normally, those types of charges are imposed concurrently," he said. "So, in terms of using prosecutorial resources — and given the fact that they've both been convicted of federal firearms violations and they're both going to prison — it doesn't make any sense to pursue a complicated investigation that would not likely have resulted in any additional term of imprisonment."

ENFORCING EPA LAWS

The Hakimo Road raid was part of an an initiative to enforce EPA laws in Hawai'i. Investigators were looking at a number of illegal dump sites in West O'ahu, authorities said at the time.

Since then, in a separate incident, two men have been indicted on several counts of illegally storing and transporting hazardous wastes and chemicals, as well as mail fraud and scheming to defraud the state of Hawai'i, Silverberg said.

Another illegal dumping investigation is continuing as part of the same initiative, which is known as "Operation E Ola Pono 2008," he said.

Daniel Meer, assistant director of the EPA Pacific Southwest Region's Superfund Division, said the EPA funded the Hakimo Road cleanup to eliminate the hazards to prevent any risk to residents and the environment. Although the EPA ordered the property owner to do the work, the situation required the EPA to take steps to ensure the wastes were properly disposed.

Higuchi said the EPA cleanup concentrated on five dump sites on the Hakimo land that contained the hazardous materials. He said federal cleanup crews did soil samples at the five dump sites on the property and found no trace of metals contamination.

"So we got lucky on that," he said.

CLEARING OTHER WASTE

The state will now address the nonhazardous materials remaining at the site — such as tons of old tires and other solid wastes, said Steven Chang, chief of the solid and hazardous waste branch at the Department of Health.

"Our focus has primarily been securing the property and having testing done to find the extent of the contamination," Chang said.

While Botelho and Dano were living on the property at the time of the raid, neither were property owners, he said.

"There was an individual who had leased the property and was doing some farming, but had also invited some other people to do sand blasting and auto salvaging operations, which were not consistent with the intent of the property — which was agricultural use," Chang said.

"That's where we find the batteries, scrapped cars, construction demolition materials being buried on site, and stuff like that."

Ultimately, Chang said, the responsibility for cleaning up the property comes down to the owner.

"Typically, we work with the landowner to do further cleanup," said Grace Simmons, supervisor of hazardous wastes for the department. "The EPA mainly looked at three or four specific, highly contaminated areas. We're looking at assessing the entire 10-acre property."

What that cleanup might entail or cost can't be estimated until the assessment is completed, Chang said.