A three-year extension the city was granted on closing the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill will not be enough time to establish an alternative landfill, a city official said yesterday.

The city will "more likely than not" need to return to the state Land Use Commission to ask for more time, city Environmental Services Director Tim Steinberger said.

Commission members on Thursday gave the city a three-year extension, adding they would not grant any more time.

The city had asked for 15 years, and had repeatedly said it would take five to seven years to put up a new landfill elsewhere.

Steinberger said city attorneys are reviewing their options including a possible appeal.

Asked if the city will need more than three years for the current landfill, Steinberger said: "I would say in order to site a new landfill and construct a new landfill, yes."

That means the city will "more likely than not" need to go back to the Land Use Commission, he said.

Commission members said they picked a three-year extension as a compromise.

Opponents of the landfill wanted it closed on Nov. 1, which was the date the commission gave when the city last asked for an extension in May 2008.

The city's integrated solid waste management plan calls for identifying the site of a new landfill in 2011. Following Thursday's decision, that timetable will have to move up to early next year, Steinberger said.

Identifying potential sites will probably take a year to do, he said. That would then be followed by an environmental assessment and the convening of a site selection committee.

"This process alone you're probably looking at a minimum of two years," he said.

When a site is selected, a series of geotechnical tests would need to be conducted to determine if it is appropriate for a landfill, which would take another year, Steinberger said.

The city would then need to get land use approvals before construction could begin, he said.

Steinberger said a seven-year timeline is "optimistic."

The process cannot start until next year because the city must first go through the procurement process to select a consultant to study the potential sites, which will take at lest four months, he said.

City Council Chairman Todd Apo, among the strongest proponents for shutting down the landfill, said the city doesn't need to go through that headache.

The three-year extension granted by commissioners is designed to coincide with the scheduled opening of a third boiler at the city's waste-to-energy H-Power facility at Kalaeloa, Apo said.

The landfill currently accepts 300,000 tons of waste a year and the third boiler is designed to process 300,000 tons annually, he said.

MAINLAND OPTION

The LUC allowed for the landfill to stay open beyond July 31, 2012, for ash and residue that is the byproduct of H-Power, meaning those factors don't need to enter into an equation about going in for another permit, Apo said.

The Hannemann administration has estimated that with the third boiler, there would still be a need to dispose of 80,000 tons of trash a year, Apo said. But that can be handled by Hawaiian Waste Systems, which is scheduled to begin transporting up to 100,000 tons of trash a year to the Mainland beginning Monday.

That contract is supposed to be a temporary one that runs out when the third boiler becomes operational. But Apo said there's no reason why a new contract can't be issued for Hawaiian Waste or another shipper.

Apo noted that the city also has been actively seeking proposals for other alternative waste disposal programs that could be ready to divert more trash away from the waste stream in three years' time.

Such alternative methods were considered largely impractical in the past because of the large tonnage that needed to be accepted, Apo said. "Now, we're no longer needing for 300,000 tons (to be processed); it's just 80,000," he said.

Mayor Mufi Hannemann yesterday dismissed the notion that shipping waste to the Mainland could be a long-term solution.

"We've always said shipping is an interim solution," Hannemann said.

'GAME OF CHICKEN'

If the city cannot continue to use Waimanalo Gulch, the mayor said, previous studies have pointed to Nanakuli as the best alternative site. That's an option "I very much am opposed to," he said.

But finding another landfill site outside of the Leeward Coast will take more time than opponents of the landfill want, he said.

Hannemann said he is pleased the commission acknowledged there is a continued need for a landfill. He reiterated that it was former Mayor Jeremy Harris, and not him, who promised to shut down the landfill. Harris promised in 2003 that the landfill would be shut down by 2008.

"So if the Land Use Commission is saying that we need to shut it down sooner than we need to, they need to face the music also ... where does that landfill go?" Hannemann asked.

Abbey Seth Mayer, director of the state Office of Planning, said he's not buying the Hannemann administration's argument that the landfill needs to be open beyond three years.

"They were supposed to close in 2003, they were supposed to close again in 2008, they were supposed to close again this year, so to say that somehow this is being sprung upon them ... they've been playing this game of chicken where they're not selecting a new site and saying 'Well, that's our only hope' and come back," Mayer said.

"I think what the commission said, what (the opponents) said, what our office said is we're all tired of that. If they have to ship everything going forward or find some other alternatives to landfilling, then they've put themselves in that position. No one else has."