LAHAINA, Hawaii — Tucked behind a wind-swept hilltop a short distance from Eddy Garcia’s lush Maui farm is a construction project prompted by the catastrophic Lahaina wildfire that has Garcia up in arms.
Work crews using heavy machinery have been working for weeks on what government officials call a “temporary containment site” for the mountain of ash and debris left behind by the blaze. Some locals like Garcia have questioned whether the project foreshadows a permanent “toxic dump” in Olowalu — a sleepy seaside enclave a few miles south of Lahaina — that would pose a potential threat to his livelihood and the environment.
Garcia, who’s made a career out of growing organic produce using earthworms to improve his soil, says even the temporary site, up for final approval this week, must be stopped and has emerged as one of its most vocal opponents. He helped to organize a December demonstration along the highway leading to the site and to collect thousands of signatures on a petition opposing the project.
“I’m fighting for my community and future generations,” he said.
County officials insist a decision on where to permanently bury the debris remains on hold. The temporary storage site would be safeguarded until the permanent landfill is completed by a “high density liner” that creates an airtight seal, officials say. Once the debris is switched to the permanent site, the plan calls for restoring the temporary one to its original condition. Officials insist that the temporary site will not become a permanent site, although a permanent one could be adjacent.
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But Garcia believes allowing the temporary site sets the stage for contamination of the land and sea with hazardous substances — arsenic, lead, dioxins — cooked up by a wind-driven inferno that killed at least 100 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes and other structures in August.
Critics warn that one of the country’s most sensitive reef systems also would be at risk.
“You’re going to take a place that’s not contaminated — right on top of a water table, a few hundred yards from the ocean — and you’re going to dump some of the most toxic substances known to man in this hole?” Garcia said after stepping out of a trailer near his farm that he’s converted into an anti-landfill war room plastered with maps and whiteboards scribbled with talking points. “It’s ludicrous.”
Garcia, 59, has sought to stir up the resistance by flooding the website for his regenerative agriculture business, Living Earth Systems, with arguments that Maui County is taking a shortsighted approach, under an emergency proclamation, to a long-term problem. An Instagram account has featured video footage shot by drone showing crews working into the night to finish the interim site in time to begin receiving the fire debris if the Maui County Council gives final approval later this week.
Several people echoed Garcia’s pessimism on Jan. 2 during a packed council meeting on the excavation of the pit on state land to temporarily store waste. County officials said they chose the spot as a “remote dry and secure” alternative to potential sites that were considered too close to populated areas and too far from Lahaina.
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“There’s been one word that we’ve been hearing over and over and over again — ‘temporary,’ that this is just a temporary site,” one of the audience members, Will Wilkerson, said during public comments. “I think it would be honest in this chamber to acknowledge that there’s probably a 99 percent chance that the temporary site will become a final site.”
Thelma Kaahui, who said her family has lived in Olowalu for generations, criticized the council as “taking a soft stand” on the issue.
“The whole process,” she said, “smells bad.”
County Mayor Richard Bissen conceded that “it’s not a perfect situation.”
But Bissen and other officials say the county is taking proper precautions to protect the ecosystem while meeting the demands of residents eager to have lots cleared so they can start rebuilding Lahaina and shorten what under any scenario is expected to be a years-long recovery.
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Early mitigation efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency included removal of hazardous household waste like batteries, cleaners and pesticides that was shipped off the island for disposal elsewhere. Steel and concrete were also separated for recycling.
Officials say what remains is an estimated 400,000 cubic yards of smaller particle debris still laced with toxic substances that needs to be removed from an “uncontrolled environment” — a scorched Lahaina exposed to wind and rain — to a temporary “controlled environment” — the covered, lined pit in Olowalu that Garcia says is rife with design flaws — until a permanent site is constructed.
The approach is considered “the best and safest way to reduce the risk to Lahaina residents and the environment,” Federal Emergency Management Agency official Bob Fenton said at the recent county council meeting.
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The government decided against trying to move the debris off-island, saying it could cost billions of dollars and risked spreading contamination while in transit. The idea was also rejected in part because it’s believed the ashes still contain human remains.
Some people “who have lost loved ones have expressed wanting to keep ashes close to home in West Maui,” Bissen said at the meeting.
Any permanent landfill would be sealed with two layers of an impermeable material designed to stop any pollutants from leaching into the groundwater or watershed. And officials have spoken of testing groundwater contamination over the next 30 years.
Despite the reassurances, environmental groups like the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii have urged taking a more cautious approach given that the 939-acre Olowalu reef is home to the largest known manta ray population in the United States and a source of coral larvae for the reefs of Lanai, Molokai and West Maui.
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Instead of 30 years of contamination monitoring, “I would hope we are thinking in terms of 100 or 200 years or more,” a conservancy official, Scott Crawford, has testified. The issue, he added, is whether placing a landfill so close to the ocean will “add an additional stressor that could eventually have seriously detrimental impacts on this vital reef ecosystem.”
Others have favored treating the ash and debris through bioremediation — the use of microorganisms to break down pollutants — before they are put into the ground.
For now, the council is expected to go ahead with a vote on Friday that would green-light removal of an amount of charred material so massive that it will take more than 130 semi-trucks and 300 days to move it.
Despite all the concerns, the mayor has asked his constituents to maintain their compassion.
People “must unite around the shared urgency of returning our survivors to their parcels while keeping everyone safe and allowing them to start the long road of rebuilding their lives,” Bissen said.
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