The Navy will not allow the City and County of Honolulu to locate a new landfill on Waipio Peninsula near Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, the city announced Tuesday.
The city says the proposed Navy-owned site could have replaced the nearly 35-year-old Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill in Kapolei, originally slated to close by 1997.
Closure of the existing 200-acre landfill near Ko Olina is now scheduled for 2028, though the city says its dump won't reach full capacity until 2036.
The Navy's decision, via an April 12 letter signed by Adm. John C. Aquilino, commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, was based on concerns regarding the site's proximity to near-shore waters and “the Navy's mission critical operations and training activities in the vicinity of the Waipio Peninsula,” the city stated in a news release.
Navy officials in Hawaii also notified Mayor Rick Blangiardi last week that the military is “unable to support the development of a landfill on this property,” eliminating it from the city's consideration, the news release adds.
Starting in 2023, Blangiardi and city Managing Director Michael Formby engaged in discussions with Aquilino and other U.S. military leaders to gain assistance in siting a new landfill on Oahu. To that end, four possible alternate sites, all on federally owned land in West Oahu and the Windward side, were under consideration, the city says.
Those sites included Lualualei in Waianae, Iroquois…
