Proposed wastewater project is flush with challenges

It’s not the kind of project that inspires a community celebration, but a $100 million-plus upgrade to the Kealakehe sewer plant could help the environment while sending treated wastewater to thirsty North Kona landscapes.

The project is one of the most expensive the county has ever undertaken and its first effort to treat wastewater to a level approved by the state Department of Health for irrigation of crops and most pastureland.

It’s a project long in the making, and it’s been beset with a multitude of challenges. Getting over the “yuck factor” is one those, said Richard Bennett, president of Applied Life Sciences LLC and vice chairman of the county Environmental Management Commission.

Bennett said the county should concentrate on supplying the treated water, known as R-1, free to public parks rather than selling it to private businesses and golf courses. That would help educate the public about the safety of the reused water, he said.

“Once we get higher quality reclaimed water, I firmly believe there will be a high demand for it,” Bennett said. “It’s going to make our drinking water resources go much, much further.”

Getting the public on board is essential, even if what happens to their waste after they flush is a topic most don’t want to talk about.

“This is the most important project in my district, even though it’s not very glamorous,” North Kona Councilwoman Karen Eoff said earlier this year. “But it is serious.”

“When we do the wastewater treatment plant celebration, nobody comes. No camera, no maile lei,” Mayor Billy Kenoi quipped at a March 23 speech to the Japanese Chamber of Commerce, adding that everyone loves grand openings of parks and roads.

The Department of Environmental Management plans community meetings starting in January as it works toward an environmental impact statement for the project, Environmental Management Director Bobby Jean Leithead Todd said Friday. The county hopes to complete the project within three years.

Bennett and other members of the Environmental Management Commission, however, think the county must also address leaky sewer pipes carrying waste to the sewer plant.

“A critical concern is the level of chlorides (salt) in the water which impacts the R-1 usage for irrigation purposes,” said a Nov. 13 letter to the county’s state legislative delegation signed by Environmental Management Commission Chairman James Fritz.

The commission wants the state Department of Health to be given funding to conduct tests of private sewer laterals for any suspected infiltration or the authority to compel private property owners to inspect their sewer lines.

Bennett said saltwater infiltration is such a serious problem it could doom the R-1 project.

“The chloride in the water is alarmingly high, so it will be extremely toxic to vegetation,” Bennett said Friday. “Asking people to irrigate with that water is a prescription for failure.”

Not only should the county capture as much of the reusable water as possible, every drop of water that’s filtered, cleaned and put to good use is that much less pollution threatening the near-shore waters off the Kona Coast, Eoff said.

The Kealakehe plant currently treats water to the lower R-3 standard, then chlorinates the effluent to further sanitize it.

The effluent pours into a sump, or pit, near the Kealakehe Police Station.

Environmentalists have worried about that outfall for years, and some have threatened to sue.

One of those is Stephen Holmes, a former councilman for the City and County of Honolulu and state conservation chairman for the Sierra Club, which took Maui County to court over its wastewater discharge issues.

“It’s a resource. It has value,” Holmes told the Hawaii County Council earlier this year. “That’s why you don’t dump it in a hole in the ground.”

Before the upgrades can go into place, the county needs to complete a $23 million sludge removal project at the plant. Costs increased on that project when the county discovered it needed to replace badly eroded liners in three of the lagoons.

That work, which will also allow the plant to operate at its intended 5.1 million gallons per day capacity, is hamstrung by the need to accommodate the nesting and breeding seasons of an endangered Hawaiian bird that lives near the plant.

The first part of the R-1 project is a $54 million upgrade to the sewer plant. Now in the planning stage, it will include a large soil aquifer treatment pond, a filtration system to remove phosphorous from the effluent.

The next phase is a $50 million distribution project to install reuse pipes from the sewer plant to Old Kona Airport Park, Queen Liliuokalani Trust property, Kohanaiki golf course and the long-anticipated Kealakehe Regional Park.

The water would be stored in a tank uphill, and gravity would feed the water to its destination.

Purple pipes are already lining the roadway in some areas, but a recently announced one-year delay to the construction of Queen Kaahumanu Highway could also slow the pipeline project. The county has spent $3.5 million for piping so far.

While all the parties involved seem to agree it’s a shame not to use water that ultimately finds its way to the ocean rather than onto the landscaping, there is disagreement on how harmful the current discharge is to marine life.

“The wastewater discharge from Kealakehe Wastewater Treatment Plant adds considerable nutrients to the ground water and hence the sea each year,” Bennett said. “A number of scientific investigations have measured elevated nutrients in the local coastal waters coincident with other measures of ground- and wastewater.”

Leithead Todd, however, points to a dye test some years ago and a more recent University of Hawaii coral survey showing little impact.

“They found no evidence of damage to coral,” Leithead Todd said of the UH study. “They said the coral reef offshore from the plant looks healthy.”

Email Nancy Cook Lauer at ncook-lauer@westhawaiitoday.com.