The Maui County Environmental Management stonewalled the DIRE coalition and Save Kahului Harbor at their intervention in the SMA Permit Exemption hearing. By some real fast talking and misrepresentation, they managed to convince the Maui Planning Commission that drilling two new “replacement” injection wells a couple hundred feet away from the existing wells and putting in more piping was “refurbishment” and worthy of an exemption from SMA permit application.
Meanwhile Councilmembers Wayne Nishiki and Sol Kaho’ohalahala, fed up with the Tavares administration’s foot-dragging on bringing Maui County into compliance with the wishes of the residents to phase out injection wells (instead of building new ones) introduced language to force the Department of Environmental Management (known to many as the Department of Environmental Law Evasion) to at least draw up plans to disinfect the water and re-use it, prior to getting the money for their new injection wells.
In an overblown stalling technique, Dave Taylor, head of wastewater (aka “A Little Sewer Water Never Hurt Anyone“) claimed the design cost would be $1 million. To which we respond, maybe in your department, but not in the real world.
Since the 1998 EIS for the Kahului injection wells stated that it was both the intent and effect that the effluent in the wells go into the ocean, the County is violating the Clean Water Act. Fines for this are $32,000 per day per well or in excess of a quarter million dollars per day.
Councilmember Joe Pontanilla estimated that the construction to treat the sewage to R1 (e.g. disinfect it) and pipe it for re-use would be about $30,000,000. Sounds like a big number given the current budget crisis. But it is less than 4 months of fines that could be imposed at any time by the EPA.
When (not if) the EPA cracks down on the Kahului injection wells, we’ll have to just bite the bullet and pay those fines for however many months it takes to plan and construct the R1 treatment.
We can’t afford not to start planning for this immediately.
What You Can Do
Download our flyer. Print it out and hand it out everywhere.
Call or email your CouncilMembers and ask them to light a fire under the Wastewater Division to clean up our water before pushing it into the ocean.
I wonder how much it will cost the County when one of the 200 people who die each year in Hawai’i from drug-resistant staph decides to sue?
Given we’ve got professors stating the high levels of MRSA bacteria are most like from the injection wells, it will be a slam-dunk case.
Did you know that the 1998 EIS for Kahului Wastewater plant says that the intent and effect of injection wells is to discharge R2 treated sewage into the ocean?
Did you know that this water has not been disinfected (treated to R1) and is full of the same bacteria that came out of your toilet?
At any time the EPA can fine Maui County over a quarter of a million dollars per day until we clean up that water to R1. And we’d need to continue operating until we came into compliance. Six
months? More?
Four months of fines would pay the $30,000,000 to bring to the Kahului wastewater to R1 and install re-use piping. The prudent, fiscally responsible course of action is to begin work immediately.
Now that this is all public record, if another paddler goes into intensive care due to staph or (God forbid) is one of the 200 people per year who die of sewage-related MRSA in Hawaii each year, the ensuing lawsuit is going to be crippling to the County.
Bottom line: NONE of this water is being treated to R1. Therefore ALL of the water is loaded with bacteria.
We’re already seeing the headlines aimed at tourists: SWIMMING IN SEWAGE. Is delay disinfecting this injection well water really worth the potential cost of continuing to pump bacteria-laden water into our ocean?
Call your Councilmember. Call the Mayor.
Karen Chun
Save Kahului Harbor
If you do get a staph infection, please go to the Surfrider Foundation’s website and fill out the Ocean Illness Form.
Go to: http://www.surfrider.org/oceanillness.asp
You folks on the West side have the same problem. ALL of the water going down ALL of the injection wells is only treated to R2.
I put the link to the Surfrider Foundation illness report on the upper right hand side along with the Health Department phone number.
Be sure to report all your staph cases to both places. If we start documenting this, we get the hard data to back up what we all know by experience — the County of Maui is making us sick and endangering our health.