Stormwater Released Into Ocean to Avoid Larger Landfill Catastrophe
01/28/2011
Michael Levine/Civil Beat
UPDATED 2/1 12 a.m.
As bad as the landfill spill was, the decision to release contaminated stormwater into the ocean was necessary to prevent something even worse — a catastrophic structural failure, a top state Health Department official told Civil Beat.
In his first lengthy interview since the spill two weeks ago, Deputy Health Direct Gary Gill said Thursday that even knowing what he knows today, he wouldn't have done anything differently.
This is how Gill described the scene at Waimanalo Gulch Landfill on the night of Jan. 12:
A cascade of rainwater dislodged garbage from a giant pile into a rapidly rising pool of water. Plastic, paper, clamshells from plate lunches and even medical waste floated across the top of the "lake" and poured into a storm drain near the lip of the basin — like the hole near the top of a bathroom sink — on their way to the ocean below.
Officials were concerned that if steps weren't taken to lower the water level, the downhill side of the basin could collapse, sending a massive wall of water and garbage into the sea.
When the rain finally let up, officials — facing a number of lousy options — picked the one they thought would help "avoid any catastrophic failure of the landfill," Gill said.
The Hawaii Department of Health and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decided the afternoon of Jan. 13 that bringing down the level of the lake atop the landfill was paramount, even if that meant pumping untreated stormwater into the ocean. For three days, until pumping stopped at 10 a.m. on Jan. 16, water discharged without undergoing normal treatment procedures.
Beaches in the neighborhood of the landfill were closed for more than a week because of high bacterial levels in the water.
