21-07-28 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Director Mansour said that Mr. Warren brought up a good point. When the Department was working on the deadline, the EPA agreed to give them the same deadline for Pahala, with the idea is this is just the overall deadline, but they were willing to negotiate and extend the time. They gave an umbrella type of date of 2023, and he had put a note to himself to follow up and look at the records. He needs to find out where the 2027 came in by talking to the consultant and staff. His understanding was it was never negotiated, they gave us one drop -dead date. We are cognizant of the deadline of N5'51ehu of 2023, he said. Director Mansour said he would address it in the next Director's report. d. Residential hauler fee credit issue discussed at RAWEEMC 6/15/21 Director Mansour said he had resolved that issue. We had a meeting with the haulers about a month and a half ago when the letter went out. There was some confusion about the difference between tipping fees and residential credits. The credit was part of our existing code but during the last revision it was omitted. And now we need to — the reason it was omitted, he still didn't understand. We cannot charge commercial tipping fees for residential waste. If we are going to start penalizing the people that decide to hire a hauler to take their waste to a landfill, then we need to have a fee that goes across the board for all residential waste. So we had continued giving the credit, and we are going to set up meetings with the haulers on a quarterly basis, to figure out and at least offset our administrative costs. Because it does cost us to administer these private hauler businesses, and the County cannot take on that cost because we have to recoup that cost somehow. We are going to be talking to garbage haulers about moving forward, streamlining the process, and figuring out how we can potentially expand the collection. If everybody is getting the residential credit, you can just pay for the garbage to be hauled from your house. That will create better economic growth for the island because it will create more jobs and more incentives, and allow us to look at the transfer stations. The director had staff run the numbers. We didn't have any idea how much the transfer stations were costing per ton. Some of the stations cost us almost $500 per ton to operate, which is totally insane, when our actual tipping fee is $116 per ton. So for a business model, it doesn't add up. So we definitely have to look at different operational and business models moving forward. He looks forward to filling the planner position, so they can assist us with sitting down and improving the business model. Currently we have and how we can improve, and making sure we are staying within industrial practices. The cost per ton at our landfill is about $244, which is almost twice the amount that we charge. So we are definitely in the negative and have to look at it from a landfill transfer station point of view of cost versus the services we provide. e. Impacts of Council -approved budget in FY 2021-22 for DEM, including life cycle assessment contract and funding a contractor to look into wastewater funding alternatives. Chair Adams asked whether Director Mansour got the money from the Council budget to hire someone to look at wastewater funding. Director Mansour said we did not. IV