21-07-28 EMC minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

being done because we do not have people within DEM who can oversee the work that a contractor would do. Ideas included setting up an enterprise fund, the same concept we had for wastewater management, focusing on user fees, dedicated taxes that are going to solid waste. We could institute more fair charges by volume of waste generated rather than a fixed fee for everybody. Running it like a business becomes more customer -focused, it's more transparent, there's more accountability, and more flexibility with the operations of the solid waste management. The downsides are that it may be politically unpopular and can be regressive. And the money maybe should go to the items that are more pressing rather than nailed down to a particular operation like solid waste management. We have already started to look at extended producer responsibility. We could increase the fees on the products that we already have, for example glass and electronics, and can come up with new categories of products. There are a lot of logistical and administrative hurdles. We are a single island in a state, and it takes people to set up systems to be able to manage it. And it's hard when it's a state program to ensure that each county gets a fair share. One item which is not going to generate revenue, but it begins the education process, is to make the fees that we do have in the property tax as a line item, and start educating people that waste management is not free. Another whole program out there that has all sorts of pros and cons about it is called "Pay as you throw." It's where you charge a fee for the waste you throw away. Waste costs a lot more than recyclables. Right now we make recycling free for residential users. Unless you put a cost on things, people don't care. They aren't going to differentiate. So it makes things cheaper to recycle something, then you have the issue of, eh, they're just going to throw it in a ditch, or a lava tube, and you need to be able to manage the littering. And we just don't have a lot of curbside pickup on this island, and it's going to be tough to institute it. And then we can always look at grant opportunities. The other end of it is to reduce costs. If we had the money to do education we could reduce the amount of waste generated. We could enhance our reuse capabilities and recycle, especially where we can generate revenue with the recycled materials. One of the top priorities is to renegotiate the Waste Management Hawai'i contract for the West Hawai'i Sanitary Landfill. Basically, that had been set up to guarantee a certain amount of waste to go in, and pay by the ton to Waste Management. It is totally the opposite of what we want to do, which is to reduce the amount of waste going in to our landfills, and to look at ways to reward Waste Management for helping us to keep stuff out of the landfill. Other ideas include a financial analysis, looking to improve our operations, and looking at life cycle analyses. With that, Chair Adams concluded the slide show and opened the floor for discussion. Commissioner Olson proposed collecting the disposal fee at the point of purchase. As a starting point, one cent on the dollar gets you funding for making the analysis of what it costs to dispose of the things that are brought in. And it grows as that cost rises. This puts the consumer in the driver's seat. He knows what it takes to get rid of what he just bought, and it takes away from simply being a function of the property tax. He knows it is going to be a substantial challenge, 0