ANDREW VLIET / SPECIAL TO STAR ANNOUNCER / JAN. sixteen
Above, a bulldozer picks up debris from Lahaina homes destroyed in the Aug. 8 wildfires.
ANDREW VLIET / SPECIAL TO STAR ANNOUNCER / JAN. sixteen
A road crossing the Honoapiilani Road has been created for trucks hauling the debris from the chimney to a transient garage in Olowalu.
ANDREW VLIET / SPECIAL TO STAR ANNOUNCER / JAN. 22
A truck loaded with debris passes through Launiupoko Park along the Honoapiilani Highway in Maui.
Two West Maui locations and the Central Maui Landfill have been chosen as the finalists for the permanent disposal site for the ash and debris from
the Lahaina wildfire.
The sites were unveiled Wednesday at the county’s weekly crisis recovery network update meeting at the Lahaina Civic Center.
At the same time, the county
Officials have introduced a two-week network survey that
Allow members of the public to provide input into the selection process. The final version is scheduled for March 1.
“There’s no such thing as the best set,” said Shayne Agawa, director of Maui County’s Department of Environmental Management. “No bachelor will make everyone happy. “
The two West Maui sites are north of Lahaina town: the Wahikuli area and Crater Village. Both sites are undeveloped, but the Wahikuli area is near residential areas and the coastline, and the Crater Village site could interfere with drinking water sources.
Maui’s central landfill in Puunene has county-owned land where ash and
The debris may be buried, but it is located 26 miles from Lahaina and promises to have special traffic with all the trucks needed to transport the debris.
“Shipping debris off the island
it’s an option,” added Maui Mayor Richard Bissen.
Agawa said the network poll is not a site preference vote. Instead, they will ask questions about what should be considered when settling on the site.
“This will help our team find the best place for the debris,” he said.
Agawa said experts analyzed the knowledge and helped the county narrow down the number of finalist sites, first to 8 sites and now to three.
The Army Corps of Engineers has lately been overseeing the removal from Lahaina of some 400,000 cubic meters of ash and debris, as well as five five-story football fields. Ash and debris are transported to the Olowalu transient disposal site.
Some 200,000 tons of debris, things such as concrete and metal, will be recycled, officials said.
Agawa said the county is looking to change the site on March 1 due to concerns about debris left behind in Olowalu.
“It’s a transition site and it’s not meant to contain debris for years and years, so we want to locate a definitive site designed to involve that debris,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Maui County Council is eyeing a possible alternative to burying the Lahaina ash and debris: a proposal to turn the toxic mix into concrete.
Officials at a company known as Yummet told council members at two committee meetings last month that it has the generation to do just that, and that the effort would likely cost the county nothing because of the profits Yummet would make from concrete sales.
Yummet CEO Brittany Zimmerman told members of the Council’s Disaster, Resilience, International Affairs and Planning Committee that the toxic debris and ash can be converted into constituent
molecules and reassembled into carbon-negative concrete that is stronger than conventional
concrete.
A $200 million plant would combine 3 processes: maximum temperature
pyrolysis, water treatment and cement production to make cement made entirely from waste.
To produce concrete,
Construction & Demolition
Debris, commercial waste, and ash would be added as rocks and sand are added to cement to make concrete.
While pyrolysis, water treatment and cement production are polluting systems, Yummet says his plant would not generate any pollutants due to the unique type of cement it uses.
“It’s the cornerstone”
Zimmerman told the committee, “If we don’t have that cement, the whole procedure may not work for us. That’s important. “
Yummet, which operates a small-scale pilot facility in Minnesota, has plans to build a large-scale plant on the island of Hawaii.
Hawaii County Council
approved a solution last year
urging county to divert all
Municipal Solid Waste to a Center
facility on an island that can turn it into things like carbon-negative concrete until 2026. The action followed Yummet’s presentations.
Doug Adams, director of the county’s Research and Development Department, saw the company’s pilot in March and reported to the county’s Environmental Management Commission in June that he had observed the procedure in action.
“I can say it’s achievable and scalable,” said the Hawaii Tribune. The Herald quoted Adams.
At meetings in Maui, Yummet won widely among those who described his procedure as an ideal solution not only for the removal of debris and ash from wildfires, but also for other counterfeit waste.
But some are skeptical.
Alan Booker, a systems engineer who spoke by video from his home in Alabama, said Yummet’s proposal is complex and has not been tested on a large scale. He said the procedure would take many years, a significant budget and many rigorous studies to be tested.
Booker and others urged
precaution.
“I’ve seen a lot of cases where small pilot projects, when they start to scale up, run into all kinds of problems,” he said. “I would propose that a third party do all the due diligence on it before such a project is attempted on something on a giant scale. “
South Maui Council member Tom Cook called the proposal
“optimistic.”
“It takes somewhat of a leap of faith,” Cook said. “But I just want to share with the community that that type of forward thinking on our small island remote home is something that we should cautiously embrace.”
Cook said the project warrants scrutiny.
“But the network should
Recognize the potential benefits
to be able to leave the money here,” he said. “So many tyres
(are) imported into the State to which they are exported. Yes
They could simply be converted into fuel and not have to be exported, which would be an economic advantage rather than an environmental benefit. negative. “
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