Vol. 1, No. 1, September 1998
Vol. 1, No. 1, September 1998
by Marc Merritte, M.S.
[Note: Due to space limitations this article did not appear in the hard copy of this HEHN publication, but is posted here as a special web feature and will appear in our next published issue.]
Linda Lingle, Maui Mayor and Republican candidate for Govenor of the state of Hawaii, often touts privatization as the solution to the state's flagging economy and to perceived governmental inefficiencies. However, the privatization of critical health and safety related operations such as Maui's wastewater sludge disposal requires that the low bid private contractor take the responsibility for insuring the safety and protection of the general public. This policy sets new precedents in the transfer of such responsibilies away from government to for profit, private enterprise concerns.
My personal experience with the County of Maui's recent privatization of this critical service has led me to believe that Lingle is no friend of the environment and that her drive for the privatization of such services can be very dangerous to the public' s health and safety, rendering the worst possible job at the lowest price.
I was originally selected by the County of Maui Solid Waste Division because of my background in the biological sciences and experience building pilot plants in an academic setting. I hold a Master's Degree from Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo, in Agricultural Sciences and I have worked for the state of California, the University of Hawaii and the federal Department of Energy in researching and developing a wide variety of biological systems, including waste to energy systems.
I started with the Solid Waste Division as a full time temporary Recycling Specialist in January 1993. I was first asked to assist the Recycling Coordinator Hana Steel and the Solid Waste Division engineers in the evaluating of responses to a request for qualifications for a planned sludge co-composting demonstration project. Even though their qualifications were highly suspect, Hana Steel ramrodded the award of the $450,000 co-composting contract to the Maui Composting Company right through the system, despite clear objections from the engineering staff and myself.
Although all of the other legitimate bidding co-composting company's proposals came in at least twice this amount, the Maui Composting Company's bid was almost exactly what the County had budgeted for the demonstration project!
Solid Waste engineer Elaine Baker objected to this strongly and took issue with the Maui Composting Company's lack of experience and credentials. She was summarily removed from the project by the Solid Waste Chief after she took her concerns to Corporation Council.
I was also taken off the co-compost project because of my loud and strenuous objections to these and other co-compost related actions, but surprisingly, as my tenure as a temporary employee at Solid Waste was coming to a close, I was offered a County contract to supervise the construction of the co-compost pilot project at the landfill. In July of 1993 I began my work as a private consultant for the Solid Waste Division and over the next 12 months I supervised the construction of a three acre, $500,000 facility. I was also awarded a County Council approved consulting contract to begin research and report to them on co-composting issues.
I finished the first phase of the co-composting construction on time and handed the one acre pad over to the contractor. They immediately began accepting sludge at the site, mixing it with chipped greenwaste and forming windrows which were turned with the Scarab machine. In the process, sludge was tracked everywhere. The co-composting process consistently breached the containment facility, with sludge winding up on private vehicles entering and leaving the landfill. Sludge was everywhere, even covering the underbody of my vehicle every day as I left the site.
The lack of adequate safety measures and proper equipment further complicated matters, and flies and a stench which spread 5 miles away to the airport soon made the conditions unbearable for neighboring Ameron. Formal objections were filed with the County and a round table discussion of the matter ensued. Hana Steel again shamelessly defended the project and contractor, who now was under the scrutiny of the State Department of Health. Several minor management changes were promised, and the project continued unabated.
Having worked both as a lab microbiologist and fermenter technician in California, I was quite familiar with the requirement of certain materials and microorganisms for strict containment. I soon learned that the sludge delivered by the County Wastewater Division was such a material, full of live pathogens and that the composting space requested by the contractor was grossly inadequate, and the Scarab machine turned the co-compost into an aerosol of spores and organic odors daily.
Although I had built the co-compost facility to State Department of Health specifications which were ment to physically contain the co-composting process, it was now running wildly out of control, with near accidents on the contractor's brakeless front-end loaders occurring frequently. Even the contractor's untrained, unsupervised employees soon began to object as well. When their requests for safety measures and properly functioning equipment were rejected by the co-composting contractor, they brought them to the attention of Hana Steel.
A second round table discussion ensued, but their voices once again fell on deaf ears. Steel unwaveringly defended the contractor and minimized the risks of sludge exposure, referring to the conditions in question as being the results of "start-up glitches" and emphasizing that this was "just a pilot project," even though the resultant co-compost was to go on sale to the general public ASAP.
Although the loudest complaints were now coming from neighboring Ameron and the co-compost contractor's employees, I also became embroiled in the affair and confronted Hana Steel in her office on the issue. I was told to stay out of the affairs of the contractor and focus on the expansion of the co-composting area, which now had been essentially tripled at the sudden request of the contractor.
I soon learned that employees at neighboring Ameron were also experiencing similar problems and after the contractor fired it's loudest critic, Tony Clow, I began to meet privately with him and others to discuss the matter. Soon other voices in the community began to question the safety of the project. Oahu waste processor Unisyn founder and biochemical engineer James McElvaney visited the site and publicly warned of it's poor design and operational procedure in a speech given to a local community association. Co-composting was suddenly becoming controversial.
During the summer of 1994 I was still researching composting under County contract while Linda Lingle was preparing to run for a second term as Mayor. Goro Hokama, her Democratic challenger and Chair of the County Council had been requesting my data in order to investigate the project in question from a technical standpoint. As the entire Solid Waste Division had reviewed and approved the bulk of my report, which now included an extensive review of co-composting technologies as well, I was surprised when Hana Steel informed me that it had one final gauntlet to clear before it could be reviewed by the Council.
She informed me that my report first had to be reviewed by Dave DeLeon, special assistant to the Mayor, for "policy." I was appalled that my report was to be edited by such a partisan, non-technical entity. Apparently, Steel did not like my report's final recommendations that were submitted to the Solid Waste Division, as they were what she regarded as harsh criticism of her co-composting pilot project.
The Mayor had pointed to the project as a cornerstone of her innovative recycling and environmental policies and Hana wanted no negatives brought out in this report to be reviewed by the Council. I agonized over the decision but begrudgingly agreed to tone down the criticism in the final recommendations because I felt that the balance of the report would be essential for making good composting decisions on Maui in the future.
I soon found myself again involved with the co-composting project, as I was asked to sit in on a new group's discussions regarding the pending renewal of the Maui Composting Company's co-composting contract. I was informally asked to be part of this new team. Conditions at the site had seen little marked improvement in any capacity and were still of great concern and as I had been asked to join this new team, I felt it imperative to express my views on the project's mismanagement in writing. I spelled out my objections to the current management practices, calling their safety standards "abysmal" and warning of the real dangers of the project.
This document was then taken by one of the group's members and faxed to the Govenor's Office on Oahu, the State Department of Health and the entire County Council with out my knowledge or permission. I soon found myself at the center of controversy and on the outs with the Solid Waste Division and the Lingle Administration in general, while my report was still in political limbo. I was then approached by several councilmen and asked to report to the County Council on my findings related to the co-composting project. The Council wanted information on the selection of the co-composting contractor, their questionable credentials and the mismanagement of the project in general. I was asked to testify in front of the Finance Committee in regards to the funding of the next contract.
John Harder, Hazardous Waste Chief for the State Department of Health, was called in to answer questions from the public and the story exploded onto the front page of the Maui News. Previously published investigative journalism from Upcountry News reporter Kelly Arbor on the co-compost project had set the stage for major news coverage of what was now becoming the Mayoral election year issue. The Mayor rallied her forces and began a counter attack, claiming that the entire episode was strictly political and the project was a highly successful environmental program.
I called the EPA in San Francisco and urged them to investigate as it was clear that the State Department of Health was going to back Lingle. They arrived with their own co-composting expert, Dr. Elliot Epstein, a co-composting consultant who attempted to discredit my concerns in a Council sponsored public forum, using bar charts, broad generalizations and scientific nitpicking. While EPA representative Lauren Fondahl admitted she was unfamiliar with the science of co-composting, she consistently fell back on her "for hire expert," who then offered to have his own company take over the Maui co-composting operation and run it for the County.
When the County Council discovered that the Maui Composting Company had falsified their credentials in order to get the contract, Goro Hokama tried in vain to remove them from the project. Solid Waste gave them a new contract in spite of the proceedings and they began so sell their "product" to the public. The entire affair ended in a last minute resolution by the Council agreeing with my call to have an independent consultant examine the co-composting operation. John Murk, an professional engineer and waste water treatment consultant and a bona fide expert in the field was selected and a contract was drawn up.
Murk was experienced and highly qualified, having helped design and build the Los Angeles facility often touted as the model for windrow co-composting followed by the Maui project, and he knew by the smell alone that the process was seriously faulted and dangerous. But after the new Council was sworn in, Murk's contract was nullified. Although a new contractor was selected for the project later that year, the static pile process utilized by EKO apparently suffers from the same maladies of foul odors, improper processing and compost curing to this day.
Now, in her bid to become governor of the State of Hawaii, Linda Lingle touts her Maui sludge co-composting project as a cornerstone in both her privatization and environmental accomplishments. However, sludge co-composting still presents a real problem here on Maui. A potentially pathogenic, disease carrying co-compost spread in our public parks is a liability and a public health threat. As a recent Cornell University report states, the EPA's own guidelines for co-composting are seriously flawed and lack of enforcement of the existing regulations puts our community's very safety in the hands of a virtually unregulated, low bid private contractor.
Sewage sludge co-compost is safe for public consumption only if produced using the highest standard of safety and state of the art technology. The final co-compost product can again become a disease carrier even after it is tested and DOH approved, since low levels of germs are tolerated in the product and regrowth of those germs to infectious levels has been documented and referenced in the Cornell Report.
The current sewage sludge co-compost product could be used safely as final vegetative cover for our upcoming landfill closures, at considerable savings to the County Public Works Department as I recommended in my Lingle Administration quashed 1994 report to the County Council on composting. But no, the Lingle Administration instead insists on selling this highly questionable product to the general public and spreading in our public parks where our children play.
This situation has been identified as a potentially serious public safety hazard and I have recommended the field testing of the final product to several public officials in order to evaluate both the performance of the contractor and the safety of the product. Other experts in this field have raised many serious questions about this project and its final product as well. It is clear that the privatization of such critical public safety and health functions of government as sludge disposal, while perhaps looking good on paper, can raise the real potential of our local government officials to harm the very people they have sworn to protect in their purported efforts to save money and streamline government services.
© 1998, Hawaii Environment & Health News