Hawaii's trash may be headed to Oregon, Washington

PORTLAND — Hawaii's largest city, unable to find enough room in paradise for trash, is looking to barge its garbage to the Northwest and ship it up the Columbia River to a landfill in eastern Oregon or Washington.

The trash would be bundled in airtight plastic, sealing in any tropical species that might hitchhike along.

Honolulu's main landfill, Waimanalo Gulch, is expected to close next year, and the city is seeking bids from companies that could haul at least 100,000 tons of trash to the mainland each year for three to six years.

Northwest landfills have long collected waste from as far as Alaska, but Hawaii's garbage would come farther and in greater volumes. The trash would take about 12 to 18 days to cross the Pacific, going to the arid plains east of the Cascades, where garbage imports have become an important economic driver for rural counties.

Before shipping, the trash would be compressed into bales of several tons each. The bales would be shrink-wrapped with at least four layers of airtight plastic to deprive any pests of oxygen, killing them, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service risk assessment. Invasive seeds or microbes that can survive without oxygen probably wouldn't escape the plastic bales, the assessment concluded.

The shipped trash could not contain more than 3 percent yard or agricultural waste, which should minimize the risk that it would carry pests, the assessment said. The baled trash could not come into contact with soil.

"It kind of makes sense not to put trash in your backyard when you live on an island," said Shawn Teevin, owner of Teevin Bros. Land & Timber Co. in Astoria, Ore., part of one group looking to bid on the Hawaiian trash contract.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Agriculture Department released an environmental assessment proposing to allow shipment of up to 500,000 tons of Hawaiian trash — 100 barge loads — each year to landfills in Oregon, Washington and Idaho. It outlined standards to keep pest species out of the region.

But Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter wasn't satisfied. He told federal authorities that Idaho doesn't want any part of Hawaii's garbage until more precautions are in place.

"Given the importance of this issue and the potential economic and environmental impacts of allowing invasive species to be moved from Hawaii to Idaho," he wrote, "I ask that you remove the state of Idaho from consideration as a destination for this material unless these issues are addressed."

The Oregon Invasive Species Council, a state-chartered panel, found out about the federal assessment a few days before the comment period closed. The group scrambled to submit comments asking for stronger safeguards but missed the deadline.

Dan Hilburn, head of the state Department of Agriculture's plant division, said baling the garbage and sealing it in plastic would keep the risk of new pest introductions "very low." The risk would be similar to other shipments arriving in the state, he said. "It's just amazing to me that anyone would go to that length with garbage and ship it across the ocean."