2%20(1).jpg)
Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
Make It Clear: Why You Can't Just Flush and Forget
Wastewater in Hawaii
Hawaii is facing a major wastewater challenge, with 83,000 cesspools discharging 52 million gallons of raw wastewater into the ocean every day. This is causing significant damage to the marine environment, including coral reefs. The state has set a goal to close all cesspools by 2050, but progress has been slow. The estimated cost to eliminate all cesspools is around $2 billion, and this number is likely to increase. Existing wastewater infrastructure in Hawaii is in poor condition, with limited funding for repairs and maintenance. Alternative solutions and grassroots efforts are being explored, but more support and leadership from the government is needed to address this crisis.
If you have comments or questions about our podcast, you can reach us through this link. To discuss a project or talk to one of our engineers, call 800-348-9843.
00:08
Angela: Hello and welcome to Make It Clear, a conversational podcast about all things related to water and wastewater. I'm your host, Angela Bounds, and I'm joined by my co-host, Shawn Rapp. In each episode, we'll tackle a relevant topic with facts and expert opinions and make things clear.
00:28
Angela: Hi, and welcome back. Thanks for joining us. Today, we're going to talk about a place that most people call paradise. We're going to talk about Hawaii and some of the wastewater challenges that they're facing right now. As always, Shawn is here with me. Hello, Shawn.
Shawn: Hey.
Angela: And Mike Saunders, who you may remember from previous episodes. He's been extremely involved in
00:58
the work that we're trying to do in Hawaii and trying to help them with some of the issues that they're facing. So, hi Mike.
Mike: Hi, how you doing?
Angela: Good, good. Should we get right into it?
Shawn: Absolutely. This is an episode actually, it's been on our books for a little while and I'm looking forward to this one.
Angela: Yeah, yeah. As Shawn was pointing out before we started this, we really should start doing these on location. I would definitely be down for
01:26
recording this podcast in Hawaii. All right, so let's kind of jump in. So when someone says Hawaii, I always think the beaches, right? You think pristine beaches, you think beautiful waters, great year round weather and surfing. I don't think about wastewater. So why are we talking wastewater and Hawaii today, Mike?
01:54
Mike: Well, I think it all does start with how pristine those waters are. I mean, it's so hard to imagine. But Hawaii has eighty three thousand plus cesspools. Right. And all told, they discharge about 52 million gallons of raw wastewater into the marine environment every day. So we start to think about what matters in Hawaii. Obviously, the world revolves around the ocean. Everybody you talk to is a surfer, everybody.
02:21
Everybody is one with the ocean. So to think about 52 million gallons of raw wastewater entering that environment and what it means and what it can do, it's a massive, massive issue. In fact, I've been almost in every state in the country and I was unaware of this till about three or four years ago. And now it's become a really, I mean, it's honestly probably the worst
02:48
situation that's wastewater related that I've seen in the country.
Angela: Yeah, it's, I too have been around the country and especially in relation to wastewater, you know, I keep my ear to the ground about where issues are happening. And I kind of had the same reaction when things started coming to light about what's going on in Hawaii, more of that “Noooooooo”. So let's talk a little bit about cesspools, right? So,
03:18
you dropped that number of 83,000. It's a big number. So what's a cesspool? And why is that a problem over other types of solution?
Mike: Well, it's kind of funny because I talk a lot about septic to sewer programs. And Hawaii, actually, a septic system is an upgrade. Cesspools are literally just a hole in the ground. They're basically a water well
03:48
or raw wastewater is put down the hole and it hits a layer of water that flows out to the ocean and off it goes. So most of these don't have any treatment at all in them. They're simply a straight pipe into a hole. I think it's really bad there too, is if you haven't been to Hawaii, most of the development is along the coast and most people look uphill to a mountain that has got water table,
04:17
water coming down from it. And literally when the wastewater gets in that water, it carries it out to the coral reefs in the ocean and then it surfaces, it comes out somewhere in the ocean. And again, that's 52 million gallons a day of untreated wastewater that gets out there. And the impacts are all over the place. A lot of the wells, I think over 50% of the drinking water wells are contaminated by this. There's areas where people that are out
04:46
swimming in the ocean or are experiencing skin infections and intestinal problems and staph infections. And most importantly, coral reefs are dying. I've had the pleasure of sitting in with, you know, people that are actually watching this. And one of the ones that was really, that really struck me was there was a lady that actually had been monitoring a specific coral reef and taking pictures every year.
05:13
In the matter of three or four years that you could see the progression of that coral reef dying. And…
Angela: That's horrible.
Mike: Yeah, it's and you know, once they're gone, they're gone.
Angela: Right. I mean, it's a huge thing in the news, right? There are news articles all the time about coral reefs and what the benefit is and why we need to protect them and how a lot of them are dying off. So, you know, this is really serious. It's something that we want to…
05:42
We don't want to see happen in Hawaii for sure.
Shawn: This paints a really different picture of Hawaii than what most people probably have in their mind.
Angela: Yeah. So what's being done?
Mike: Well, the state of Hawaii knows it's a problem. So their state department of health actually adopted rules and regulations that would say that all cesspools will be closed by January 1st, 2050.
06:11
Angela: That's a long ways away.
Mike: Yeah. I mean, an 83,000 cesspools, I mean to be fair, that's a big number, too.
Angela: It is.
Mike: But you're right. 20. You know, we still have 26 years until they're all supposed to be gone. You know, and I see this a lot is, is they set these long term dates, but what happens between then and now, it's not stopping the problem.
Angela: It's not stopping the progression of the deterioration of their waterways. Right?
Mike: Mm hmm.
06:40
Shawn: I have a feeling some of those coral reefs will be gone before then.
Angela: Right.
Mike: Well, definitely. Yeah.
Angela: So has any progress been made?
Mike: Yeah, a lot of studies.
Angela: And what did the study say?
Mike: Well, I think, you know, it's usually the first step is you identify the problem and where the focus areas are. And they've done that. They've, they've identified hot spots where cesspools are clearly causing most damage. Some of these have progressed into
07:10
feasibility studies on what should be done. But as far as meaningful conversions, not very far, that very, very little has been done. You know, and I think part of that is, you know, a deadline that's so far out. I think there's certainly, it doesn't get, I mean, you see this all the time where it's like, just doesn't get people's attention until 2045.
Angela: Right. Right.
Mike: When the reality is, you know, again, these things, it needs to be addressed right now.
07:39
They can't all wait till the end. So yeah, so far, not a whole lot of progress. A lot of talk, a lot of studies.
Angela: Yeah. So what is the estimated cost?
Mike: So kind of interesting. The initial studies that look at Hawaii as a whole have pegged the total estimated cost to get rid of the 83,000 cesspools about $2 billion if it was all done when they did the report. So clearly, costs have gone up. So that number already is probably
08:10
understated. And really, as we start to think about a lot of these projects pushing out till 2050, the number gets bigger and bigger. So yeah, I think that the 2 billion is actually much lower, or the actual number is much higher than 2 billion.
Angela: But we're estimating that as low. You think that estimate is low?
Mike: So if you really dig into the numbers, I think it works out to around $24,000 per cesspool removed.
08:39
So one of the early engineering studies was for Pahala, which is a community on the south end of the big island, has about 517 homes. They have applied for $40 million in clean water SRF funding to eliminate those cesspools with gravity sewer. And that cost works out to $77,000 per cesspool. So...
09:06
So compare that to 20, what 24,000 or whatever. That's a big difference. And that number alone, if that was the formula that's being used going forward, would point to the two billion actually being closer to $6 billion.
Angela: Right, right.
Mike: Ironically, Pahala is not the hardest area to do. I'm gonna say in my time in wastewater and I've walked around a lot of communities.
09:31
The challenges of solving the wastewater issues in Hawaiian communities is unlike any other. For those that haven't been there, you have a lot of rock. Not only is it rock, it's very hard rock, it's volcanic. Rightaways are very, very narrow, so there's not a lot of space. The homes, because they're on cesspool, the homes are, I mean, literally, they almost take up every inch of a lot. They have very little green area,
10:01
very close together. So, you know, because they didn't need a drain field, they just had a hole in the ground. There isn't set aside areas for drain fielding. So, the challenges are really, really crazy. And I've admittedly said that there's no easy solution. When you look at how they've provided water service, they have pipes running up and down walls because they can't put it in the soil. And honestly, the wastewater system might have to mirror that.
10:30
pipes going up and down walls and, and you know, the conventional wisdom of putting pipe three feet in the ground doesn't apply. It might be a couple of inches in the ground…
Angela: right
Mike: Cause it's rock.
Shawn: Right.
Mike: So it's definitely a challenge and Pahala at $77,000 is not, was not the hardest area. There's areas that will be much more than that.
Angela: Yeah. So you've been working with local groups in Hawaii to promote alternative solutions. Can you
11:00
tell us a little bit about that.
Mike: Yeah, it's kind of interesting in Hawaii that everywhere else in the country, the initiative is really usually driven from a municipal level down, meaning a county or a city kind of drives the process. They apply for money. They hire the engineers. And to some extent, that is existing. But alternatively,
11:25
Hawaii seems to be more of a grassroots thing where it's coming up from homeowners associations that wanna make changes, it's coming from nonprofit groups. And there seems to be a lot of support at that level to make things happen, but they also need the support of the governments and whatnot. So I've been spending a ton of time, whether it be online, whether it be in person, which somebody has to do it, right?
Angela: Yeah.
11:53
Mike: But they're speaking to homeowners associations and educating them on the alternatives because the reality is, you know, if all the programs, you know, you look at it in my experience, you know, to think that gravity sewer is a solution for these communities is really hard to believe. I mean, putting pipe deep in rock isn't a good situation. And then you'd still probably need a pump on a lot of these to pump it out to the gravity sewer line,
12:22
that I just feel like it's the element of education and having that knowledge of alternative systems is really important. And I've spent a lot of time talking to people. And once you show them what we're doing, you can see the wheels turning. It's like the answer is, well, why are we doing this other stuff? Why aren't we doing these things?
Angela: Right. So let's talk a little bit about the infrastructure that's there
12:51
and how that is an issue.
Mike: So that's the other part of this equation that's really odd. So obviously, with the cesspools where there's no treatment, they do have infrastructure. They have existing sewer systems in some areas. They have wastewater plants in other areas. The condition of these systems is across the board really, really bad. They just don't
13:19
have a very structured system for developing and running utilities. There's not a lot of regulation on how the infrastructure gets built. So what you see is, in the case of treatment implants, I'll use Hilo as an example. This is a 5 million gallon a day facility. Overflows are normal. I was reading an article where a lady, I don't know what she was, but she talked about that she’s been
13:47
seeing spills at this plant since she was a little girl.
Angela: Wow.
Mike: Never resolved. And so now this plant is I don't know how long it's been under EPA consent order, but the cost just to bring that plant up to standards is estimated at 700 million dollars.
Angela: Wow.
Mike: And there's elements in the plant, believe it or not, just simple stuff like the influent screens.
Angela: Yeah.
Mike: Been out of service since 2016 and never fixed.
Shawn: Oh, wow.
Mike: That's what's in the consent order. And…
14:17
Angela: So, how is that happening? Like you spent years of your life, of your career, working for a public utility. So what's the issue right now?
Mike: Across the board, they don't have a sustainable model to run a utility. One of my first visits, I was standing on one of the treatment plants talking to the manager and we're...
14:45
basically looking up the hill at all these houses. And I was asking him, I said, so is everybody here connected? And he said, no. And I saw this relatively new development of literally hundreds and hundreds of houses within probably two miles of this treatment plant. And the conversation went towards, well, are they connected? And the answer was no. And I said, well, how in the world are they not connected? So the plant was here, right? And he said, yeah. He said, they don't have to connect. The developer gets to decide.
15:14
And…
Angela: The developer decides not the county.
Mike: Yeah. So…
Angela: Interesting.
Mike: So imagine at the time cesspools were allowed. Let's see your a developer. Do you invest in infrastructure to take wastewater to the treatment implant, or do you drill a hole on the ground and straight pipe into the hole? Kind of a no brainer.
Angela: Yeah.
Mike: The developer is going to do what's cheaper and most of the time.
Shawn: Mm hmm.
Angela: Right.
Mike: So, so then we started talking about other things I said, so
15:43
So we talked about capital improvements and connection fees. He said they don't have connection fees. It makes it even odder. So if you're a developer, there's a general saying in most states that new development pays their way. Meaning that when they connect to a system, they pay a connection fee that gets used to expand capacity for others.
Angela: Right.
Mike: Doesn't exist, there's no connection fee. So if somebody connects to the system, they don't pay a fee. So there's no revenue that comes from people connecting to the system. So that led into the conversation, well, how do you support
16:13
Capital improvements, making the system bigger, repairing stuff? That was part of their general fund. Most, most utilities are an enterprise fund, meaning they're a business, they're self-sustaining, so they have to have these fees to generate money to sustain the system. These systems in Hawaii don't have a mechanism for that. They actually have, it comes out of the general tax dollar fund and every year they have to fight to get it in their budget to do something, so guess what? Things don't get fixed.
Shawn: Oh boy.
Mike: There's no money for it. So,
16:42
So not only do you have this problem that you have all these homes that are not connected to sewer and basically going down a hole in the ground, you have this additional problem that the infrastructure needs millions and millions of dollars. And really, you shouldn't be connecting anybody to the system until you fix what's already there.
Angela: Right. So how do you? Oh, go ahead.
Mike: Well, I was going to say, in the case of Hilo, there's actually an engineering report out there that says that
17:11
if the fix for the cesspools is to connect more, because there is capacity there, is it will be years, decades, before they actually get the plant up to snuff.
Angela: Right, right.
Mike: I mean, it's just, it's a crazy problem. I've never seen it to that extent anywhere.
Angela: Yeah. So how do we get Hawaii on the right track?
Mike: Well, like I said, there's a lot of, I mean, my perception is there's a ton of grassroot support. There's people...
17:40
literally people in communities that are putting personal money towards solving the problem because government isn't providing money for that. That's admirable. I mean, I sat in a room, I did a presentation to a community, I don't know, maybe four or five months ago and at the end of the meeting, they actually announced saying, hey, we want to do an engineering study. Can anybody donate to this? And there was people putting up their hands.
Angela: Right.
Mike: That's amazing. I mean…
18:09
Angela: Yeah.
Mike: that shows that there's, there's definitely support, but I think the frustration of homeowners associations trying to navigate through this. I mean, the steps that they got to go through to hire engineers, do a feasibility study to try to secure money. That isn't in most in the wheelhouse of most HOAs. So it always has said it really needs strong voices and people at a county level
18:39
to make this stuff happen and take on a role of leadership. And I don't know if that's a call out for what it is, but that's what you expect in most places. I've even gone as far to suggest that maybe the solution, you know, it's never very popular for politicians to push for sewer as part of their platform. If you're a commissioner of a county, for example, it's tough politics to say, we want to go out there and start charging people to put sewers in. And so I've kind of suggested that maybe it would make sense
19:08
to form an overlay of a sewer district or something that has their own ability to tax and raise money and is mandated just to solve this problem. Because they got to do something. I think if every effort from an HOA ends in frustration, they're never going to solve this problem. So somebody needs to step up. And I think that's what I would definitely push for, is probably that second
19:37
motivation to create sewer districts, maybe over the whole state, maybe it's over each island.
Angela: Mm-hmm. So then the sewer district would be responsible for the maintenance of the system following installation.
Mike: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so I've raised this question, because the HOAs ask the question, right? If they look at what we do at Orenco and say, you know, that makes a lot of sense here, the next question is, well, who maintains this?
20:05
Angela: Right.
Mike: My answer is, well, ideally, the county should. And the answer at the county level is generally, well, we don't have resources or we don't have people or we don't have money to do that. And in their defense, if you don't have rate structures or the ability to adopt rate structures to support the utility, then how do you add people?
Angela: Right.
Shawn: Right.
Mike: So there is a catch 22 there. The only other alternative, I mean, because it's really imperative as the existing system is shown, is if you don't
20:34
provide maintenance, a good system will fail. We always say good systems fail with bad maintenance. Bad systems actually can sustain themselves with great maintenance.
Angela: Right.
Mike: I've said that that's probably the most important element here. So even if an HOA gets money and it's the ability to put pipes in, is they also need to have the ability to charge rates and hire a qualified maintenance entity to look after it and commit to that. So I think those are the two models is, is one
21:03
is certainly having trained maintenance entities that will commit to doing what needs to be done. There's a place at the state level to make sure that they adopt rules to make sure those things are getting done, do inspections and the things because they can't have another Hilo happen. You can't have another plant that's spilling wastewater out every day.
Angela: Right. Right. I don't... So it's like I was saying in the beginning of the podcast,
21:32
until it was made common knowledge, common to common to us wastewater people, not common to the public necessarily. I didn't know anything about this, right? I think, you know, a lot of people have been to Hawaii and have no idea that this is going on. Right. So I don't I don't think that most people know that this is an issue. Even people
22:02
that live in Hawaii. So are people aware of what appears to be a crisis? Are they not? And why are they not if they're not?
Mike: So it's funny, you know, whenever I go there, obviously I stand out like a sore thumb because everybody else is starting a vacation and I'm starting a work trip when I show up. So when I'm sitting in the back of a cab or an Uber, I...
22:30
you know, talking about it. Of course, they go, they look at me and go, what are you here for? You don't look like you're on vacation. And, and when I tell them, it's always surprising that they know very, very little about the problem or the number of cesspools. And it kind of makes you contemplate, well, why is it like that? And I kind of come to the conclusion as well. There's, you know, if you're a scientist or if you're a diver, you certainly are aware. Angela: Right.
Mike: But for most people, if the…
22:59
If it's not a hot button in the news, and really it only becomes a hot button when sewers, you know, out of sight, out of mind. If it's exiting out in the ocean and killing coral reefs, the average person probably doesn't know that.
Angela: Right.
Mike: So if it's not in the news, most, I think a lot of people would rather keep it that way. If you own a hotel or, you know, even if you're a state
23:22
worker or if you're at high level in the state, your biggest business is tourism. The last thing you want to be doing is telling people that you got a huge problem.
Angela: Yeah, that this is happening in the place that they're going to vacation and snorkel and swim and surf.
Mike: Yeah. So I, you know, I think I don't know. It sounds drastic, but there there's an environmental catastrophe out there. And if you listen to, you know, this is the first place
23:49
where I've seen scientists absolutely put slides up and say, absolutely, the degradation of coral reefs is connected to wastewater. I haven't heard that anywhere else in the country. There's usually outliers of, you know, that point to maybe runoff and other things that contribute. They have absolutely here said this is being caused by wastewater. And it's a big issue and it really needs to be dealt with.
Angela: It does. It absolutely does.
24:19
All I can think is we've covered a lot. Right, we've covered a lot of things. It's a lot to digest and and really think, think about. Do you have any final thoughts for us? So any calls to action?
Mike: We've been doing this for for decades.
Angela: Right.
Mike: And I think my first biggest aha moment is as a wastewater professional was I was at a community in Louisiana and
24:49
when I saw straight pipes coming from homes into swales. And to this day, that vision has stuck with me. And, you know, that this, this ranks right up there. This is something else that is really stuck with me as a wastewater professional. It really shouldn't exist in this country. It really, we shouldn't be making an excuse. We shouldn't be setting dates at 2050 when, when things could be done
25:18
quicker and easier. And while we work for an alternative collection system, this one really, I can't tell you how disappointing it is to me to have read the first couple feasibility studies in Hawaii, again, where I know darn well that that solution just isn't the best solution. And if this is just, this amplifies one of the biggest issues we have here is that
25:47
these, for these projects to move forward, they obviously need public financing. There has to be more accountability for how we arrive at the best and most sustainable solution.
Angela: Yeah.
Mike: And, and this to me should get everybody's attention because it doesn't have to be 2050. There's a big problem. There are solutions. We need to kind of look at how we get to those best solutions quicker and easier. Get rid of some of the red tape because even
26:17
You know, even project there, even if we say we want to start this today, I'm going to say the way the way things are done in Hawaii, it's going to be six, seven years before the first stick of pipe goes in the ground for a community level project. And I think we should start with the goal and how we make the process better, where it gets more sustainable solutions to the table and, and gets things, get this problem resolved quicker, because we don't get a second chance with some of these coral reefs.
26:46
Angela: Right. Right. And at least six years would be 2030.
Mike: Yeah.
Angela: Right? Not 2050.
Mike: Yeah. So, so I feel like is, you know, as I go over there, you know, people go, oh, lucky you're going to Hawaii. And I always kind of say, well, I don't really go there. I mean, it's, it's all business. Believe me, I'm going to paint a picture. I'm working. Well, I mean, typically you
27:15
You know, I stay in Honolulu and I'm jumping on an early morning plane to one of the other islands coming back late at night. And I, I'm not even there necessarily just, you know, obviously, you know, I'm representing our company, but I feel this need to be an advocate for, for solutions. And whether it's us or anybody, it's just there's, there's a need for that. And so I don't know
27:38
that's kind of where I land at the end of the day is it's, you know, you're committed to clean water. This is definitely a high profile area and just want to make it make a difference.
Angela: Right.
Shawn: I know there are other people that are actually there in Hawaii who feel the same way and they want to make a difference. And, and I know they're running up against some roadblocks too. So hopefully, being able to hear podcasts like this one, hearing the information that we share. We'll
28:04
kind of light a fire under somebody or cause somebody to pick up the torch and start running with it. Cause…
Angela: Have somebody that feels supported, right? Like maybe there are people that are seeing the, the killing off of the coral reefs and, and really want to help. And if they know that we want to help them fix the problem, then they can reach out and we can put them in touch with Mike and it takes a village, right?
28:34
Mike: It does. Well, and I will say that I'm always amazed at the people you meet along the way and the commitment of people that really take the time to understand this issue and want to resolve it. And I think that's the rewarding part of it is just the people you meet. And they don't need to do what they're doing to make a difference. And boy, some of them are amazing.
Angela: Right.
29:04
Well, we will end on that positive note then. I really appreciate you spending time with us today talking about this, Mike. I appreciate all of you that are listening and we'll see you next time.
We wanna thank you again for joining us today. Before you go, don't forget to subscribe where you listen to podcasts. So you're notified when new episodes are posted. Also, you can leave your comments or suggestions through the contact link on our website.
29:33
www.orenco.com. Until next time, have a great day.
