The Waipio Soccer Complex is emerging as a leading candidate for the city’s next landfill site, prompting Honolulu City Council members to wonder what the logistics would look like.
This is not without complications. For one thing, the fields are currently used by about 30,000 Oahu soccer players, according to the Parks and Recreation Department website.
Use of the land would require permission from the Navy, which currently controls it and plans to use it as a place to transport materials through Pearl Harbor while it builds a new $3.4 billion dry dock for submarines.
Nothing is set in stone yet, especially without Navy approval. But the Waipio Peninsula is “the most promising place” right now, City Manager Mike Formby said at a March meeting of the city council’s budget committee.
Still, questions remain about its feasibility, as a council committee demonstrated Wednesday. Council members demanded answers about the cost of relocating busy soccer fields and how a landfill there would withstand natural disasters.
Currently, Honolulu’s only municipal landfill is in Waimanalo Gulch, near Ko Olina. That landfill is scheduled to close in 2028, meaning the city has limited time to find and open a new site elsewhere on Oahu.
The city was supposed to name a new location by the end of 2022, under the terms of its permit.
But just before the deadline, Mayor Rick Blangiardi and Department of Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock requested an extension until the end of 2024. The Planning Commission is expected to approve the request, according to a draft decision published on March 1st.
Finding a new location proved difficult.
State Legislation adopted in 2020 prohibits the construction of a new landfill within a half-mile radius of schools, hospitals and residences. Other restrictions include airport buffer zones and “no-go zones” located above the island’s drinking water aquifers.
Blangiardi said the city is negotiating with the military to use some of its land. The Waipio Peninsula remains in the lead, but opposition has already surfaced.
Frank Doyle of the Hawaii Soccer Association, who was instrumental in launching the Waipio soccer complex and served as director of the Department of Environmental Services under Mayor Jeremy Harris, testified in opposition.
“This facility has improved people’s lives in so many ways,” Doyle said.
The facility has 24 regulation fields and was built in 2000 for about $23 million, or just over $40 million with inflation. Scott Keopuhiwa, president and executive director of the Hawaii Youth Soccer Association, said they expect to host 200 mainland teams at a tournament in June.
“Tens of millions have already been invested in the Waipio soccer complex at its current site. Why would we consider moving it, spending more money to build another soccer complex, creating a landfill where we already have infrastructure, etc.?” he asked.
Formby said one possibility would be to move the soccer stadium west to Kalaeloa, where the city also plans to build a racetrack. But it wouldn’t be as central a location, Keopuhiwa said in an interview.
Council members also asked about the site’s location near a tsunami zone and whether the facility would require a special management area permit because it would be close to a shore.
Babcock stressed that the proposed land is actually outside the tsunami zone. Formby said, however, that many questions remained to be resolved.
“All of the things you raise are valid questions and challenges, issues that should be resolved once the property is given the green light. But because that hasn’t happened, we haven’t been able to get that far,” Formby said.
If talks with the military over the Waipio Peninsula don’t work out, some of the city’s remaining options include seeking private land, using eminent domain to buy existing residential areas or asking state lawmakers to change state law. Formby said he has consulted with some lawmakers about the latter possibility, but “they have indicated it would be a very difficult process.”
If talks with the military are successful, city officials would then begin a process of community outreach and consider next steps, such as obtaining permits. The entire process would likely take about eight years, Formby said, meaning they would have to start in 2020 in order to meet the 2028 deadline for closing the current Waimanalo Gulch site.
Space isn’t really an issue — Babcock said the current site, which opened in 1989, still has room until about 2036. But city officials haven’t publicly announced their decision to extend use of the current site, which Formby said is partly because they could find a site where a landfill could be opened more quickly.
He acknowledged, however, that the timetable was becoming increasingly tight.
“Most people do their math and realize that at some point we’re going to have to make that decision. But we’re not making it right now,” Formby said.
