The connection between climate change, landfills, and the legacy that we leave future generations
“We have to remember, landfills are forever,” Honolulu Board of Water Supply Chief Engineer Ernie Lau reminded lawmakers in March, testifying in support of a prohibition against siting solid waste facilities over a drinking water aquifer.
For Lau, the chronic or sudden release of extremely toxic landfill sludge or “leachate” directly over any drinking water source is an unacceptable threat.
“My kuleana is about providing water for our future – not just today, but for the future seven, eight or more generations from now, a hundred years from now. What will those who are around then say about the condition of the water resources on Oʻahu?”
Lau’s views are well-grounded, particularly after the U.S. Navy’s Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility contaminated Oʻahu’s primary drinking water aquifer, despite years of assurances regarding its safety.
Thus, the City and County of Honolulu’s proposal to place a new landfill in Wahiawā, directly over another aquifer, suggests that there is a lack of understanding about the importance of zealously protecting our freshwater resources.
Using a climate lens may help provide more clarity on how to understand – and address – Oʻahu’s landfill conundrum.
All landfills, even modern ones, are expected to eventually leak. When they do, “leachate” containing a number of extremely toxic ingredients, including heavy metals, PFAS (“forever chemicals”), and other long-lasting compounds, are released into the environment. These toxic chemicals percolate into the soil, and eventually seep into any underlying groundwater.
Thus, siting a landfill over a drinking water source essentially guarantees its contamination – whether in our lifetimes, or in that of our children’s or grandchildren’s.
What does this mean, from a climate perspective?
Hawaiʻi is already facing historic water scarcity, with 90% of our islands seeing less rainfall compared to a century ago.
This trend will only continue. While some climate models predict rainier conditions in windward areas, all agree that Hawaiʻi’s leeward regions will see substantially decreased rainfall, and at least one indicates a 30% reduction in rainfall in wetter areas and a 60% reduction in drier ones by 2100.
Additionally, hotter temperatures mean higher evaporation rates and reduced aquifer recharge – along with greater demand for water for drinking, agriculture, and other purposes.
In other words, our grandchildren are going to need all the water they can get – and where we place our next landfill could rob them of even more of this precious, irreplaceable resource.
The city’s assurances of environmental safety through operations and routine maintenance don’t reflect our climate reality.
Even ignoring the inevitable failure of landfill “liners” and the ever-present risks of human error or even sabotage, climate-fueled superstorms, floods, and wildfires will create unprecedented challenges to preventing the disastrous release(s) of toxic leachate over our water supply.
Meanwhile, as sea level rise increasingly inundates coastal cities and displace millions; as increasingly frequent climate disasters cause economic and social institutions to falter and collapse; as billions of “climate refugees” are forced to migrate; as droughts cause mass crop failures and starvation; and as regional conflicts increase as a result – the supply chains we now take for granted will begin to break down.
This, in turn, will keep us from sourcing and bringing in the equipment necessary to operate and repair the leachate pumps, monitor wells and test equipment, leak detection and containment systems, and other components to safely contain and manage the millions of gallons of leachate that the new landfill will annually generate.
If future maintenance failures that will poison our grandkids’ water are essentially unavoidable, should the new landfill be sited as proposed?
Is there a solution?
Fortunately, existing climate strategies provide examples of how we might address our interconnected landfill and climate challenges, and their shared root causes.
Both the climate and landfill crises compel us to upend the social inequities plaguing us. For example, it has become increasingly clear that those most impacted by the impacts of the climate crisis – and by its underlying phenomena of overconsumption, industrial exploitation of people and ʻāina, colonialism, and patriarchy – must be empowered to use their experience-based insights to pivot us away from the devastation that lies ahead, and toward a more just and sustainable way of life.
Hawaiʻi residents who have directly experienced the public health, environmental, economic, and social impacts of living next to landfills must be solicited for their input and offered meaningful (and paid) decision- making roles in planning the next one. This should include ideas for protective measures against the harms they have experienced, and the reparations and compensation that they, their communities, and any future community should receive, for bearing the costs of hosting Oʻahu’s waste.
Only through such a demonstrated commitment to justice, can we puka through the outright opposition a new landfill will face – and begin rebuilding the reciprocity and understanding needed to navigate our waste management and climate crises.
We also need policies and investments to stop our unsustainable reliance on imported food and goods – the source of much of our waste and size of our carbon footprint. This includes reining in the profit-driven exploitation of land and water that makes local food security and sustainable ways of life nearly impossible to achieve.
Broad implementation of Indigenous land and water management can also reduce our external dependencies, and restore the circular, largely waste-free economies our islands previously enjoyed.
Educational curricula and strategic investments, from home gardening classes to civic empowerment programs, can also help us take control of our collective fate, and live in far better balance with our islands, and each other.
Oʻahu’s landfill crisis is not just a waste issue, but one intertwined with our ever-worsening climate crisis. Our grandchildren will want to know: did we uphold our generational kuleana to take on both?
