Bill Text: HI HB2398 | 2022 | Regular Session | Introduced
Bill Title: Relating To Landfills.
Spectrum: Moderate Partisan Bill (Democrat 6-1)
Status: (Introduced - Dead) 2022-02-03 - The committee(s) on EEP recommend(s) that the measure be deferred. [HB2398 Detail]
Download: Hawaii-2022-HB2398-Introduced.html
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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES |
H.B. NO. |
2398 |
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THIRTY-FIRST LEGISLATURE, 2022 |
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STATE OF HAWAII |
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A BILL FOR AN ACT
relating to landfills.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF HAWAII:
SECTION 1. The legislature finds that Act 73, Session Laws of Hawaii 2020, prohibits landfills from being placed in conservation districts and requires a one-half mile buffer zone between landfills and residential areas, schools, and hospitals. While this measure was well-intended, it reduces the number of potential sites for future landfills, creating an unintended consequence of potentially siting the new Oahu landfill over a drinking water aquifer.
The legislature recognizes that all landfills eventually leach industrial solvents; heavy metals; and chemical compounds, including pesticides, into the surrounding environment. A 2021 groundwater and leachate monitoring report determined that the Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill generates about nine thousand eight hundred gallons of leachate per day. With the recent water contamination event connected to the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, the legislature must be proactive in preventing any future threat to Hawaii's drinking water.
Therefore, the purpose of this Act is to reduce the landfill buffer zone from one-half mile to one-quarter mile.
SECTION 2. Section 342H-52, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by amending subsection (b) to read as follows:
"(b) No person, including the State or any county,
shall construct, modify, or expand a waste or disposal facility including a municipal
solid waste landfill unit, any component of a municipal solid waste landfill
unit, a construction and demolition landfill unit,
or any component of a construction and demolition landfill unit without first
establishing a buffer zone of no less than [one-half] one-quarter
mile around the waste or disposal facility.
This subsection shall not apply to the continued
operation of an existing waste or disposal facility that is properly permitted;
provided that continued operation does not require physical expansion, vertical
or horizontal, of the facility requiring additional permitting review and a
permit modification.
For the purposes of this subsection:
"Buffer zone" means the distance between the edge of waste or waste activity and the nearest residential, school, or hospital property line.
"Waste or disposal facility" excludes individual, state certified, non-industrial redemption centers."
SECTION 3. Statutory material to be repealed is bracketed and stricken. New statutory material is underscored.
SECTION 4. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.
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INTRODUCED BY: |
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Report Title:
Landfills; Solid Waste Management; Buffer Zone
Description:
Reduces the landfill buffer zone from one-half mile to one-quarter mile.
The summary description
of legislation appearing on this page is for informational purposes only and is
not legislation or evidence of legislative intent.
