The county of Maui, Hawaii has applied for zoning and other land-use entitlements to develop a scrap recycling yard on 14 acres in Puunene.
The application for rezoning, community plan amendment and state land use district boundary amendment will go before the Maui Planning Commission at 9 a.m. Nov. 14. A consultant is studying the project to determine how it should be operated and whether the facility is even needed now that there are two private scrap yards on Maui, said county Solid Waste Division Chief Tracy Takamine.
"I guess that still needs to be answered," Takamine said.
Robyn Loudermilk, the planner assigned to process various land use requests for the county proposed abandoned vehicle scrap metal and white goods facility, said that the Department of Public Works and Environmental Management is proposing the development of a facility that will collect, store, auction and process these vehicles. It also will process the vehicles for the scrap metal and white goods.
As the proposes use is not an allowable use with the existing land use designations, applications for Land Use District Boundary Amendment, Community Plan Amendment, and a Change in Zoning have been filed with the Planning Department.
Michael Miyamoto, deputy director for the Maui County Department of Public Works and Environmental Management, noted, that a few years ago a privately owned company was processing and marketing the scrap metal. However, after numerous violations, the Department of Health shut down the operation, leaving the island without a service provided. The end result was a growing amount of vehicles and appliances littering the region.
In the short term, Maui County put out a Request For Proposals and only one company qualified. This provider had some challenges with properly zoned land, approval of the land owner, environmental insurance for leased land, and zoning requirements for the type of land use. In the end, the County paid a high price for the processing of metals.
Given these challenges, the County looked long range and decided it was better if the County owned the land and ensured proper zoning, community plan conformance, and state land use designation. This would eliminate half of the equation for the processing of metals.
Since we've started this process, another metal processing company has started up, Miyamoto added. They are on leased property, on a special use permit, functioning on a interim permit as they have infrastructure that needs to be constructed for compliance with zoning requirements and missed all of their announced start dates.
Once we are completed with the construction of the site, we will then put out a service contract request. Hopefully with land issues taken care of by the County, the cost to process the metals will be reduced to a point where the public will deliver their metal products rather than litter our roadways.
The plan being looked at right now is for the county to own the land and then contract out the service for processing and marketing of the material.
At the present time the county has contracts with towing companies to deliver vehicles, and the county’s refuse collection staff collects appliances from residences.
The county estimates that the island will handle around 200 vehicles and 400 appliances per month.
The public hearing for these three items is scheduled with the Maui Planning Commission on November 14, 2006. After the public hearing, these three requests will then be transmitted to the Maui County Council for final action.
If the project moves forward on schedule, it is set to be operating by 2009. No design or construction funds have yet been awarded. Whether it should be run internally by the county, or by a private contractor, will be evaluated in the consultant’s study of the project, Takamine said.
Earlier this month the county signed a contract with SOS Metals Island Recycling LLC to process all the cars and appliances hauled in off Maui’s roads and fields, for a price of $108.88 per car and $21.88 per appliance. SOS is taking over from previous contractor Kitagawa Towing, whose owner Mike Kitagawa has said he will protest the contract, according to the Maui News.
Both Kitagawa and SOS opened shop after longtime junkyard Maui Scrap Metals was closed in April 2005. Recyclers are still processing the backlog of thousands of vehicles that piled up in the months when there was no viable scrapyard on the island.