County: Fourth West Maui Temporary Debris Storage report shows compliance

The West Maui Temporary Debris Storage site environmental monitoring quarterly report for the fourth 90-day operational period shows the findings from sampling and monitoring comply with county, state and federal environmental regulations, according to a county news release announcement.

The full report is available online at https://www.mauirecovers.org/debris-containment.

Report highlights include the following:

• More than 1,550 residential and commercial properties have been cleared of more than 400,000 tons of ash and debris in Lahaina.
• More than 21,000 truckloads of ash and debris have been taken from Lahaina to the TDS site.
• There have been no exceedances of health-based Action Levels in air-quality monitoring.
• There have been no events of any leachate leaving the lined basin; thus, there have been no suspected or potential impacts to groundwater or nearby waterways.
• All stormwater run-off/run-on Best Management Practices are functioning and inspected regularly.
• The US Army Corps of Engineers installed two groundwater monitoring wells around the TDS site. The first samples were collected by USACE on July 7, 2024, with a second round collected on Oct. 8, 2024. Due to an issue associated with the way the samples were collected in the second round, which impacted results for turbidity and Iron, the County of Maui requested that the wells be resampled. The resampling was completed Dec. 3 and Dec. 8, 2024 (MW-01), and Dec. 4, 2024 (MW-02). Results can be found in the fourth quarterly report. Samples will continue to be collected and analyzed quarterly (every three months), which is a typical frequency for waste storage and disposal facilities.

On Jan. 21, 2024, Maui County Council approved Ordinance 5596, also known as Bill 120, which granted USACE and its contractors right-of-entry to utilize two parcels located in Olowalu, West Maui, as the Temporary Debris Storage site for ash and debris from the Aug. 8, 2023, wildfires in Lahaina.

Bill 120 requires that best efforts be used to protect against the runoff of debris or leachate from the TDS site to the ocean, including through run-on and run-off control, groundwater-detection monitoring, air quality monitoring, stormwater-pollution prevention, and maintenance of adequate documentation, record keeping and transparent public reporting on these efforts.

The data from this sampling and monitoring is publicly available, consistent with Hawai’i law. Information is available at the Maui Recovers Debris Containment page at www.mauirecovers.org/debris-containment.

As required in Bill 120, the data was presented in a public forum within all four 90-day operational periods. The first operational period began on Jan. 21, 2024, when the Council approved the Olowalu ROE, through April 19, 2024. The second operational period began on April 20, 2024, through July 18, 2024; the third operational period began on July 19, 2024, through Oct. 17, 2024; and the fourth operational period began on Oct. 18, 2024, through Jan. 15 2025.

The fifth quarterly report will be submitted by April 15, 2025.

For more information on debris removal and containment and to view the full presentations, reports, plans or supporting documents, visit https://www.mauirecovers.org/debris-containment.