Last July, in my IDEAS essay on Hawaii having the highest number of cesspools per capita in the country, I argued that the pandemic should motivate the state and counties to diversify our economies and increase the sanitation workforce develop the necessary to convert all these cesspools.
Now, nearly a year later, Hawaii has a key new ally in the cesspit conversion work: The federal government, under a new administration, is pushing policies and offering funding to do just that.
If there’s one thing most Americans should agree on, it’s the need to fix our country’s deteriorating infrastructure. Despite partisan politics, the US Congress passed the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan Act, and its members are currently bickering over the proposed budget for the American Jobs Plan.
The new AJP law would invest $1.7 trillion to get people back to work and restore our aging roads, bridges, water and wastewater treatment systems.
As a co-founder of the non-profit WAI: Wastewater Alternatives & Innovations, my focus is on the latest issue. Hawaii has approximately 88,000 sumps statewide that dump 53 million gallons of untreated wastewater into our groundwater every day. This sewage pollution poses a harmful threat to public health, drinking water, the coastal environment and coral reefs, along with Hawaii’s reputation as a world-class tourist destination.
WAI helped found the Work 4 Water initiative by bringing together leaders from Hawaii Community College, the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College, the Water Resources Research Center, and the Hawaii Department of Health and Human Services’ Sanitary Division. For the past year, our W4W group has met weekly and focused on four long-term goals: human resources development, infrastructure investment, cesspool replacement, and water conservation.
Fortunately, Hawaii’s congressional delegation is increasingly aware of the seriousness of the problem.
“Sewage has been really neglected for years and it’s something we need to address as a state,” Rep. Kai Kahele recently wrote. “This is a great time to do this with the American Rescue Plan because it can provide millions of dollars for jobs and investments in Hawaii’s sanitation infrastructure.”
“We have a cesspool problem on our neighboring islands where they really aren’t going to comply with the Clean Water Act unless we provide them with the infrastructure,” Sen. Brian Schatz said in a recent interview with Civil Beat, “either for large sewer systems or small distributed wastewater management systems or something even more distributed like the Gates toilet.”
Half of the state’s cesspools — 49,300 — are on Rep. Kahele’s home island, the island of Hawaii. Kauai has 13,700, Maui County has 13,640, and Oahu has 11,300.
Something must be done
As Kahele notes, “The County of Hawaii has been in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act and EPA federal rules and regulations since 2010, when the county assumed responsibility for the large-volume Pahala and Naalehu sumps.” Given these federal rules, what should the counties be doing? do – continue with the old, expensive sewage systems or find a new and cheaper technology?
When Sen. Chris Lee and I attended the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Reinvented Toilet Expo in 2018, we began to realize that our current sanitation system is not the solution.
These systems once served a purpose, but now they’re the definition of a vicious cycle: we use clean drinking water to flush our toilets, and then use vast amounts of energy and miles of sewer lines to pump that waste across the island to municipal wastewater treatment plants , which require even more energy to separate the liquids from the solids; and we end up pumping the clean water into the sea and transporting the sewage sludge to landfills that are already full.
In her new book, Pipe Dreams, Chelsea Wald writes, “Every day, by one estimate, people around the world use nearly 40 billion gallons of fresh water – nearly six times the daily water use of the entire continent of Africa – to flush toilets. We can do that better.” Yes, we can.
There are basically three different scenarios for dealing with our cesspool and sewage problems.
At one end of the spectrum are the major sewage systems. While it may be possible to extend sewer lines into certain Hawaiian communities near existing facilities, it would be financially impossible to create this type of massive, centralized, and outdated infrastructure in more remote areas of the islands. Building sewage treatment plants and installing traditional sewer lines and pumping stations would be prohibitively expensive and disruptive for small, rural areas.
At the other end of the spectrum, each individual sump will cost tens of thousands of dollars to convert to a more environmentally friendly septic system. Many homeowners lack the money, which is why the Work 4 Water initiative is seeking federal funds to help homeowners with remodeling costs.
We are also now working with community colleges on each island to develop training programs to certify more workers in the wastewater sector and develop hands-on internships with local businesses to create enough jobs to rebuild 88,000 cesspools.
As I discovered last year, gold can be mined from these dark, underground streams of waste. By training thousands of workers for long-term, high-paying jobs, we’re able to install new sewer systems across the state.
In 2017, lawmakers mandated the conversion of all cesspools by 2050 through passage of Act 125. In order to convert all of the sumps in the state within the next 30 years, the state must increase its current rate of sump conversions from about 200 per year to 3,000 per year.
The middle ground
Instead of large sewage systems or individual sump conversions, for at least one-third of Hawaiian homes currently using sumps, the best option may be to hook up to smaller “distributed sewage management systems,” as Sen. Schatz outlined.
There are promising new technologies for decentralized, more efficient and cheaper wastewater treatment systems. The central message of the Gates Foundation’s Reinvented Toilet program and Pipe Dreams is that we must not only reinvent the toilet, but reinvent the entire sanitation system.
With the federal government committed to rebuilding our decaying infrastructure, now is the time to develop community-scale mobile sanitation systems that recycle the valuable resources and nutrients in our liquid and solid waste. Instead of pumping nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium into the sea, we can recycle them on land to enrich our soils (instead of expensive synthetic fertilizers).
These systems can be funded by federal funds, state bonds, and in some cases by the sewage companies themselves.
How do we recycle our waste safely and cheaply? WAI partners with Elemental Excelerator to bring innovative technology and financing models to Hawaii. One of Elemental’s new cohort companies is Cambrian, whose small modular treatment systems are designed for approximately 30 to 300 homes.
Cambrian has created a hydroelectric power purchase agreement that allows the company to build these systems with a service contract rather than a large upfront investment.
This “sanitation-as-a-service” approach can save counties millions of dollars and provide state-of-the-art facilities to rural communities like Pahala and Naalehu on the island of Hawaii or coastal areas like Maalaea on Maui.
As Rep. Kahele notes, right now in Maalaea, “wastewater is treated in every single condo and then piped straight back into the ground (via injection wells), and that’s also having a big impact on the Maalaea coral and offshore fisheries.”
Counties like Maui could focus on installing flowlines to connect Maalaea’s 10 condominium complexes and nearby businesses to these smaller treatment systems.
Cambrian’s systems are capable of converting liquid wastewater into clean R1 water that can be used for irrigation and agriculture. Other companies can recycle the solid waste sludge.
Biomass Controls, originally funded by the Gates Foundation, uses a process called pyrolysis, in which waste is burned with high heat and low oxygen, turning it into 100% pathogen-free biochar. This thermodynamic heating process can reduce sludge volume by 90% and remove more than 95% of pharmaceuticals, plastics, PFOS and other toxic contaminants.
The resulting odorless biochar can be used as a soil improver or as a medium for water and air filtration. It can also be used for carbon sequestration to help the state meet its 2045 carbon neutrality goals.
Jim Mothersbaugh, CEO of WaterTectonics, operates a wastewater treatment plant in Makena, Maui. He is working to integrate Biomass’ technology into his treatment system. By avoiding hauling 90 loads of mud to landfill each year, he reduces his carbon footprint and saves hundreds of thousands of dollars in transportation costs and garbage fees. Using biochar as a soil conditioner for agroforestry, he hopes to make his facility a model for the future of waste recycling.
These two treatment systems are examples of mobile, scalable and affordable solutions that can help convert our problematic waste into valuable products. Hawaii could become the national leader by recycling 100% of its liquid and solid waste.
As we emerge from the cocoons of our quarantine, we should make sure we don’t revert to outdated ideas and technologies. Instead, we should work together to fix our aging infrastructure and build a better foundation for the future.
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