Senate President Robert Bunda, D-North Shore, is lobbying his 24 fellow state Senators to pass a bill — SB 1532 — that will allow the construction of a landfill over Hawaii’s main aquifer in Kunia, which supplies drinking water to up to 90 percent of Oahu’s 1 million residents.
Bunda reportedly told his fellow Senators the landfill is safe and will not contaminate the drinking water source for Hawaii. However, experts from such government agencies as the state Department of Health, the city Board of Water Supply, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and others, are adamantly against the plan.
There has surprisingly been little publicity on the bill, in part because of how Senate leadership has carefully directed the progression of this legislation.
The bill moved quickly and quietly through the state Senate, and in an unusual turn of events, skipped the Environment and Government Affairs committees where it was scheduled to be heard, and instead was re-referred to the Water Land and Agriculture. That committee, headed by one of Bunda’s loyalists, voted to pass the bill out to the full Senate for a vote, with three committee members in favor and two opposed.
The bill will pass Thursday to the House –