Hawaii Plans To Ship Tons Of Trash To The Pacific Northwest

By Joseph Friedrichs, 6-04-08

	Caption: Oregon has enough trash, obviously.

A wise, slightly disturbed and possibly insane friend of mine once told me the following statement when I ran out of beer and asked him for one: “Don’t make your problem, my problem.”

And that’s the first notion that popped into my head when I heard about Hawaii’s plans to start dumping trash in the Pacific Northwest, including a landfill in eastern Oregon.

Hawaii’s largest city, Honolulu, is apparently unable to find enough room for its trash and is thus looking to barge its garbage to the Northwest and ship it up the Columbia River.

The Oregonian reports that Honolulu’s main landfill is expected to close next year, and the city is seeking bids from companies that could haul at least 100,000 tons of trash to the mainland each year for three to six years. The bidders are expected to be groups with plans to bring the trash to Oregon, Washington or possibly Idaho. The trash would be bundled in airtight plastic and be shipped in bales weighing several tons each.

I should probably mention at this time that Honolulu’s landfill sits near a beach area where The Walt Disney Co. plans to build a multimillion-dollar resort complex.

So here’s the skinny on this situation: Hawaii is giving Oregonians stockpiles of trash so that a high-class resort can be erected and nobody there has to deal with the waste created by a massive influx of humans to an island.

What elected officials and all parties involved with this bizarre arrangement need to say to the people of Hawaii is the following: “Don’t make your problem, our problem.”