KALAHEO, Kauai — It was no surprise, really, that not a single speaker favored a Kalaheo site for a new county landfill.

Around 250 people packed the Kalaheo School cafeteria for Thursday night’s public meeting on a proposed new county landfill, and dozens who spoke gave myriad reasons why a committee-favored site on 127 acres of Kaua‘i Coffee Company land near the Brydeswood residential subdivision is a bad idea.

“There is no reason in the world to take productive agricultural land out of coffee. No reason,” said Phil Scott, a Kalaheo resident and one of the last managers of the now-defunct McBryde Sugar Company, and one of the first leaders of Kaua‘i Coffee Company.

Tom Shigemoto, of Kaua‘i Coffee Company parent company Alexander & Baldwin, said A&B allowed a Maui landfill in the middle of its cane fields there, but is not willing to part with productive coffee land for a new county landfill on Kaua‘i.

The county should instead find a willing landowner to host a workable landfill site, said Shigemoto, also a former county Planning Department director who added that he has seen agricultural companies on the island struggle then fold.

“Kaua‘i Coffee is the last one standing,” and the corn companies that have supplanted sugar on the Westside and South Shore are “a blessing,” Shigemoto said.

“The Umi site (as the Kalaheo site is known in landfill-proposal documents) does not make sense for Kaua‘i Coffee,” said Kaua‘i Coffee Company General Manager Wayne Katayama, to thunderous applause from the packed house.

“There has to be a better alternative,” he said, the first speaker to indicate that the landfill site and Kaua‘i Coffee Company lands have been the first such lands in Hawai‘i and Kaua‘i to earn the state designation as important agricultural lands.

“You don’t put a dump in the middle of agricultural land that is profitable,” said Anne Punohu of Kalaheo, adding that high-tech alternatives to the need to build a new landfill haven’t been looked at by county officials.

She sported a “no landfill” sign outside her home across the street from the school before the meeting began.

Dr. New Sang of Kalaheo said he would quit buying Kaua‘i Coffee if a landfill is allowed on former Kaua‘i Coffee Company land, adding that he fears decreases in nearby land values and concerns for the environment and health care.

“That’s not being green,” said Sang.

“There are alternatives,” said Arnold Leong of Hanapepe Valley, a former deputy county engineer. Why would anyone want to build a mountain of trash to make good agricultural land fallow, he asked.

Sherwood Hara, a former state Board of Education member and Hanapepe resident, said there is lots of former sugar land owned by Gay & Robinson, some of which might make a good landfill site.

If the world finds out there is a landfill in the middle of Kaua‘i Coffee Company fields, what is going to happen to Kaua‘i Coffee, asked Ikaika Perreira of Brydeswood subdivision.

The county “folded” to a developer on the Eastside’s Kumukumu landfill site after the developer won development rights on that parcel, he said. If the Kumukumu site (north of Kealia) was pulled from consideration after the developer got development permits, why shouldn’t the county eliminate from consideration for a new landfill the Umi site now considered IAL, he asked.

Sugar is gone, guava is gone, pineapple is gone. “Now all we have left is coffee and genetically modified corn,” said Julie Taboniar of Numila, whose husband works for Kaua‘i Coffee.

“This is an IAL land,” said Kalaheo’s Roy Oyama, president of the Kaua‘i County Farm Bureau. “We gotta have more farming.”

Mike Shimatsu, roastmaster at Kaua‘i Coffee Company, called it a “slap in the face” to consider placing a landfill on productive agricultural land. Current land use and the IAL designation are two reasons the Umi site should not even be considered for the new county landfill, Shimatsu said.

“This isn’t a rational proposal,” said Kalaheo resident and attorney Rob Goldberg, saying a landowner unwilling to sell land to the county for a landfill will mean a 10-year, expensive court battle if the county goes through condemnation proceedings in order to acquire the Kalaheo land.

“The bottom line is this is not the right site,” said Mel Rapozo, a former member of the Kaua‘i County Council.

“Once it’s ruined it is gone forever,” said Kalaheo resident Linda Silva, adding that the Kalaheo property is too valuable in agriculture to even be considered for landfill purposes.

“The landfill is not supposed to be in Kalaheo,” said 40-year Kalaheo resident Sab Yoshioka, adding that he will start his own petition drive and get signatures of Kalaheo residents opposed to the landfill here and bring the signatures to members of the County Council.

Councilmembers have the final say on where a new county landfill will be sited.

“We should do all we can to support Kaua‘i Coffee, not put up obstacles,” said Norman Hashisaka of Kalaheo, advocating that every effort should be made to locate a new landfill on state land that the county might acquire for free or by land exchange.

Large numbers of Kaua‘i Coffee Company employees will have to be terminated if the landfill goes on former Kaua‘i Coffee Company land, said Hashisaka, adding that siting a landfill there will have adverse impacts on the island, surrounding businesses and neighborhoods.

If a landowner willing to sell land for a new county landfill is found, will that make that landowner’s site the top site, and will the county then decide to put the landfill there, asked Bruce Pleas of Kekaha.

Around 300 signatures were attached to pages of petitions opposing the Umi site for a new county landfill. Many in the crowd sported “Dump da Dump” buttons.

Recycling efforts key

Other speakers said the time is now to increase recycling efforts in order to lengthen the estimated seven-year life expectancy of the existing Kekaha Landfill, even thanking Mayor Bernard Carvalho Jr. for moving the ball forward after the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Landfill Site Selection ranked the Umi site No. 1 among seven sites under consideration.

Due to “rampant consumerism,” all Kauaians own a piece of the existing landfill, said Ben Sullivan of Kalaheo, a Kaua‘i Island Utility Cooperative board member who thanked Carvalho for “forcing the issue.”

Sullivan said Carvalho’s decision on a new landfill creates “an opportunity to do things differently,” and that doubling the current 30-percent diversion rate (or keeping 30 percent of what had been going into the Kekaha Landfill out of it) can be doubled overnight.

“We have to do this. This is a challenge,” to reduce waste in each household to next to nothing, said Sullivan.

Jonathan Jay of Kalaheo said residents contribute to the need for a new landfill every time they bring their trash curbside without sorting it first, and in fact are “voting for a landfill” by those actions.

Dr. Linda Weiner, who lives and works in Kalaheo, said she and her husband have reduced their curbside trash to one small bag through sorting. She said she worries about the visual impact of a new landfill at the ‘Umi site as seen from Kukuiolono Golf Course, nearby Pu‘u Road and the National Tropical Botanical Garden.

Dede Letz, who has been a process facilitator for both the MACLS and public-meeting process, said, “This is very early in the process. The final decision has not been made.”

Letz said nearly everything related to the landfill site-selection process is posted on the county Web site, www.kauai.gov/government/departments/publicworks/solidwaste.

Another meeting with the same format is scheduled for Dec. 16 from 6 to 9 p.m., also in the Kalaheo School cafeteria.