Maui Mayor Richard Bissen has selected a location near the Central Maui landfill as the permanent dump site for an estimated 400,000 cubic yards of non-recyclable debris and ash that is being cleared from the five-mile burn zone in Lahaina.

Cheers erupted during a community fire recovery update meeting when Shayne Agawa, director of the county Department of Environmental Management, announced the decision Wednesday evening at the Lahaina Civic Center.

While the Central Maui site will cause the most traffic, results from a community survey prioritized the site over two others in West Maui for being a safe distance from the ocean, homes, schools and hospitals.

“Our students and ocean should come before worrying about the traffic,” said Seanna Daise, a teacher at Lahaina Intermediate School. “I am happy they listened to us.”

The approximately 20-acre, privately owned property in Puunene that is currently a rock quarry was selected over two state-owned sites near the Lahaina Civic Center in West Maui.

One of the West Maui sites was a parcel that borders the Wahikuli residential subdivision and has been considered for future housing. The other was the more than 500-acre Crater Village, which is further up the mountain from the subdivision and potentially could interfere with drinking water sources. Both of the West Maui sites were a half-mile from three Lahaina schools.

Bissen made the decision based on the community survey, additional public input and scoring criteria ranking the three sites.

The mayor said he hopes the county can quickly get the site up and running so that some of the fire debris does not need to be brought to the temporary site in Olowalu at all.

The Central Maui site is “pretty much in the middle of nowhere” and already slated for future landfill expansion, Agawa said.

The biggest drawback to the Central Maui site is it’s about 19 miles and a 30-minute drive on existing roads from the temporary Olowalu dump site, compared to only a 9-mile, 15-minute drive from the Lahaina options.

The double transport time and hauling distance of the estimated 40,000 truckloads is more expensive, will put additional wear and tear on roads and equipment, and will create more traffic for nearly a year.

There are also safety concerns with truck drivers having to navigate a six-mile portion of Honoapiilani Highway that winds along the Pali coast and through the business area of Kahului.

While there is not anything practical the county can do to eliminate driving the Pali coast, Agawa said the county is trying to get access to cane haul roads that would eliminate having to drive through major commercial sections of Kahului.

The next thing the county needs to do is acquire the land, which is owned by Komar Maui Properties. The county has been trying for years, and gone through three mayors, to try to buy it. The county will try again, offering more than the most recent appraisal of about $850,000, Agawa said.

There is a plan B, on county-owned land also next to the landfill, Agawa said. But the privately owned 20 acres is already dug out for a quarry, making it the ideal cost-effective site, he added.

Once the permanent site is designed and built, which will take about a year, all debris and ash staged temporarily in Olowalu will be transferred there, officials said.

While FEMA will reimburse the county for most if not all of the transportation cost from the temporary to the permanent dump site, as well as the weight-based “tipping fees” in Central Maui, the county is on the hook for the cost of constructing the permanent site.

Building a permanent site at Olowalu was estimated to be about $60 million, because it was going to be built to higher standards due to its proximity to the ocean. The Central Maui site has a price tag of approximately $40 million because it can be built to a lower standard due to its location.

The mayor’s decision came after a monthslong process that began with identifying more than 100 potential sites across the island. Quick analysis whittled the sites down to eight and eventually the top three.

The county’s original frontrunner was a site in Olowalu, near the location of the temporary debris site built by the Army Corps of Engineers. But protests by the community — primarily about environmental concerns that toxic material in the debris could leach into groundwater and affect nearshore marine life and a 1,000-acre coral reef — led Bissen to eliminate it from consideration in early January.

The final site was selected based on a variety of factors, including time to acquire the land, proximity to Lahaina for traffic and safety, access in and out of the site, surface water management and environment concerns from flooding, storms and tsunamis.

Historic preservation, cultural sensitivity and distance to the coastline and prevailing were taken into consideration at the public’s request, along with the proximity to schools and hospitals.

The final decision also was based in part on the results of a survey taken by 2,757 residents, of which 57% were from West Maui and 49% said they were directly impacted by the fires.

Agawa showed charts indicating how the community’s will changed the scoring of the sites.

Residents had 16 days to take the survey. The county also contracted with Hawaii-based Anthology Research to conduct the survey from a random sampling of residents by phone and email to try to ensure a better sampling of people across the island.

Shipping the non-recyclable ash and debris off of Maui — estimated to be able to fill five football fields five stories high — or putting it in permanent containers was quickly dismissed as too expensive and time consuming, federal and county officials said.

While it is costly and uses a lot of resources to move the debris and ash twice, it is necessary to speed up the rebuilding process and to remove potentially toxic material to the contained temporary area, officials said.

In phase 1, the Environmental Protection Agency removed hazardous household materials, bulk asbestos, and batteries for electric cars and solar power storage, which was shipped to licensed disposal and recycling facilities on the mainland. Maui does not have such facilities.

The Corps is leading phase 2 of the debris removal, with cleanup underway on properties that signed up for the government program. The ash and other material is being “burrito wrapped” in thick industrial plastic and sealed with an adhesive before being transported to Olowalu.

Since the start of phase 2 on Jan. 17, the debris removal operation performed by Corps’ contractor Environmental Chemical Corporation has cleared 168 Lahaina residential properties. It has received permission to clean up more than 1,425 properties.

An estimated 200,000 cubic yards of recyclable material, which includes steel and concrete, is being staged at the Pioneer Mill in the burn zone and then transported by contractor Hawaii Materials Recycling to Central Maui businesses for recycling. As of Feb. 20, about 11,000 tons of recyclable concrete and metal have been removed from Lahaina residential properties.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.