Representatives from the hospitality industry are pushing back on a Hawaii County Council bill that would increase sewage treatment costs for hotels, on top of planned across-the-board rate hikes for all customers in coming years aimed at providing more funding for wastewater operations and maintenance.

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Representatives from the hospitality industry are pushing back on a Hawaii County Council bill that would increase sewage treatment costs for hotels, on top of planned across-the-board rate hikes for all customers in coming years aimed at providing more funding for wastewater operations and maintenance.

Bill 183, discussed Tuesday by the council’s Committee on Environmental and Natural Resource Management, would create a new customer class for hotels which would be billed at a higher monthly rate than other commercial and residential ratepayers.

Department of Environmental Management Director Daniel Girvan told committee members that the addition of the new hotel class reflects data suggesting these businesses produce more wastewater than other users.

“Because hotels, not always, but sometimes, have restaurants, they have a high density of population, they have industrial grade laundries to keep all of their linen clean. … By the time you receive all that wastewater, it is an unusually large volume, and it’s an unusually large concentration of materials that we have to treat,” Girvan said. “So, I am sensitive to the idea that the price is higher, and what that really means is that for a very long time we have been undercharging for that for that grade of customer.”

SCP Hilo Hotel General Manager Breeani Kobayashi-Kuali‘i testified at the meeting, arguing that the proposed increase was unfair to businesses like hers which make efforts to be sustainable and reduce waste.

“If one hotel consumes dramatically less water than another, I don’t believe its commitment to conservation should become irrelevant just because it’s a hotel,” she said. “If the goal is to protect our infrastructure and our resources, then I feel the actual rate of consumption should matter.”

Leadership from the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel and Outrigger Resorts also spoke in opposition to the bill.

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“Isolating our brick-and-mortar hotels with rate increases of more than 300% disproportionately burdens local properties that already contribute tens of millions through real property taxes … ,” said Outrigger representative Kekoa McClellan, noting that short-term vacation rentals would not be subject to the higher rates. “Cost spikes like this threaten operational stability, impacting local families who rely on our hotels for gatherings, staycations and their jobs.”

The bill includes a proposed rate schedule that would more than double what hotels, as well as other customers, currently pay over the next five years.

For residential units, this would increase the rate every year starting in 2027, going from the current fixed fee of $52 a month to $125 by 2031. For hotels, under the new class, rates would spike to $96 a month per unit next year and rise to $189 over the same proposed time period.

Girvan said the rate increases are necessary to support the operations of the county’s wastewater division. At the moment, he said, revenue from sewer rates covers only about 52% of the department’s operating costs. This does not include the additional millions of dollars in repairs and upgrades to wastewater infrastructure the county is currently on the line for under a mandate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The bill follows the release of a recent countywide wastewater rate study evaluating the sustainability of the existing rate structure, which Girvan said supports the need for significant increases.

Committee members had questions about the study, which Councilman Holeka Inaba noted had not been provided to the council prior to the meeting.

The committee decided to defer further discussion about the bill to the committee’s Sept. 15 meeting to allow time for the study to be reviewed.

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Email Grace Inez Adams at [email protected].