HILO, Hawai'i — Large-scale recycling on the Big Island is at a crossroads, with Mayor Harry Kim's administration so far unable to pursuade a skeptical County Council majority to spend millions of dollars on a major new "sort station" to boost recycling on the eastern half of the island.

If the $15.5 million project fails this week, it will be a major setback for county recycling, which the county had planned to use as a primary way of disposing of rubbish when the Hilo landfill closes, said Barbara Bell, director of the Department of Environmental Management.

Council Chairman Stacy Higa said the Kim administration has put too much emphasis on recycling, which Higa said diverts only a small fraction of Big Island trash at an enormous cost.

A recent study commissioned by the council concluded Big Island recycling programs were costing taxpayers $400 per ton, he said. By comparison, trucking Hilo's trash across the island and dumping it in a landfill at Pu'uanahulu costs only $70 to $100 per ton, he said.

"It's costing us a ton of money," Higa said of the county's recycling efforts. "It's probably the right thing to do, but at what cost?"

Bell disputed those cost estimates, saying recycling costs $95 to $136 per ton, or roughly the same as it costs to dump trash in the landfill. But landfills must be monitored for 30 years after they close, and must be replaced with expensive new landfills after they fill up, she said.

"If we added those costs in, landfilling would be even more expensive," she said.

According to Bell's reports to the council, almost 55,500 tons of rubbish, or about 20 percent of the Big Island waste stream, was diverted from county landfills last year. About three-quarters of that was green waste and scrap metal, including junked cars.

Long-term county plans call for increasing recycling to dispose of 45 percent of all county rubbish by 2014.

Garbage disposal on the Big Island differs from much of the rest of the state because there is no county-sponsored residential trash pickup.

More than 85 percent of single-family-home residents on the Big Island haul their own garbage to 21 "transfer stations" across the island. The county then trucks rubbish from the transfer stations to landfills near the Hilo airport and at Pu'uanahulu in North Kona.

Time is running out for the Hilo landfill, however. The county predicts it will be filled to capacity by next March, and the state may then require it to close. To buy more time, the county plans to ask the state Department of Health for permission to increase the slope on the sides of the landfill in the hope that it can remain open two or three years longer.

Eventually the county plans to set up a new high-tech system for disposing of trash on the eastern half of the island, such as a garbage-to-energy incinerator or an anaerobic digestion process that would break down rubbish to produce methane gas.

But it will take at least two to three years for the county to select a particular type of disposal plant, find the tens of millions of dollars to pay for the project, perform the required environmental studies, obtain the necessary permits and build it.

That assumes there are no lawsuits or other unexpected problems to stall the project. Bell said it took 11 years to get Honolulu's garbage-to-energy plant running from the time Honolulu officials decided what technology they wanted to use.

If the Hilo landfill closes before the new trash-disposal facility is finished, county plans call for East Hawai'i rubbish to be either recycled or shipped 80 miles across the island to the other landfill at Pu'uanahulu.

The sort station, which is scheduled for a vote by the council this week, is critical to that plan.

The $15.5 million project includes areas where people can drop off materials for recycling. It would also have a "reload" center where 200 tons of trash from East Hawai'i would be brought from the transfer stations each day, sorted to remove some materials for recycling, and then consolidated into larger trucks for the 80-mile run to the Pu'uanahulu landfill.

With the reload facility, county officials said no more than 17 truck trips will be needed to move East Hawai'i's rubbish to Pu'uanahulu.

However, hauling trash across the island is strongly opposed by some West Hawai'i residents, who predict the rubbish trucks will cause traffic and other problems.

The county has spent $1 million on planning and environmental reports for the sort station, and the council provided another $4 million three years ago to get started on the project.

Higa has introduced a resolution to allow Kim's administration to spend that $4 million on a simpler reload facility so that trash can be consolidated for trucking to Pu'uanahulu.

However, the council's Finance Committee split 4-4 in a vote last month on whether to provide another $4 million — or a total of $8 million — for the sort station with the recycling component. A vote on that proposal has been scheduled before the full nine-member council Thursday, and six votes are necessary to add the second $4 million appropriation to the county construction budget.

Higa said he believes he is part of a majority on the council that opposes spending $15.5 million on the sort station and recycling project. If so, that would halt the Kim administration's recycling push.

"Before we move forward, I'm going to make sure that it is cost-effective when we're spending the people's money," Higa said.

Bell said the county had been promising the state Department of Health for a decade that it would build a facility like this to reduce the flow of trash into county landfills.

"It is a very common solution across the United States in dealing with solid waste," she said. "It's not particularly fancy, it's well thought out, with a lot of community input."

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.