Hawaii / Environmental Crime / Hazardous Waste

Poison in a Tank. No Permit. No Alarm. No Test.

A Hawaii company stored ignitable, toxic hazardous waste in an unpermitted tank for years. The EPA found out during a single inspection. Nobody had checked.

A company that sells itself as a waste management solution stored ignitable and toxic hazardous solvents in a tank with zero leak detection, zero permits, and zero daily inspection records for at least two years straight, while regulators were never even notified it existed.

What Unitek Actually Does for a Living

Unitek Solvent Services, Inc. operates out of 91-125 Kaomi Loop in Kapolei, Hawaii. The company collects oily waste, waste antifreeze, waste tires, and spent solvents from commercial and industrial customers across the island. It cleans petroleum sump pumps and generates and distributes something it calls “EcoDiesel.”

The core of its business model is a parts-washer leasing program. Unitek leases industrial parts washers to businesses, collects the spent solvents those machines generate, hauls them back to its Kapolei facility, reclaims them, and then resupplies customers with clean solvents. This is a closed-loop system, in theory.

In practice, the solvents flowing through that loop tested positive for ignitability (hazardous waste code D001) and toxicity (hazardous waste code D018). Unitek stored thousands of gallons of this material without a permit, without a tracking system, and without any mechanism to detect if the tank holding it was leaking into the ground beneath a Hawaiian industrial park.

The Tanks: What Was Stored Where

Unitek’s facility houses multiple storage tanks. Tanks 21 and 22 each hold up to 3,500 gallons of spent solvents collected from customers. Tank 23 holds reclaimed solvents before they are redistributed. Tank 25 holds “still bottoms” — the concentrated toxic residue left over from the reclamation process — for up to three years before off-site disposal.

Tank 22 is at the center of every single major violation in this complaint. Unitek collected solvents from at least two named customers, Waipahu Repair and HECO (Hawaii Electric Company), transported those solvents to the facility, and stored them in Tank 22 without a permit, without proper manifests, without a leak detector, and without determining whether the waste was even hazardous.

Eight Counts. Eight “Major Violations.” Zero Excuses.

The EPA’s complaint against Unitek lists eight separate counts. Each one carries the exact same damning phrase: the agency calls it a “major violation.” That language has a specific legal weight. It means the violation does real, structural damage to the regulatory system designed to keep hazardous waste from poisoning communities.

Every violation documented below took place across a two-year window from 2020 through 2022, the same years regulators were stretched thin by a global pandemic. The EPA did not find out until a compliance inspection in May 2022. Before that, Unitek was operating completely off the radar.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Cannot Repay

The industrial park at Kaomi Loop in Kapolei sits on Oahu’s west side, one of Hawaii’s fastest-growing residential corridors. Ewa Beach, Kapolei, and Makakilo neighborhoods surround this area. These are working-class communities, home to families who moved west precisely because they could not afford the urban core of Honolulu. They did not choose to live next to a facility storing thousands of gallons of ignitable, toxic industrial solvents. They were never asked.

Toxic waste code D018 indicates arsenic contamination at levels that trigger federal hazardous waste designation. Arsenic does not announce itself. It does not smell. It does not discolor the water in a way anyone would notice without a lab test. If Tank 22 leaked into the soil or groundwater at any point during those two years, the people most likely to encounter the contamination are the ones who work nearby, whose children play in the area, and who drink from wells or live downstream from industrial runoff. They would have no idea.

Ignitable waste, code D001, means the solvents stored in that unmonitored, undetected tank were a fire hazard. A 3,500-gallon tank of flammable industrial solvent in an industrial park with no leak detection system is an emergency waiting for a spark. Workers at neighboring businesses, delivery drivers, maintenance crews, and first responders would have been the ones closest to that risk. None of them were informed. None of them consented.

The manifest system for hazardous waste exists precisely so that society can track where poison goes. When Unitek collected solvents from Waipahu Repair and HECO and transported them without manifests, it severed the chain of accountability. If something had gone wrong during transport, first responders would have had no documentation of what they were dealing with. If a driver spilled material on a roadway, emergency crews would have been operating blind in the dark. The entire paper trail that exists to protect the public was simply erased, not by accident, but by consistent practice over two years.

Volatile organic compounds, the measurement Unitek never bothered to take before dumping solvents into Tank 22, do not stay in the tank. They evaporate. Workers inside and around the Kapolei facility breathed whatever was off-gassing from an uncharacterized, unlicensed tank of industrial solvent for years. Hawaii law requires that measurement specifically because air emission standards kick in above certain thresholds. Without the measurement, there were no standards. Without standards, there was no protection.

The people harmed by this kind of negligence rarely appear in a lawsuit with their names attached. They do not get a settlement. They get an asthma diagnosis six years later and a doctor who says there is no way to prove the cause. They get a cancer screening that comes back troubling and a company that no longer exists as a legal defendant by the time anyone connects the dots. The Non-Financial Ledger for Unitek Solvent Services is still being written, in the bodies of people who may never know why they are sick.

Legal Receipts: Straight from the EPA’s Mouth

The following passages are taken directly from the EPA’s formal complaint against Unitek Solvent Services. No paraphrase. No editorial. These are the government’s own words describing what happened and what it means.

“Respondent’s failure to submit notification to EPA prior to managing hazardous secondary materials is a major violation that essentially undermines EPA’s ability to oversee Respondent’s compliance with the regulatory scheme under RCRA and the long-term management of hazardous wastes throughout its jurisdiction.” EPA Complaint, Count One, Paragraph 28

“Respondent’s failure to perform an accurate determination of waste is a major violation that essentially undermines Respondent’s management of hazardous wastes and risks exposure and damage to human health and the environment.” EPA Complaint, Count Two, Paragraph 34

“Respondent’s failure to comply with the manifest requirements for hazardous wastes is a major violation that essentially undermines Respondent’s management of hazardous wastes, risks exposure and damage to human health and the environment, and undermines EPA’s ability to oversee the long-term management of hazardous wastes throughout its jurisdiction.” EPA Complaint, Count Three, Paragraph 39

“Respondent’s failure to install and operate a leak detection system for hazardous waste is a major violation that essentially undermines Respondent’s management of hazardous wastes and risks exposure and damage to human health and the environment.” EPA Complaint, Count Five, Paragraph 50

“The violations alleged in Paragraphs 23 through 65 represent significant violations of RCRA because they significantly undermine the ability of the Respondent to properly manage hazardous wastes to prevent exposure and potential damage to human health and the environment, creating a significant potential for harm.” EPA Complaint, Civil Penalty Section, Paragraph 68

Societal Impact Mapping: The Bigger Picture

Environmental Degradation

The absence of a leak detection system on Tank 22 is the detail that should keep every Hawaii resident up at night. The law requires a system capable of detecting a failure in containment within 24 hours. Unitek had nothing. Nothing detecting a slow seep. Nothing detecting a crack in the tank lining. Nothing detecting pooling liquid in a secondary containment that may or may not have existed. Two years of toxic, ignitable solvent sitting in an unmonitored tank on a Hawaiian island where the groundwater table is close to the surface and the ocean is not far away.

Hawaii’s groundwater is not an abstraction. On Oahu, the aquifer system beneath the island supplies a significant portion of drinking water for residents. Contamination events in Hawaiian groundwater do not resolve quickly. The geology of a volcanic island means contamination pathways are complex and difficult to remediate. If Tank 22 leaked, the damage could extend far beyond the facility fence line, and it could persist for decades.

The failure to measure volatile organic concentrations before dumping solvents into the tank compounds the environmental picture. Air emission standards for tanks exist because hazardous vapors do not respect property lines. They drift. They accumulate. They deposit. The solvents Unitek was handling included materials characterized by ignitability and toxicity, a combination that produces airborne hazards capable of traveling well beyond an industrial park.

Public Health

Hazardous waste code D018 is the designation for arsenic-characteristic waste. Arsenic exposure is linked to cancers of the bladder, lung, skin, kidney, nasal passages, liver, and prostate. It is also linked to cardiovascular disease and neurological damage. These are not speculative or contested links. They are established by the World Health Organization, the CDC, and decades of epidemiological research. The fact that Unitek never even tested its waste to know this was in the tank makes the exposure risk more concerning, not less. They were not managing a known hazard. They were managing an unknown one, which is worse.

Workers inside the Unitek facility itself faced the most direct exposure risk. They worked in proximity to a tank storing thousands of gallons of material that was never measured for volatile organic concentrations. Air emission controls that would have been triggered by those measurements were never applied. The people who drove the collection trucks, operated the reclamation equipment, and maintained the facility operated inside a hazard envelope that Unitek never bothered to define or disclose. Worker health and safety protections begin with accurate hazard characterization. Unitek skipped that step entirely.

The customers who sent waste to Unitek, and who received reclaimed solvents back from it, operated under the assumption that they were working with a compliant, professional waste management company. HECO, Hawaii’s major electric utility, and Waipahu Repair were specifically named as sources of the solvents stored in Tank 22. Any failure in Unitek’s management of those materials creates liability and exposure risk that flows back through that entire supply chain.

Economic Inequality

The communities bearing the environmental and health risk of this facility are in West Oahu, an area that has historically housed lower-income and working-class families, many of them Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander. Hazardous facility siting and hazardous facility negligence follow predictable patterns in America: the communities with the least political power and the least access to legal recourse tend to absorb the most risk. Kapolei’s growth as a residential area was driven by affordability, which means the people living closest to Kaomi Loop generally did not have the economic flexibility to move away from an industrial neighbor.

The maximum daily penalty authorized under the law is $93,058 per day per violation ($93,058 is roughly what a median Hawaii household earns in an entire year). With eight violations running potentially across two years of conduct, the theoretical maximum exposure for Unitek is enormous. But the EPA does not always seek the maximum, and companies frequently negotiate penalties down through settlement. The people who breathed the air near Tank 22 will never negotiate their health back. The asymmetry between corporate accountability and community harm is built into the system.

What Now: Who Answers for This

The complaint identifies the recipient of the certified mail as Byron Manipon, listed at Unitek Solvent Services, Inc., 91-125 Kaomi Loop, Kapolei, HI 96707. The email address on the service record is byron@uniteksolvent.com. No corporate officer titles are provided in the source document beyond this contact information.

Regulatory Bodies to Watch

• EPA Region 9: The agency that filed this complaint and retains enforcement authority. Watch for a Consent Agreement and Final Order or a hearing result. Demand the maximum penalty is pursued, not negotiated away.
• Hawaii Department of Health (HDOH): Hawaii administers its own RCRA-authorized hazardous waste program. HDOH has independent authority to act and should be pressed on why this operation went undetected for two years.
• OSHA: Workers inside the Unitek facility were exposed to uncharacterized volatile organic compounds. OSHA has jurisdiction over worker health and safety violations that may have accompanied these environmental violations.
• Hawaii Environmental Health Administration: The body responsible for monitoring environmental threats to public health in Hawaii. Residents near Kaomi Loop in Kapolei should demand a soil and groundwater assessment around the Tank 22 location.

What You Can Actually Do Right Now

If you live or work near Kaomi Loop in Kapolei, contact the Hawaii Department of Health’s Solid and Hazardous Waste Branch and formally request a soil and groundwater assessment of the area around the Unitek facility. Put it in writing. Request a response in writing. Do not let them bury it in a phone call. Connect with local environmental justice organizations on Oahu’s west side, particularly those working in Native Hawaiian communities, who have experience navigating state and federal environmental enforcement processes and who understand how to turn a regulatory complaint into sustained public accountability. Your power in this situation is documentation, persistence, and community. Use all three.