The Non-Financial Ledger: What $160,000 Does Not Cover

Hawaii is not an abstract place on a map. It is a chain of islands sitting in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, geologically isolated, ecologically fragile, and almost entirely dependent on groundwater for drinking, irrigation, and survival. The islands rest on volcanic rock, and rainwater percolates through that porous geology into aquifers that have taken thousands of years to accumulate. When you put an open-bottomed pit filled with human excrement above that system and let it drain freely for two decades, you are not making a regulatory error. You are making a choice. Anheuser-Busch made that choice every single day from 1996 to 2021, and The Odom Corporation has continued making it through the date this settlement was filed in 2025.

The people most exposed to this contamination are not Anheuser-Busch executives sitting in offices at One Busch Place in St. Louis, Missouri. They are the workers who showed up to those beverage warehouse and distribution facilities at 2955 Waapa Road in Lihue, at 16-211 Wiliama Place in Keaau on the Big Island, and at 3140 Oihana Street in Lihue. These are warehouse workers, loaders, drivers, and distribution staff. People who used the restrooms on those properties. People whose sanitary waste was, by federal legal definition, being injected into the ground beneath their feet without proper treatment. These workers almost certainly had no idea. They were never asked. No public notice of these violations was required as a condition of the corporations’ continued operation. They just kept showing up to work, every day, for years.

The broader community surrounding these sites carries the same invisible burden. Lihue is the county seat of Kauai, a community of working families, Native Hawaiian residents, agricultural workers, and small business owners. Keaau sits in Puna on the Big Island, one of Hawaii’s most historically underserved communities, an area where residents have already faced displacement and environmental destruction from lava flows, where trust in institutions is hard-won and easily broken. These are places where the phrase “your government is protecting you” carries deep skepticism. And this case proves that skepticism earned. The federal cesspool closure deadline was April 5, 2005. That is twenty years ago. The EPA did not bring a formal enforcement action until 2024, and the cesspools are not legally required to be fully closed until April 30, 2026. Twenty-one years of free contamination. Twenty-one years of residents and workers drinking water from an island system that these corporations treated as a free sewage sink.

There is a particular kind of insult embedded in how these corporations handled their exit. Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc. owned the Waapa Road and Wiliama Place properties from 1996. The federal prohibition on new large capacity cesspools took effect on April 5, 2000. The closure mandate for existing ones kicked in on April 5, 2005. By the time Anheuser-Busch sold both properties to The Odom Corporation’s subsidiary on October 29, 2021, those cesspools had already been in federally prohibited operation for over sixteen years. Anheuser-Busch did not close them before the sale. It sold properties with known, active, federally illegal injection wells attached. The buyer, The Odom Corporation, accepted those properties and kept the cesspools running. Neither company treated the cessation of environmental law violations as a precondition for a real estate transaction. Both treated Hawaii’s groundwater as someone else’s problem to solve later.

The dignity cost here is also worth naming plainly. These cesspools were servicing restrooms at commercial beverage distribution warehouses. The companies profiting from the sale and distribution of beer and beverages across the Hawaiian islands were, simultaneously, treating Hawaii’s subsurface drinking water environment as a disposal site for human waste. The irony is not subtle: corporations that built their entire business model around people consuming liquid products in Hawaii used Hawaii’s groundwater infrastructure as their personal sewage system, and paid a penalty that amounts to roughly a rounding error on a quarterly earnings report.

And the non-financial ledger includes what comes next. The consent order requires closure by December 30, 2025 for the Oihana Street site and by April 30, 2026 for the two remaining sites. Every day between now and those deadlines, these cesspools continue injecting contaminants. The settlement does not require emergency closure. It does not require any immediate halt to operations. It sets future deadlines and asks the companies to file quarterly progress reports. The communities near these sites must wait, again, for the corporations to get around to following a law that was enacted in the year 2000. The harm does not pause for the administrative process.

Legal Receipts: Verbatim From the Government’s Own Documents

Every quote below is pulled directly from Docket No. UIC-09-2024-0109, the Consent Agreement and Final Order entered by EPA Region 9. Nothing has been paraphrased or invented. These are the government’s own words about what these corporations did.

“40 C.F.R. §§ 144.84(b)(2) and 144.88 requires owners or operators of existing LCCs to have closed them by April 5, 2005. New LCCs were prohibited as of April 5, 2000.”

Paragraph 29 — Statutory and Regulatory Authority

“Respondent Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc. previously owned the property from July 26, 1996 to October 29, 2021, at which time it sold the property to Odex Lihue, LLC.”

Paragraph 41 — Factual Allegations, 2955 Waapa Road

“Respondent Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc. previously owned the property from July 26, 1996 to October 29, 2021, at which time it sold the property to Odex Hilo, LLC.”

Paragraph 47 — Factual Allegations, 16-211 Wiliama Place

“EPA alleges that each day that Respondents Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc., The Odom Corporation, and Odex Lihue, LLC failed to close the alleged LCC at the property located at 2955 Waapa Road after April 5, 2005 constitutes a violation of 40 C.F.R. §§ 144.84(b)(2) and 144.88.”

Paragraph 45 — Factual Allegations, 2955 Waapa Road

“EPA alleges that each day that Respondents Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc., The Odom Corporation, and Odex Hilo, LLC failed to close the alleged LCC at the property located at 16-211 Wiliama Place after April 5, 2005 constitutes a violation of 40 C.F.R. §§ 144.84(b)(2) and 144.88.”

Paragraph 51 — Factual Allegations, 16-211 Wiliama Place

“EPA alleges that each day that Respondents Odex Kauai, LLC and the Odom Corporation failed to close the alleged LCC at the property located at 3140 Oihana Street after April 5, 2005 constitutes a violation of 40 C.F.R. §§ 144.84(b)(2) and 144.88.”

Paragraph 39 — Factual Allegations, 3140 Oihana Street

“To date, Respondents Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc., The Odom Corporation and Odex Lihue, LLC have not closed the LCC at the property.”

Paragraph 44 — Factual Allegations, 2955 Waapa Road

“To date, Respondents Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc., The Odom Corporation and Odex Hilo, LLC have not closed the LCC at the property.”

Paragraph 50 — Factual Allegations, 16-211 Wiliama Place

“To date, Respondents Odex Kauai, LLC and The Odom Corporation have not closed the LCC at the property.”

Paragraph 38 — Factual Allegations, 3140 Oihana Street

“40 C.F.R. § 144.81(2) defines ‘large capacity cesspools’ (‘LCCs’) to include ‘multiple dwelling, community or regional cesspools, or other devices that receive sanitary wastes, containing human excreta, which have an open bottom and sometimes perforated sides.'”

Paragraph 23 — Statutory and Regulatory Authority

“Under Section 1423(c)(1) of the SDWA, 42 U.S.C. § 300h-2(c)(1), and 40 C.F.R. Part 19, EPA may assess a civil penalty of not more than $27,894 for each day of violation, up to a maximum administrative penalty of $348,671, for violations occurring after November 2, 2015 where penalties are assessed on or after December 27, 2023.”

Paragraph 32 — Statutory and Regulatory Authority

“Respondents consent to the terms of this CA/FO, including the assessment of the civil penalty of $160,000, and the performance of the compliance requirements specified below.”

Paragraph 11 — Authorities and Parties

“This civil penalty represents an administrative civil penalty and shall not be deductible for purposes of federal taxes. 26 U.S.C. § 162(f).”

Paragraph 55 — Settlement Terms, Civil Penalty

“Full payment of the penalty as described in Section V.A., above, and full compliance with this CA/FO as described in Section V.B. shall only resolve Respondents’ liability for federal civil penalties for the violations and facts alleged in Section IV of this CA/FO.”

Paragraph 79 — General Provisions

“Full compliance with this CA/FO does not in any manner affect the right of EPA or the United States to pursue appropriate injunctive relief or other equitable relief or criminal sanctions for any violation of law, except with respect to the claims described in Section IV that have been specifically resolved by this CA/FO.”

Paragraph 83 — General Provisions

“I certify under penalty of law that this document and all attachments were prepared under my direction or supervision in accordance with a system designed to assure that the qualified personnel properly gather and evaluate the information submitted. Based on my inquiry of the person or persons who manage the system, or those persons directly responsible for gathering the information, the information submitted is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, true, accurate, and complete. I am aware that there are significant penalties for submitting false information, including the possibility of fine and imprisonment for knowing violations.”

Paragraph 74 — Submission Requirements (mandatory certification text required of Respondents)

“Section 1421 of the SDWA, 42 U.S.C. § 300h, requires that the Administrator of EPA promulgate regulations, which shall include permitting requirements as well as inspection, monitoring, recordkeeping, and reporting requirements, for state underground injection control (‘UIC’) programs to prevent underground injection from endangering drinking water sources.”

Paragraph 14 — Statutory and Regulatory Authority

“Pursuant to Section 1422(c) of the SDWA, 42 U.S.C. § 300h-1(c), and 40 C.F.R. § 147.601, EPA administers the UIC program in the State of Hawaii.”

Paragraph 30 — Statutory and Regulatory Authority

Societal Impact Mapping: The Full Damage Report

Environmental Degradation

The regulatory framework underpinning this case exists for one reason: open-bottomed cesspools are engines of groundwater contamination. Under federal law, 40 C.F.R. § 144.3 defines a “well” as “a dug hole whose depth is greater than the largest surface dimension,” and a cesspool qualifies as a “drywell,” which in turn is classified as a Class V injection well under the Underground Injection Control program. When these corporations operated their large capacity cesspools past the April 5, 2005 closure deadline, they were not operating a minor nuisance. They were operating unauthorized subsurface injection systems that, by the explicit logic of the Safe Drinking Water Act, pose a direct threat to underground sources of drinking water.

Hawaii’s geological character makes this threat particularly acute. The Hawaiian islands are built on basaltic volcanic rock, which is highly permeable. Rainwater moves rapidly through the rock into freshwater lens aquifers that float atop denser saltwater underground. These lens aquifers are the primary source of drinking water for large portions of the Hawaiian population. There are no great inland rivers to draw from. There are no vast surface reservoirs. What is in the ground is what people drink. When human excreta, containing nitrogen compounds, pathogens, pharmaceutical residues, and other biological contaminants, is injected directly into this geology without treatment, the contamination pathway to drinking water supplies is short, direct, and difficult to remediate.

The cesspools in question were servicing commercial distribution warehouses that, by EPA’s own allegation, had the capacity to serve twenty or more persons per day. These were not small-scale residential units. They were commercial-scale waste injection points. Three of them. On two islands. Operating for decades past the legal deadline. The document is silent on any groundwater monitoring data, any plume characterization, or any assessment of actual contamination levels in the aquifers near these sites. That silence is its own form of damage: no one appears to have looked, and no one was required to look as a condition of this settlement.

The sites span Kauai and the Big Island. Kauai is one of the most ecologically sensitive islands in the chain, home to endemic species found nowhere else on Earth, with freshwater systems feeding coastal reefs and marine habitats. The Big Island’s Puna district, where the Wiliama Place site sits, is an area with complex hydrology and a history of groundwater contamination concerns. Injecting untreated human waste into the ground in these locations is not a localized technical problem. It is a direct assault on ecosystems that took millions of years to develop and that support both the people who live there and the tourism economy that the entire state depends on.

Public Health

Large capacity cesspools are classified as prohibited injection wells under the Safe Drinking Water Act precisely because of their documented public health threat. Human excreta contains a suite of pathogens including bacteria, viruses, and parasites. It contains nitrogen in the form of nitrates, which at elevated concentrations in drinking water cause methemoglobinemia, a condition that reduces blood oxygen in infants and is potentially fatal. It contains pharmaceutical compounds excreted by people who take medication, compounds that water treatment systems are generally not designed to filter. When this material is placed in direct contact with permeable volcanic geology above Hawaii’s drinking water aquifers, the public health exposure pathway is real and documented by decades of scientific literature on cesspool contamination.

The workers who used the restrooms at 3140 Oihana Street, 2955 Waapa Road, and 16-211 Wiliama Place were the most directly proximate human beings to this ongoing injection. The consent order identifies that the Oihana Street cesspool collects sanitary wastewater from four restrooms, while the Waapa Road and Wiliama Place cesspools each collect from two restrooms. These workers, in all likelihood, did not know they were working at facilities with federally prohibited injection wells beneath them. They were not warned. The settlement includes no requirement that any worker notification occur, no health screening for current or former employees, and no community health assessment for residents near the contamination sites.

The public health gap in this settlement is a story in itself. A consent agreement that resolves twenty years of illegal groundwater injection with a $160,000 fine and future closure deadlines contains zero provisions for public health monitoring. No blood testing. No water quality testing in surrounding private wells or municipal intake points. No independent assessment of whether the aquifers near these three sites have already been compromised. The regulatory framework required these cesspools to close in 2005 because of known public health risks. The enforcement action in 2024 and 2025, two decades later, treats the matter as a compliance paperwork issue, not a public health emergency. The community bears the health risk; the corporations bear a fine smaller than the cost of a modest commercial construction project.

Economic Inequality

There is a geography of corporate harm, and it always follows the same lines. The beverage warehouses and distribution centers operated by Anheuser-Busch and The Odom Corporation in Hawaii were not located in wealthy resort enclaves or gated communities. They were located in Lihue and Keaau: working-class communities, communities with significant Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations, communities that do not have the political or economic leverage to make a global beverage corporation move faster than it wants to move. The choice of where to site a distribution warehouse that uses an illegal cesspool is, in effect, a choice about whose groundwater you are willing to contaminate. These companies made that choice repeatedly, across multiple sites, on multiple islands, for multiple decades.

The economic logic of the violation is straightforward and damning. Closing a large capacity cesspool and replacing it with a compliant Individual Wastewater System or a municipal sewer connection costs money. The corporations calculated, implicitly or explicitly, that paying that cost before April 5, 2005, or at any point in the following twenty years, was less economically attractive than simply continuing to operate in violation. The penalty ultimately assessed, $160,000 total for all five respondents across all three sites, is the price that these companies paid for two decades of free sewage disposal. When Anheuser-Busch sold the Waapa Road and Wiliama Place properties in October 2021 without closing the cesspools, it effectively transferred both the legal liability and the ongoing environmental harm to The Odom Corporation, while booking the proceeds of the sale. The contamination was, in that transaction, a cost externalized onto the Hawaiian environment and the people who depend on it.

The settlement also reflects a structural economic inequality in how environmental enforcement works. EPA’s maximum penalty authority for post-2015 violations was $27,894 per day per violation, with a cap of $348,671 per violation. Three sites, spanning at minimum several years of continuing violations under that penalty tier, meant the theoretical maximum administrative exposure for these corporations was in the millions of dollars. The agreed penalty was $160,000. For a beverage distribution enterprise operated under the umbrella of Anheuser-Busch, one of the largest beer companies on the planet, and The Odom Corporation, a multi-state distributor, $160,000 is not a deterrent. It is a line item. Working families in Lihue and Keaau who drink from aquifers potentially affected by these cesspools do not have the financial resources to retain environmental lawyers, commission independent hydrogeological studies, or negotiate penalty reductions with federal regulators. The corporations do. That asymmetry is what produces a $160,000 settlement for twenty years of illegal injection into Hawaii’s drinking water system.

The economic inequality extends to the timeline of harm versus the timeline of remedy. Communities near these sites have been living with the consequences of this illegal injection for up to twenty years before enforcement action was taken. The closure deadlines in this settlement extend to April 30, 2026. If these corporations request force majeure extensions, those deadlines can be pushed further. Meanwhile, there is no compensation mechanism, no community fund, no remediation escrow, and no requirement that the companies make the surrounding community economically whole in any way. The $160,000 penalty goes to the United States Treasury. Not to Kauai. Not to the Big Island. Not to the workers. Not to the water.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now? The Watchlist, The Levers, The Fight

• Jordan Elliott — Associate General Counsel, Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc. Named in the Certificate of Service as respondent contact at One Busch Place, St. Louis, MO 63118.
• Jay Eversman — Named in the Certificate of Service as second respondent contact for Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc. at One Busch Place, St. Louis, MO 63118.
• Elle Shrefler — Senior Vice President, Operations, The Odom Corporation. Named as primary contact for The Odom Corporation, Odex Kauai LLC, Odex Lihue LLC, and Odex Hilo LLC. Address: 11400 SE 8th Street, Suite 300, Bellevue, WA 98004.
• Maureen Mitchell — Attorney, Fox Rothschild LLP, Seattle, WA. Counsel of record for The Odom Corporation and subsidiaries.
• The Odom Corporation — Corporate Respondent. Delaware-incorporated beverage distribution company. Operates in multiple states including Hawaii. Subsidiary entities Odex Kauai LLC, Odex Lihue LLC, and Odex Hilo LLC are named co-respondents. Parent company owns all three currently-open cesspool sites.
• Anheuser-Busch Sales of Hawaii, Inc. — Corporate Respondent. Delaware-incorporated wholesale beverage distributor. Owned the Waapa Road and Wiliama Place cesspool sites from 1996 to October 2021. Sold properties with active, federally prohibited cesspools still in operation.

Regulatory Bodies With Active Jurisdiction

• U.S. EPA Region 9 — The agency that brought this action. Has ongoing oversight authority over compliance deadlines. Contact: Jelani Shareem, Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, 75 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, CA 94105. Email: Shareem.Jelani@epa.gov. This is the person to contact if closure deadlines are missed.
• Hawaii Department of Health (HDOH) — Named in the consent order as the state agency that must approve all cesspool closure, conversion, and replacement work. HDOH has independent enforcement authority over these sites.
• U.S. Department of Justice — EPA is authorized under this consent order to refer non-compliance to DOJ for civil or criminal enforcement. If deadlines pass without closure, public pressure on DOJ to act is a legitimate escalation path.
• EPA’s Underground Injection Control Program (UIC) — The federal regulatory program governing all Class V injection wells including large capacity cesspools. Citizens can submit complaints and tips directly to EPA’s enforcement office.

Compliance Deadlines to Watch

• Quarterly Progress Reports — Required every three months from The Odom Corporation and Hawaii subsidiaries. First report due three months after the May 13, 2025 effective date. These are public administrative records. Request them from EPA Region 9 under FOIA if they are not published proactively.
• December 30, 2025 — Deadline for closure of the cesspool at 3140 Oihana Street, Lihue, Kauai. If this date passes without a confirmed Final LCC Closure Report filed with EPA, that is a reportable violation of the consent order.
• April 30, 2026 — Deadline for closure of both the 2955 Waapa Road (Lihue, Kauai) and 16-211 Wiliama Place (Keaau, Big Island) cesspools.

What You Can Do Right Now

• File a public comment with EPA Region 9 about this consent agreement. The document itself notes that the order is subject to a 40-day public notice and comment period before becoming final. Your comment is part of the legal record.
• Contact Kauai County Council members and Hawaii County Council members and demand independent water quality monitoring near the three cesspool sites. This is a local government function that can be triggered by constituent pressure without waiting for federal action.
• Support organizations doing frontline environmental justice work in Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities, including those working on water rights and groundwater protection. Mutual aid to these organizations builds the infrastructure that catches the next violation before it runs twenty years.
• If you are a current or former worker at any of the three named sites, document your employment history and consult with an environmental attorney regarding potential exposure claims. The consent order
  The Odom Corporation et al (UIC-09-2024-0109) – Filed CAFODownload

  Please click on this link to learn more about this pollution of clean drinking water in Hawaii: https://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/rhc/epaadmin.nsf/Filings/DB61F4DEF549539D85258C8A0082A92F/$File/The%20Odom%20Corporation%20et%20al%20(UIC-09-2024-0109)%20-%20Filed%20CAFO.pdf

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