Pipe work worries Punalu'u residents
By Eloise Aguiar
Advertiser Windward Bureau
PUNALU'U — Some residents are concerned about an ongoing water-main project that calls for the removal and replanting of 50-year-old trees along the Kamehameha Highway that secure the shoreline from erosion and protect homes from extreme tides.
Some residents said that they have had difficulty obtaining information about the Board of Water Supply project, despite regular meetings scheduled by the contractor, RCI Environmental Inc. and the water board.
"We have to dig and dig and question and question to come up with an answer," said Kathleen Mattoon, of the Punalu'u Community Association.
However, the Ko'olau Loa Neighborhood Board said RCI and the water board have been responsive, attending all its meetings and answering its questions.
"They give us updates at the board meetings, and they're accessible by phone or fax," said Mary Anne Long, the board's chairwoman.
The water board and RCI will attend a Punalu'u Community Association meeting on Aug. 14.
For more than a year, the water board has been installing a 36-inch transmission main in Ka'a'awa, Hau'ula and Punalu'u that will carry water to Kane'ohe and Kailua. The contractor is installing 12,900 feet of line in two phases.
The completion date is May 2002. About 28 percent of the work is finished, said Howard Tanaka, head of the water board's Maintenance Unit Engineering Branch.
The construction has created traffic delays and has fallen behind schedule mostly because of the discovery of human graves, which requires the work to slow down to remove the bones, Tanaka said. The project has unearthed six burial sites.
At issue now is a micro-tunneling phase of the project where the contractor will drill a tunnel under two streams at the North Punalu'u and South Punalu'u bridges on the highway. The company has hired an arborist to inventory and catalogue the plants at the site and develop a plan to remove, transplant and replace the plants once the tunneling is completed.
The tunneling will require two 15-foot by 30-foot pits on either side of the streams to hold equipment, Tanaka said. Installing the pits will require some pile driving, he added, but the contractor will install buffers to soften the noise from the machines.
Long said the noise will be a concern to the community. "If they are going to create horrendous pile-driving noise, then I think everybody will have a problem," she said.
Mattoon said the community hasn't seen the tunneling plan and has balked at the size of the pits.
The plan isn't finished said Marty Miller, vice president of RCI, but once it is completed, he will share it with the community. "We will not start that work until that plan is approved," he said.
In the meantime, Miller said he is available to Mattoon and others in the community.
"We try to attend, on a regular basis, the community association meetings as well as the Ko'olau Loa Neighborhood Board meetings," he said.
The work is part of a larger project to install about 16 miles of line from Ha'iku Road in Kane'ohe to Punalu'u, creating a parallel system that eventually will replace the existing pipe line. The project's initial cost was $90 million, but the Board of Water Supply has redesigned the project to eliminate a segment from Kahana Bay to Waihe'e Valley Road, reducing the cost. A new parallel water-main will cost $43.5 million.
The pipe from Ha'iku to Kahalu'u is 42 inches. The larger pipe reduces the cost of pumping water, Usagawa said.
"It saves us some operating costs," he said. "It's really not to develop any more water. This will make the system more reliable."
Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com or 234-5266.
Correction: A new parallel water-main from Punalu'u to Kane'ohe Bay Drive will cost $43.5 million. The Board of Water Supply project has been redesigned to eliminate a segment from Kahana Bay to Waihe'e Valley Road, reducing the cost. A previous version of this story used information provided for the original project.
