Campbell Avenue road project next

By Suzanne Roig
Advertiser East Honolulu Writer

DIAMOND HEAD — Residents along Diamond Head and in eastern Kapahulu: The road crews are coming.

Starting in September the Board of Water Supply will begin tearing up the streets to lay new 2-foot-wide water pipes along Campbell Avenue from Herbert Street to Kaunaoa Street.

The $3.1 million job will probably take about a year, said Howard Tanaka, head of the maintenance and engineering branch at the Board of Water Supply.

The board plans to solicit bids in June, and construction will begin in September.

Along Campbell Avenue there are shops, travel agents and a senior center that will have to deal with the inconvenience of construction. Laura Smith of Island Triathlon and Bike, on the corner of Campbell and Kapahulu avenues, said many businesses will be affected because their customers rely on street parking.

Her store, one block beyond where the actual construction will be, has a parking lot, so the impact won't be as bad, Smith said.

"Most of my business is from people who drive in," said Larry Foster, owner of Art Attacks. "Much of my business depends upon how fast they can find street parking. That's how I advertise my business so customers don't go to the mall."

The 4,000 feet of pipe will give the water utility the flexibility of diverting water to either Waikiki or East Honolulu, Tanaka said. In addition, the water utility will replace a 6-inch pipe along Kaunaoa Street with an 8-inch pipe to improve water flow and meet Board of Water Supply standards.

"Right now, a lot of the water from the Diamond Head Reservoir goes to Waikiki," he said. "We need to relieve some of the pressure surges on this system."

The pipes were put in place in 1952 and there have been breaks over the years. Construction will require lane closures and may be "difficult due to the presence of old trenches and old excavations... and the need to excavate below the groundwater table in selected areas," the Board of Water Supply stated.

The community will be notified when construction begins, and a presentation will be made to the Diamond Head-Kapahulu Neighborhood Board before construction begins, Tanaka said.

The work is part of a six-year master plan to repair aging and weak pipes around the island. There are 2,000 miles of water pipes on O'ahu, Tanaka said.

Each year, the board begins working on 40 miles at a time. Last year, the Board of Water Supply began work on replacing lines from 'Ainakoa Avenue to West Hind Drive on Kalaniana'ole Highway.

The life expectancy of a water main is about 50 years.

"What we're doing in our plan is looking at the whole system and the age of the system and the soil conditions," Tanaka said. "We want to identify where we should spend our resources. Prior to this, we would replace only those with a history of breaks; now we're trying to be more systematic."

Reach Suzanne Roig at sroig@honoluluadvertiser.com or 395-8831.