Posted on: Wednesday, June 19, 2002
More flood worries pour out at North Shore meeting
By Will Hoover
Advertiser North Shore Writer
Fed up with perpetual floods, about 80 residents from Waialua and Hale'iwa crowded into a special North Shore Neighborhood Board meeting last night to have their say about high water.
Most had only one question on their minds: What can be done to stop it?
"We're trying to figure out where the water is coming from and what can be done about it," said Nan Lucero, who brought pictures of two floods since 1996 that have devastated her home on Hale'iwa Road. "Every time it rains we're worried about whether we're going to get flooded again."
Representatives from the city and county, the state and the federal government listened to the parade of people air their grievances regarding the torrential rains that damaged homes and destroyed crops in Waialua last month.
They promised to take the problem into consideration, but they offered few if any solutions.
Rep. Michael Magaoay, D-45th (Waialua, Kahuku), probably summed up the official position best when he told the gathering, "We're here to listen to you guys and see what we can do."
Much of the estimated $300,000 in losses after the floods in early May has been associated with the 3 billion-gallon Wahiawa Reservoir, popularly know as Lake Wilson, which was built after the turn of the 20th century to provide water for sugar cane and pineapple field irrigation systems.
A decline in O'ahu's agricultural production over the ensuing decades led to the closing in 1996 of the Waialua Sugar Co., the island's last such company.
That, in turn led to a dramatic rise in the water level of Lake Wilson.
Area residents had complained for years that the floods have been increasingly severe. That led to a decision late last month by the Dole Food Co., which owns the reservoir, to attempt to lower the level of Lake Wilson by 10 feet.
After more than a month of releasing water through a 24-inch pipe, Andrew Monden, chief engineer for the state's Department of Land and Natural Resources, said the reservoir level had dropped less than three inches.
Stanley Otake has watched homes in his family-owned Otake Camp get deluged many times in the past two decades after waters have crested Lake Wilson's 80-foot spillway.
He was one of the few people on hand last night who has actually formulated a strategy to fight flooding, which he outlined in a letter to the governor and presented at last night's gathering.
Otake's proposal calls for the building of a dirt levee (complete with pilings to trap large debris) between Farrington Highway and the area's cane-haul road.
Otake estimated the cost at around $200,000 — a far cry from earlier proposals that called for the building of emergency reservoir overflow basins that could cost hundreds of millions.
Monden said that while the state intends to discuss Otake's idea, the proposal isn't specific enough to be feasible.
Furthermore, he said that while the plan might help with the flooding around the Otake Camp, the problem in the area's flood plain is much broader.
"This is a way to get things moving," Monden said. "But there's a lot more work to be done."
