Capitol's pool maintenance to cost taxpayers $360,000
By Johnny Brannon
Advertiser Staff Writer
They no longer reek, and maybe soon they won't leak.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
The state has poured a small sea of cash into maintaining the picturesque reflecting pools that surround the state Capitol, and a new plan to plug some pesky cracks is expected to cost about $360,000.
Kevin Shiroma, a Department of Accounting and General Services worker, cleans the reflecting pools at the state Capitol in the morning. Keeping the pools clean is a year-round battle for the state.
The money, included in the state budget the Legislature approved last month, will pay for a new pool liner and an upgraded circulation system that should help keep the pools clean.
The water, meant to symbolize the ocean that surrounds Hawai'i, constantly seeps into the basement of the Capitol in dozens of places, damaging some offices and collecting in makeshift catch basins.
"Right now there are some breaks in the liner, and we're experiencing a lot of leaks downstairs that cause water stains and other problems," said James Richardson, administrator of the central services division of the Department of Accounting and General Services. "In some places we have drip pans, and we try to run tubing into a drain close by."
He estimated that the pools have 20 to 30 leaks altogether.
And controlling the algae that flourish in the pools has become a constant battle that keeps a crew of custodians busy year-round. Richardson said the wide and shallow design of the pools and the brackish well water that fills them make a great incubator for the muck.
"There's too much surface area exposed to sunlight, and it's a natural thing that algae will grow, so it's a constant problem," he said. "And we don't have really good water circulation in some areas."
Every day, between three and eight state workers plod around the pools mopping and vacuuming up the green and brown scum, assisted sometimes by prison inmates on a special work detail.
The intense maintenance often carries a hefty aesthetic price: snarling water pumps used to clean the pools shatter the morning calm — and the occasional rotunda press conference — like a chorus of lawnmowers, quickly obliterating any tranquility the water might otherwise inspire.
Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser
No work schedule has been prepared for the coming repairs, but there will be more disruptions when they begin. A contractor will have to tear up the hard bottom of the pools to install a new synthetic liner, Richardson said.
The pools surrounding the Capitol seep into the basement of the building in dozens of places.
Just how much money the ongoing pool maintenance costs taxpayers remains as murky as the water itself.
Until a few years ago, the state spent about $75,000 a year on a private pool cleaning service, but officials canceled that contract out of concerns that it was too expensive.
No one tracks how many work-hours go into pool maintenance now, Richardson said, whose division is in charge of their upkeep. "Maybe we should so we could come up with an annual cost," he said.
Eight state custodians are normally assigned to the pool detail now, but on any given day several are usually dispatched to other assignments to fill in for workers who call in sick or are on vacation, according to Richardson.
Sen. Sam Slom said it's ridiculous that the state doesn't know how much it is spending on the pools.
"Any time you ask the state, they say there's no cost now, but, of course, there's a cost," said Slom, R-8th (Wai'alae Iki, Hawai'i Kai). "It's a continual make-work project. To use that kind of manpower and resources on something that's simply for decoration at the Capitol makes no sense at all."
From time to time, lawmakers and state officials have pondered filling the pools with fake water or converting them into rock gardens or other low-maintenance alternatives, but no idea has stuck.
In the meantime, the algae is real and the work is there, along with the leaks.
The lengthy saga of the pools and their problems has been a continual source of jokes for old Capitol hands.
Slom and others say the pools were cleaner and looked more natural when they were filled with schools of tilapia that devoured the algae.
But Richardson maintains that the fish and their by-products turned the pools into a stinky swamp. "When we had the tilapia in there, the water was kind of black," he said. "It looks a lot better now."
The state got rid of the fish in the early 1990s when the Capitol was renovated, but that move also caused a stink.
Workers drained the pools without first evacuating the fish, and thousands died before the Hawaiian Humane Society threatened to sue the state for cruelty to animals. That forced officials to halt the work and move some surviving fish to ponds in Paradise Park.
