Army divers clear Wai'anae harbor

By Will Hoover
Advertiser Leeward O'ahu Writer

The Wai'anae community got a welcome hand from the military yesterday, with Army — yes, Army — deep-sea divers performing underwater demolition to rid the harbor of crumbling piers that had become a safety hazard.

Spc. Matt Hawkey of the Army's 7th Dive Detachment used a torch to cut rebar supports from a pier at Wai'anae Boat Harbor during a training exercise that also cleared the harbor of 20 decaying piers at no cost to the state. Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

A third of the facility's 73 finger piers had been taken out of service, and some had crumbled so much that they were literally falling into the water.

Officials knew something had to be done, but the state didn't have the money.

That's when the state, community and Army sorted out the unique solution: Let an Army demolition team tear down the piers as part of a training exercise.

And yesterday, a two-week project to remove the 20 most dilapidated piers was completed.

"How many people even know that the Army has a dive detachment?" Wai'anae Boat Harbor Master William Aila said yesterday morning. "This is saving the taxpayers big time."

The state has earmarked $750,000 to either be used to build a new dock or to reconstruct new piers.

Which plan is the most economically feasible won't be known until state engineers conclude a study. That should take six months, said Aila.

By noon yesterday, the dive team had demolished the last of 20 6-ton piers, snapping the structures in two with precision and securing them at the bottom of the harbor to be removed later to an artificial reef.

"We are using no explosives in this operation," said Capt. Steve Kolouch, officer in charge of the dive operation. "We have a variety of hydraulic tools we can use, we have breakers, chipping hammers and acetylene torches. And we also have gravity on our side."

Four empty 50-gallon drums were placed in the midsection on the last pier to fall, for example. When pounding, chipping and clipping steel cables wasn't enough to collapse the pier, adding water to the drums was enough to do the trick.

In less than a second the pier split in half and dropped below the surface.

The operation was praised as a success, not only by the military, but the state and community as well.

Aila said the idea for the joint project was the result of a Wai'anae Coast Neighborhood Board meeting several months ago.

After a discussion about how some piers at the harbor had deteriorated to the point of being a safety hazard, an Army officer at the meeting suggested that a demolition dive team might be able to take them out at no cost to the state.

The State Department of Land and Natural Resources couldn't say precisely how much savings taxpayers chalked up. But Mason Young, administrator of the DLNR Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation, said, "If it's any indication, we removed eight of these piers at the Ala Wai Boat Harbor and it cost us around a quarter of a million dollars."

The unit involved in the project was one of only six U.S. Army deep-sea demolition teams — the 7th Dive Detachment, which is attached to the 29th Engineer Battalion. It is the only such team in the Pacific.

Although the Army spent the past two weeks demolishing the piers, it took several months to set what the military called the Innovative Readiness Training program in motion.

"It allows the community to benefit from some of the Army training," said Maj. Kelly Butler, in charge of the project for the battalion. "It's a partnership where the community says we have a need, and the Army says we have a training requirement."

IRTs are rare, she said, because the opportunities don't come along that often. And even then there's a lot of paperwork involved.

"It is a permitting and authorization process," Butler said. "We need to make sure we do everything environmentally and legally correct. We can't just come out and do the work for free."

The military training directly supports the Army's wartime mission, said Master Sgt. Rodney Heikkinen.

"This has been good training for the divers," said Heikkinen. "It teaches them how to move this type of heavy material around without crane support or, in this case, without explosives.

"This is the first type of mission like this that the team has ever done, so the training has been especially valuable."

Reach Will Hoover at whoover@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8038.