Park restrooms are high on state's to-fix list
By Gordon Y.K. Pang
Advertiser Capitol Bureau
Sheena Gandeeza and Stephanie Choi walked into one of the women's restrooms at Sand Island State Recreation Area last week, looked around and promptly walked out intent on finding somewhere cleaner and in less disrepair.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
"It was just unsanitary," said Gandeeza, 19, a Salt Lake resident who noted that toilet stalls had no doors or tissue paper and that plumbing in the facility appeared to be clogged.
Alice Bratton and her seeing-eye dog Olma get their exercise at Sand Island State Recreation Area, where deteriorating facilities include a cracked bench, in which steel bars stick out in place of missing wood.
Land Board Chairman Peter Young said he feels the pain of anyone who has ever walked into a restroom at a state park and been grossed out, and he wants to do something about it.
Young's Department of Land and Natural Resources is on a mission to overhaul the state's recreational facilities. He estimates it will take four to five years to repair and clean up the 69 parks and other areas under his department's stewardship.
The Lingle administration's supplemental construction budget, submitted to the Legislature last month, includes $14 million for the first round of those improvements — $9 million in general obligation bond funds for replacement of cesspools at state parks and $5 million in bonds for restroom improvements.
The state is under a federal Environmental Protection Administration mandate to replace all its high-capacity cesspools by April 2005, making it the top capital improvements project for the DLNR, Young said. There are 49 large-capacity cesspools in the state's parks, most of them tied to a single restroom structure, also known as a comfort station.
Failure to replace them could result in fines of $27,500 per day for each site. "Knowing we have that, let's use that as a catalyst to look at other repairs," Young said. So, wherever possible, many of those parks, such as the Sand Island State Recreation Area, will also get new restroom facilities, he said.
"The focus now is restrooms," he said. "The most common complaint we get from people about facilities around the state at our state parks is inadequate restrooms. We want people to enjoy our state parks and having clean, functioning restrooms is a part of that."
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
Those thoughts were echoed by Lingle, who said she doesn't want to hear of restrooms that are shut down from disrepair.
Damaged benches and walls, broken light fixtures and leaking roofs at Sand Island park may be repaired when the state overhauls its recreational facilities, an effort with a pricetag of "under $100 million."
The concrete bench in one of the men's changing rooms at a Sand Island comfort station shows signs of deterioration. Many park users have noticed the state of disrepair of the restrooms.
"We had 15 million visits a year to state parks between local people and visitors," she said. "That's a lot of visits to those parks, so they're very well-used."
Young declined to name which specific parks or facilities are the biggest priority, but said a more detailed plan for the supplemental budget request should be available by the time the Legislature opens Jan. 21.
"The plan is, over time, there will be improvements to every state park around this state," he said. "The plan is, every year, to make improvements at parks on each of the islands."
The four- to five-year timeline is contingent on available money, Young said. He said it will take "under $100 million" to accomplish the task.
The planned improvements are good news to park goers like Winston Bautista, 27, of Kalihi, who visits the Sand Island park about once a month. The open ventilation of the restrooms aren't enough to ease the stench that permeates through them, he said. Bautista said that restrooms should be a priority.
"Everybody can hang out (on the park's grassy areas) but the bathrooms are bad," he said.
Several park visitors said it will take more than new restrooms to shore up the park. "When they do fix 'em, people break 'em," said Robert Daniel 60, of Salt Lake, who rides a bike at the park frequently. Daniel suggested beefed up enforcement patrols by DLNR to cut down on vandalism and graffiti.
"Most of the damage is done on weekends by kids and young adults," he said.
Paul and Sharon Tominaga, 40, of Manoa, who were at Sand Island park with their two children, said the restrooms they visited were not as bad as they've seen elsewhere. Paul Tominaga said any new improvements should be accompanied by better maintenance and security.
"How are they going to keep it clean after that?" he asked. "If they don't take care of it, people are just going to take it apart."
Young said that the improvements are being undertaken with that in mind and that the overhaul is not just about making the parks look nicer.
"We spend a lot of extra time and money just because of deteriorating facilities, trying to deal with them on just the basic repair and maintenance," he said. "So the idea is to make the appropriate, significant repair now and replacement of some of these older facilities that are in need. It will help our operational expenses to go down because newer facilities are just easier to care for."
The Lingle supplemental budget request for capital improvements also includes $10 million in reimbursable general obligation bonds for renovations to the state's 21 small boat harbors and 54 boat ramps.
Such improvements would be paid for with slight increases in slip, ramp and other boating fees. Young said he will make it clear to boaters that he does not intend to pay for operations with fee increases.
Young did not say how much would be needed to pay for all the scrubbing-down of the state's harbors and ramps.
"Based on the discussions we've been having over the last several months, we know that there are improvements that can be done at every boat harbor, and we know there are improvements that can be done at every boat ramp," Young said. "In some cases, it's a driveway, in some cases a parking area, or plumbing for a washdown area, or the ramp itself."
The supplemental budget also calls for $2.4 million in general obligation bond funds to complete the sand replenishing project at Waikiki's Kuhio Beach and related improvements to minimize future sand erosion.
Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8070.
