Castle Junction project begins

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Transportation Writer

KAILUA — Work began yesterday on a $7.8 million, six-month project to pare down a dangerously eroding hillside above Castle Junction, state officials said.

The land removal project is the largest of its kind attempted along an existing state highway in recent memory, Transportation Director Rod Haraga said.

By the end of the work, the steep hillside, ranked No. 5 on a list of landslide risk sites for motorists in O'ahu, will be transformed into a gently terraced slope, Haraga said.

Crews working up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, will remove more than 240,000 cubic yards of dirt from the hillside. Most of it will be sold as landfill to neighboring Kane'ohe Ranch, Ocean Pointe development in 'Ewa or Hawaiian Cement's Halawa quarry.

"They'll be digging all day and hauling all night," Haraga said of contractor Goodfellow Brothers Inc., which yesterday received a notice from the state Transportation Department to proceed.

By late yesterday morning, Hawaiian Electric Co. crews were removing a string of power lines from the top of the hillside. Plans were being made to set up an early-morning contraflow lane for Windward O'ahu commuters passing the construction site near the intersection of Kalaniana'ole and Kamehameha highways at the foot of the Pali.

Officials said the contraflow lane, running from Kapa'a Quarry Road to the Castle Junction from 5:30 a.m. to 6:45 a.m. on weekdays, would begin in the next week or two.

"We're going to try to minimize any disruption to commuters, but we're also asking them to be patient," Haraga said.

Work crews will approach the hillside from the Kane'ohe side, through the entrance to the Windward campus of Hawai'i Pacific University, reducing the prospect of interfering with town-bound traffic.

However, much of the dirt will be hauled across the highway at night through a new road opposite Kapa'a Quarry Road and put onto Kane'ohe Ranch land. Selling the excavated dirt allowed the contractor to bring the cost of the project down from an original estimate of $15 million to less than $8 million, said DOT spokesman Scott Ishikawa.

The state also has agreed to pay about $97,000 to buy, via condemnation, the hillside land once owned by HPU and the Teixeira family trust, Ishikawa said.

Reach Mike Leidemannat 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.