Posted on: Friday, November 12, 2004

EDITORIAL
Fouled beaches are Third World mishaps

It happens every time it rains hard, so we usually don't give it a second thought.

The rainwater sluices into the city's sewers, overwhelming the system and resulting in spills — occasionally massive — of untreated or partially treated sewage into our streams and favorite swimming beaches.

It happened again — twice — Saturday night in Kailua, when 5,000 gallons of rain-diluted raw sewage belched forth from a manhole on Wana'ao Road, into Ka'elepulu Stream and on down to the beach. At Marine Corps Base Hawai'i, the heavy rain contributed to a release of 67,000 gallons of partially treated sewage through the Mokapu outfall, which fortunately empties about two miles out to sea.

The Wana'ao spill resulted in the posting of 125 signs along Kailua Bay Sunday morning, warning swimmers to stay out of the water.

The city, under court order to reduce the number of spills, has spent millions of dollars in recent years to help prevent rainwater from getting into the sewage system. But why should it take a court to tell a jurisdiction utterly reliant on tourism that it needs to keep sewage away from its beaches?