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The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, April 24, 2005

Water testing to expand

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

If canoe paddler Jay Griffin had waited just a few more hours before seeing a doctor, they might have had to amputate his finger.

State environmental health specialist Gerald Higuchi uses a Hydrolab Quanta device to gather information on salinity, acidity and turbidity at Honolulu beaches. He monitors Ala Moana Beach Park, the beach near the Hilton Hawaiian Village lagoon and the beach at the Waikiki Police Substation.

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As it was, he spent several days in a hospital suffering from an infection that swelled his finger to almost double in size and sent purple streaks shooting up his forearm, an infection he thinks came from polluted water.

"If you speak with any group of paddlers, most will tell similar stories about staph infections, especially if they paddle in harbors or canals with stagnant water," Griffin says.

That's one reason the state Health Department says it plans to step up efforts to monitor water quality around Hawai'i's most popular beaches. And there will be even more effort to tell the public quickly when a problem area is identified, officials promised.

As Hawai'i joined the rest of the nation in celebrating Earth Day last week, the Health Department announced it had received a new $324,000 grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to increase water quality checks at more than 100 ocean sites across the state.

While problem areas concentrate in harbors and canals, most offshore areas appear clean and safe. In 2,850 tests for bacteria at 100 offshore locations last year, acceptable limits were exceeded only 32 times, mostly after heavy rains that wash dirt and debris into the ocean and from sewage spills, said Watson Okubo, head of the Health Department's Clean Water Branch.

While state officials have been criticized on occasion for not doing enough testing, watchdog groups here say the state has stepped up to the plate and is making a good-faith effort to keep the public informed of problems.

"They're doing a fairly good job with the resources they have," said Carey Morishige, head of the Sierra Club's Blue Water Campaign, which educates residents about the dangers of runoff and other ocean pollution.

Morishige praised the state's partnership with the local chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, which has been posting water quality test results on its own Web site while the Health Department develops its own.

"Pulling in a nonprofit to help shows they're willing to go one step forward," she said. "It's a great example for other state agencies."

Lawrence Lau, deputy director for environmental health, said the department hopes to have its own Web site announcing the weekly test results available later this year.

Although the national Natural Resources Defense Council criticized the state in 2003 for not adequately monitoring water quality at popular tourist beaches, the number of sites tested regularly has doubled in the last three years, Lau said.

"With our new federal grant, we believe will be able to do even more samples," he said.

The state has more than 400 beaches and rocky coastline covering about 185 miles on six islands. These sites are divided into three categories, Okubo said.

Fifty-two "top tier" sites — those like Waikiki and Ala Moana — are tested twice a week for the fecal indicator organisms Clostridia perfringens and Enterococcus using one of the strictest standards in the nation.

Another 50 beaches get sampled once a week. The remaining 300 or so beach areas — mostly in less-visited areas like Keawa'ula (Yokohama Bay) — are tested occasionally, as staffing and money permits, he said.

None of the beaches tested in 2004 exceeded federal safe limits on more than one occasion, according to results which are summarized annually in the State Data Book.

The state responds to problems by posting warning or beach closing signs until the situation improves, although it doesn't automatically close a beach when the standards are exceeded, instead relying on additional factors such as the presence of raw sewage before making a determination.

"With the new grant, we're hoping to be able to do more sampling and more beaches more often and get the information out to the people quicker," Lau said.

Morishige said that was good news.

"The important thing is to educate the public that the water shouldn't be brown," she said. "There's always more than can be done."

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.