VOLCANIC ASH

By David Shapiro

At the movies, persistent advertisements on the big screen make me feel guilty for keeping the shower water running while I lather up.

I'm forever admonished by the city to water my lawn only in the early morning or late afternoon — if I must water it at all. Sprinkling in the middle of the day is a waste of water and time, I'm scolded, because the hot sun evaporates the water virtually before it hits the ground.

When my water usage once spiked over the average, I received a testy note from the Board of Water Supply suggesting that I not even think about washing my car or my dog.

O'ahu's water is permanently in short supply, it seems, and no conservation measure is too small as we try to balance this finite resource against the relentless demands of urban growth.

Which is why it's maddening to drive past the grassy hillside that the state Department of Transportation carved out of the cliffs at Castle Junction to protect motorists from falling rocks where the Pali and Kamehameha highways intersect.

State maintenance crews there apparently didn't get the memo about the importance of using water sparingly.

They water in the middle of the afternoon when the hottest sun of the day burns down. If you look closely, you can see the mist rising in evaporation.

The sprinklers often are running when it's raining, even in the middle of torrential storms late last year that washed away most of the newly seeded soil at the bottom of the hillside.

Those heavy rains forced workers to install netting to protect what little topsoil was left where the hill meets the highway. Now their sprinklers water the patches of scrub grass that have sprouted under the netting.

It makes you wonder what they planted up there that requires any watering at all at this time of year.

We've had enough rain in Kailua that I haven't watered my lawn since October, and the grass is plenty green. So is the never-watered grass at the little memorial knoll across the Pali Highway from Castle Junction.

You'd think that if the government is going to preach water conservation, officials would feel some obligation to set an example.

But Windward O'ahu residents learned a long time ago not to expect anything to make sense on the Pali Highway.

On the other side of the Pali tunnels in Nu'uanu, the same Department of Transportation is practicing another kind of strange conservation — of highway paint.

There's been a long-running battle over speeding in Nu'uanu, often by Windward commuters trying to get to work on time.

Two years ago, the Department of Transportation moved to slow us down by installing speed bumps where we entered the residential area.

Motorists grumbled about the rumble strips jangling their cars, and Nu'uanu residents bellyached about the noise from cars clattering over the bumps, so the state removed the strips shortly after they were installed.

But somebody at DOT apparently got the bright idea that they could have the benefit of rumble strips without actually having rumble strips by leaving the lettering on the road warning motorists to slow for nonexistent speed bumps ahead.

We Windward residents may not be the brightest coals in the imu, but we'll eventually figure out that there ain't no speed bumps after slowing for them a few dozen times and encountering none.

And unlike the wise guys who thought up the rumble strip ruse, we're smart enough to know to turn off our lawn sprinklers in the middle of the day and when it's raining.

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net.