honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser

Posted on: Sunday, May 8, 2005

'Akulikuli cleansing of Ala Wai under way

By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Workers and volunteers returned to the Ala Wai Canal yesterday to float a new crop of 'akulikuli plants designed to offset the urban pollution plaguing the canal.

16-year-old Iolani School student Alex Chun worked on embedding 'akulikuli plants into the floating phytoremediation platforms at Ala Wai Canal yesterday. Natural Systems Inc. is moving ahead with its project intended to help clean up the canal's polluted water.

Andrew Shimabuku • The Honolulu Advertiser

A dozen set of hands methodically punched 800 'akulikuli plugs, each an inch long, into bubble-wrap platforms that measure 5 feet wide by 100 feet long. Crews then rowed out into the Ala Wai and lashed the six platforms together in a project that's intended to reduce the levels of nitrogen, phosphorous and algae in the main channel of the canal.

Workers previously launched 20 floating platforms in the Ala Wai's drainage canal.

After a total of 40 to 80 rafts are in place — stretching more than 3,000 feet — the health of the Ala Wai should show dramatic improvement within three months, said Chad Durkin, project manager for Natural Systems Inc., which last month received approval from the state Board of Land and Natural Resources for the $500,000 project.

The idea is to create a new community of plants, roots, bacteria and micro-organisms that will draw in nitrogen, phosphorus and algae and essentially starve the algae currently blooming in the Ala Wai, Durkin said.

The "floating phytoremediation platforms" — as they're called — also remove toxic metals, suspended solids and other man-made pollutants that have accumulated in the Ala Wai from decades of rainwater runoff.

Durkin has also helped nearby Iolani School students form a Phytoremediation Club where they regularly measure water samples of the Manoa-Palolo stream that runs behind their school and feeds into the Ala Wai.

Iolani sophomore Kyle Fooks, 16, said he doesn't know how to spell "phytoremediation" but he knows that it means helping the environment.

He helps record oxygen and salinity levels of the Manoa-Palolo stream and came out yesterday to get his hands dirty poking 'akulikuli plants into the floating platforms.

"It only seems normal to help with this project," Kyle said. "I'm interested in science and the environment. And I don't like the fact that the Ala Wai is so dirty."

His friend and classmate, Alex Chun, 16, normally would have been asleep while all of the work was going on.

"I don't wake up until 12 on Saturdays," Alex said.

But Alex, who works out on the Ala Wai as a member of the Iolani paddling team, showed up at 8 a.m. because "I've always heard from my dad how the Ala Wai used to be so clean and healthy. Now it's all polluted."

Durkin, 28, said that his work with Hawai'i students is as important as the Ala Wai project.

"Ultimately, any change is going to come from the next generation," Durkin said, as his 2-year-old daughter, Mehana, played with the plugs.

The morning began with a blessing and prayer by William Kaina, retired kahu of Kawaia ha'o Church, who thanked God "for helping us discover the 'akulikuli plants that we now use to keep our water and environment clean."

Kaina also thanked God for creating the indigenous plants "so that we didn't have to go so far to help us here at home."

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8085.