HALE'IWA — The potential for flooding on the North Shore, which sits at the bottom of the island's largest watershed, recently brought together city, state and federal officials with community leaders who called for more agency cooperation, fewer meetings and action instead of more studies.

U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono attended the Hale'iwa meeting last week and stressed that consensus more than anything will help her to secure money for a mitigation project.

While city, state and federal officials wanted more studies done, residents said enough studying. Now is the time to act — before a crisis.

The potential for flooding on the North Shore has been the object of years of discussion and at least four studies. Last week's meeting was spurred by the latest study.

"We're sitting in a (Hurricane) Katrina situation," said Pam Mills-Packo, a consultant who is developing a comprehensive watershed plan for Kaiaka Bay funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. "The real problem is the sediment, weed clogging and erosion."

Breaches in the levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina led to widespread flooding in the city in 2005, and a similar thing would happen to Hale'iwa, threatening 2,400 lives, if the dam at Lake Wilson fails, Mills-Packo said.

Now is the time for engineers to decide how to address the problems, she said, and many North Shore residents think dredging Kaiaka Bay and the various streams that lead to it is the solution.

The city has awarded a $75,000 dredging study and has budgeted $200,000 for plan design for the dredging of Kaukonahua Stream from Otake Camp to Kaiaka Bay, said Reed Matsuura, a North Shore Neighborhood Board member and aide to City Councilman Donovan Dela Cruz.

However, the city will need $2 million to $4 million to complete the work and may have to rely on state or federal funding, Matsuura said.

At the request of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Army Corps of Engineers is poised to do a comprehensive study of watershed issues, said Nani Shimabuku, a project manager with the Corps. At least four plans have been done in the past but no projects were generated from them because they weren't cost effective, Shimabuku said.

Some $300,000 was requested for the DLNR study but Congress didn't fund it, she said. Although residents are tired of studies, it's the only process by which the Army Corps can get involved, Shimabuku said.

"The Corps may not help (resolve the problems) but it can identify agencies that could get involved," she said.

But others said dredging just scratches the surface of the issues facing the watershed, and pointed to what they said were high cancer rates among people who have lived along the waterways all their lives.

A watershed plan with monitoring could lead to solutions to improve people's lives and the ecology of the whole system, including the reefs, said Michael Lyons, North Shore Neighborhood Board chairman.

The silt from high above Hale'iwa is running down and filling streams, backyards and bays, bringing whatever toxins are in the soil, Lyons said.

"It affects our reefs," he said. "It affects what we eat. It affects our health. The community is frustrated because we've done so much and we don't know what else to do."

Mills-Packo said her watershed study identifies problem areas, possible solutions and monitoring requisites, and she's waiting for final funding to complete the plan. Part of the plan is to involve the community to rehabilitate the land and for teachers to develop curriculum, she said.

"For us, we're here and now, and the real thing is educating the people to be able to take care of their own backyards and to ask Mazie for help," Mills-Packo said.

Hirono said she could sense the community's urgency but the problem is nationwide and hundreds of communities are competing for funding. She urged them all to work together. Consensus is critical, she said.

"If they have something concrete going forward, which is the dredging, and at the same time are figuring out the larger issues surrounding this watershed, we can begin to work on those in some cohesive way," Hirono said.

Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com.