KUALOA — Eight weeks after state officials posted pollution warning signs at Kualoa Regional Park, water contamination there persists, and new, more permanent metal signs have gone up.

Officials are still trying to pinpoint the source of the problem but have concentrated on a restroom whose wastewater drains into the park's leach field.

Visitors to the beach yesterday stayed out of the water for the most part, although one couple searching for shells said a tourist family was there in the morning and that the children were in the water. The couple said they didn't see any signs but knew to stay out of the water because of a newspaper report.

"I never saw any sign when we came," said Charlotte Taca-vena of Ma'ili. "Where's the metal signs? It's not visible."

The 22 signs, a little larger than a sheet of office paper and posted on trees and in the ground near the shore, warn people of the contamination and against swimming, boating or fishing.

Tacavena suggested a big sign should be posted at the park entrance.

"I see the dangerous shorebreak sign that's at the entrance," she said. "Why isn't (the pollution sign) over there?"

Warning signs are posted whenever there's a sewage spill. Islanders expect such signs to be removed within a couple of days as the ocean and streams carry the bacteria away.

Kane'ohe resident Anne Stevens, who comes to the park four times a week to paddle, said she was surprised to see the signs still up.

"I thought they were lazy and didn't take the signs away," she said. "But they told me not to go in the water."

She noted that this sign-posting was longer than usual and views it as a sign that the environment is suffering. "It's the whole infrastructure," she said. "We're going to rot in our own filth."

The state Department of Health on Nov. 30 said it found bacteria levels nearly 10 times the acceptable standard.

In technical terms, the geometric mean of the bacteria level was 65.39 colony-forming units per 100 milliliters of water. The standard is 7 units.

Test results this month from Restroom No. 1 show bacteria levels as high as 200 units.

Dale Mikami of the department's Clean Water Branch said state officials don't know for sure what is causing the problem.

In the past, the department had said that heavy rain on the leach fields was a factor, but recent dye tests have come up negative, Mikami said

"At this point we suspect that it is the leach field, but we want to make sure," Mikami said.

The city has reduced the amount of wastewater that enters the leach field, city spokesman Bill Brennan said. Sewage is being pumped into trucks and hauled away, he said, adding that one restroom was closed for a while and campers were moved elsewhere.

"We're taking steps that you would think would lead to lower counts or improved counts, and they're not going down," Brennan said.

He said city officials have asked state officials to look for other sources of pollution along the shoreline. "No one seems to know what the source is," he said.

The city has plans to replace the restroom waste system with a new one, Brennan said.

Reach Eloise Aguiar at eaguiar@honoluluadvertiser.com.