About $4.1 million in federal stimulus money awarded Friday to the Hawai'i County Fire Department will help offset the $9 million construction cost of the Makalei Fire Station, the Hawaii Tribune-Herald reported.

"Makalei is a station that has been a long time coming; it's something that the West Hawai'i community has been waiting 10 years for," Fire Chief Darryl Oliveira said. "Kona is growing very quickly, and it's an area we are currently underservicing in the sense that we have prolonged response times because the roads are all uphill from the Kailua station. The station will definitely improve our ability to serve the Kona district."

Because the funding is provided by Fire Station Construction Grants, a $210 million program of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, construction must be completed by September 2012, Oliveira said.

The project is expected to go out to bid by the end of this year, with site preparation beginning in early 2010, he said.