“Lanakila Housing, it’s okay for a while.” — Ehukai
The low-income project on around 29 acres in the center of Hilo Town may be one of the few ever immortalized — though hardly celebrated – in Hawaiian song. From the early 1950s until the last few standing homes were finally razed, the drab green buildings with their metal security screens over the windows and doors afforded about 230 families shelter close to schools, shops, and offices.
For a while, at least.
The project had its beginnings even before World War II, when the territorial government received the promise of funds from Washington for development of what was to be Hawaiʻi’s very first low-income public housing project, built by the Hawaiʻi Housing Authority. The land was owned by the territory, but from 1879 to 1947 it was under lease to the Waiakea Mill Company, a sugar plantation.
The war delayed construction, but in 1951, buildings started to go up and the first residents moved in in 1952. After the 1961 tsunami, about 90 more units were added to the project to accommodate some of the displaced families.
In the mid-1990s, the state moved families out in anticipation of replacing the homes as part of an ambitious, $27 million project. Many of the buildings were demolished, with the county hoping to use part of the land for a new fire station (never happened). The remaining buildings were vacant for years, even as the state razed the older units and put up scores of new buildings in the mauka portion of the development, mauka of Kapiʻolani Street, which bisected the project.
In 2005, then-Governor Linda Lingle questioned why so many of the Lanakila apartments remained empty. During a visit to Hilo, Lingle presided over the dedication of 28 new housing units in the mauka area. But she decried the vacant nearby units. “Seven years ago, 60 people were removed from those units,” the Hawaiʻi Tribune-Herald reported her as having said. “Now they sit empty, right in Hilo, where there’s a tremendous need” for affordable housing.
Chad Taniguchi, an official with the Hawaiʻi Public Housing Authority, agreed. While some units were in need of major repairs, he told the newspaper, most of them need only “a good cleaning, painting, fixing holes in walls, minor repairs, things you and I could do if we had the time.”
Three years later, Mayor Harry Kim made the same point. In a tour of the still empty buildings in 2008, Kim said that he had urged the state to sell the land to the county. When that didn’t happen, Kim and members of the community then proposed to have volunteers rehabilitate a number of the units. Kim and Taniguchi led several neighbors and community leaders on a tour of the units, most of which, he and others maintained, were in good structural shape and required only cosmetic repairs to make them livable. Pointing to a pile of scrapped timbers, Taniguchi remarked that much of the wood – redwood, he said – could be reused. “They’re not making it anymore,” he said, as reported by Big Island Video News.
Taniguchi and Kim urged representatives of non-profit groups to help fix up the units, with Kim saying the county would provide the supplies.
Then-state Rep. Clift Tsuji was among those who volunteered to rehabilitate several of the 62 vacant units. When he proposed this to HPHA offices in Honolulu, he told the Tribune-Herald, he was informed his services weren’t needed. The newspaper said Tsuji was told that the involvement “by the Friends of Clift Tsuji was too political.”
In any event, the cost of refurbishing the vacant units had increased by 2010. What had been estimated to cost around $42,000 per unit in 2008 was now $125,000. HPHA was now also concerned that keeping the old structures standing would interfere with plans for redevelopment of the area.
It wasn’t until 2013 that funds were in hand for clearing the last of the structures in anticipation of completing Phase IIIB (eight buildings on about 5 acres makai of Kapiolani Street – though only four were eventually built) and Phase IV, the remaining 9 acres bounded by Kapiolani and Wailoa streets.
By that time, on the mauka side of the project, work had already begun on building about 160 units, and most were complete or nearly so.
Soon after the funds to begin addressing the makai portion were available, HPHA contracted for a preliminary assessment of soils. That 2013 study, which looked at surface soils under roof drip lines and downspouts, found lead present at concentrations above the environmental action level, or EAL. (Environmental Action Levels, according to the Department of Health, “are concentrations of contaminants in soil, soil gas, and groundwater that are used in decision-making throughout the environmental hazard evaluation … process.”)
Concentrations of lead in the soils measured along the roof drip lines were as high as 4,600 mg/kg, orders of magnitude higher than the EAL set by the Department of Health for unrestricted use (200 mg/kg). The highest concentration of lead measured at downspouts was 3,600 mg/kg. Lead concentrations in paints on exterior walls, door and window frames, and even roofing were “higher than 30,000 mg/kg,” the report stated.
The findings led to a more thorough study in 2014 of soils at just three of the old buildings, representing 10 percent of all the structures yet to be razed. That survey found high levels of arsenic deep in the soil, as well as lead and pesticide contaminants. Total arsenic levels were as high as 1,590 mg/kg – and even when the bioaccessible fraction was calculated, arsenic concentrations were still well in excess of soil screening levels.
In late October 2014, John Peard of the Department of Health met with Myounghee Noh, the contractor performing the soil tests, to go over the alarming findings. It was agreed the results would need to be reviewed by others involved in the site work as soon as Noh could pull a report together.
That meeting was held November 7. Attending were representatives from the DOH Hazard Evaluation and Emergency Response office, an engineer from HPHA, and contractors doing soil evaluation for the Public Housing Authority. They discussed the findings and how the presence of high levels of contamination might impact construction schedules, how the area might be remediated (excavation and removal, burial, etc.), and the like.
The upshot was a collaboration between Myounghee Noh and HPHA’s contractor, INK Architects, to develop a draft plan for removing or otherwise addressing the contaminated soil over the roughly 14 acres of the Lanakila site still awaiting new housing.
That report, which addressed only the 1.5 acres of Phase IIIB, was delivered in July 2015. It looked at a number of ways in which the contaminated soil could be dealt with, including extensive excavation, partial excavation, excavation and landfilling of contaminated soil, and “in-place encapsulation,” which was the preferred alternative. Over and above the problem of what to do with the soil was the matter of the concrete slabs on which the housing had been built. The alternatives were analyzed for cost, effectiveness, and feasibility.
The preferred alternative would require use of a new foundation design, the report stated. This might involve “drilled piers, caissons, or mat footings instead of traditional spread footings.” Soil could be left in place and either capped with new foundations or topped with two feet of clean fill for the landscaped areas. Any “excess soil” would be encapsulated on site. Slabs that formed the foundation for the old housing could be left in place, thus avoiding the cost of excavating them and relocating them.
Other requirements would include a “geotextile membrane and ferro-magnetic tape, separating clean fill from underlying contaminated soil. Long-term institutional controls would also be required, including prohibition of digging, including gardening, and removal of deep-rooting plants.”
From the standpoint of cost, this alternative was judged to be the most economical. The novel foundations would be more expensive than traditional ones to construct, but, the report stated, “this is more than compensated for by the reduced cost of encapsulation relative to excavation and landfill disposal.”
The preferred alternative was estimated to cost around $281,000, while partial or extensive excavation were both estimated to cost around $1.5 million. The most far-reaching alternative, involving scraping the site and removing anywhere from 3,000 to 12,000 cubic yards to the West Hawaiʻi landfill, was estimated to cost from $3 million to upwards of $8 million.
The DOH then requested further soil analysis be done for the Phase IIIB site to provide a more systematic characterization of contamination. This time, areas further out from the houses were sampled, resulting in lower levels of lead and pesticides. Soil samples taken at deeper levels below the surface showed arsenic concentrations rising with depth.
The report on action alternatives from the previous year was revised in light of the newer soil survey. This time, the preferred option was identified as “excavation and containment in SMU” (SMU is a soil management unit). The SMU would would receive roughly 1,100 cubic yards of soil and 500 cubic yards of concrete waste. The excavated site would be covered with geotextile fabric and two feet of clean fill, then grassed over. Total cost was put at $647,000. The SMU would be at the lower end of the Lanakila site, with a rock retaining wall erected at the makai border and would be designed to accept the contaminated soils from both Phase IIIB and Phase IV.
Yet more revisions – a total of five – were done before the DOH finally gave its approval, on May 11, 2016. The plan went out for public review, including a meeting at the Lanakila Community Center, held May 26. Despite publicity, including notice at the community center itself, the attendance sheet shows just nine people were present, all representing either state agencies or contractors. If any member of the public attended, they did not sign in.
Work finally began on the four four-plex buildings in Phase IIIB. Families moved into them in early 2020.
As work on Phase IIIB was ending, soil characterization began for the remaining nine acres of the Lanakila site – the area that, to this day, remains vacant. Results showed high levels of arsenic at every site (including bioaccessible arsenic), and even chlordane, toxaphene, and mercury at high levels in one sample site. Lead and pesticide contaminants were present, but at levels below EAL.
(The presence of toxaphene is puzzling. According to Myounghee Noh, “The main historical use of toxaphene was for pest control on cotton crops; therefore, toxaphene is unlikely to be present in soil at the project site exceeding the ESL [environmental screening level] for unrestricted land use.” This could suggest that residents of Lanakila took pest control measures into their own hands at some point.)
In February 2020, Myounghee Noh gave the DOH and HPHA an Environmental Hazard Evaluation and Removal Action Work Plan. It included elaborate precautions for workers who would eventually be part of the clean-up workforce. It laid out hot, warm, and cold zones, representing degrees of contamination, with protective gear requirements and decontamination zones relative to each one. Dust screens to be built around the entire site were described with technical specifications.
That year, contractors “disturbed approximately 7,300 cubic yards of impacted soil” from the Phase IV site, going down to two feet below the surface, according to a report filed with the DOH in 2022 by Myounghee Noh that proposed a long-term hazard management plan. The removed soil was either placed in the Soil Management Unit or used as fill in low-lying areas. On top of the cleared land, contractors “installed a clean cover system of geotextile barrier, ferrous marking tape, clean aggregate fill material, and a six-inch seeded layer of topsoil.”
“The COPCs [chemicals of potential concern] are managed on-site beneath a geotextile barrier and a minimum of 18-24 inches of clean fill, and therefore present no risk to workers or facility users, provided that ground disturbance to this depth does not occur,” the report states. “However, impacted soil could pose health hazards to construction site workers and the public if the hazards are not managed properly.”
The Department of Health engaged an outside reviewer to look over the 2022 plan for long-term management of the site. Finally, on March 11, 2024, the DOH notified the Hawaiʻi Public Housing Authority that the plan would require some revisions. Attached was a list of 116 detailed comments, some substantive and some more stylistic.
Two days later, the DOH was notified that TetraTech, contractor to Highridge Costa and Form Partners, would be doing their own geophysical survey at the Phase IV site. “Approximately eleven borings will be installed to a depth of up to 20 feet bgs [below ground surface],” the DOH was told. Borings would be backfilled.
Highridge Costa is the housing development firm that has partnered with HPHA to develop 10,000 affordable housing units across the islands, including 250 units at the Lanakila site. The borings are apparently needed to know more about the eventual effect of construction work.
The DOH has not yet received any report on what might have been found in the borings.
— Patricia Tummons
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