By October 1990, excavations had removed soil along Kalaniana`ole Avenue to, in places, a depth of eight feet — down to bedrock. The county had placed barricades along some of the dug-up areas, but they were being stolen “by the dozens,” noted Wendell Hatada of Hawai`i County Civil Defense.
Every time the cycle of excavation and sampling occurred, the remaining soil continued to show levels of contaminants greater than background levels. Should the excavated areas be filled before all contaminants had been removed, the fill itself might later on have to be removed if further remediation work were determined to be required. On November 7, 1990, Hatada’s log shows, HPM and its consultant, Brewer Environmental Services, decided to take two more background samples before filling the excavated areas.
The following day, though, Civil Defense administrator Harry Kim decided on his own to have the county repair the damage. Hatada’s log notes that, at 7:50 a.m. on November 8, Kim told him to “inform Hazard Eval. that the county will fill up/in the dug-up area and CD will take the responsibility.” Hatada was further instructed to call the county Department of Public Works to arrange to have the dug-up area filled with gravel, except for the areas where sampling was still planned. Kim told Hatada that he should call the Department of Health to find out where the sampling was to occur and then have the rest of the areas filled in: “filling 90 percent of the area will help Mike [Fujimoto] psychologically — we must help him out,” Hatada reports Kim as having told him. Fujimoto is vice president of HPM.
The testing was not completed until the end of November. Part of the reason it as prolonged was because HPM and Brewer were trying to establish evidence that background levels of arsenic were already high — evidence that it could use in arguing to the Department of Health that the levels of metal in the excavated soil were, relatively speaking, not so bad.
On November 30, Fujimoto called Civil Defense. There were still some areas of disagreement with the state DOH, he said, but the state was willing to discuss these and see if the parties “can negotiate some of the [clean-up] standards based on background samples.” “Per Mike,” Hatada’s log says, “he has a positive feeling that he and Jenny [Kleveno] of Brewer can work it out with the state satisfactorily. If they cannot agree, then he would like CD assistance.” Assuming agreement could be reached, Fujimoto told Hatada, “HPM wants to do [the] fill job all one time instead of piecemeal.”
December 6 saw Fujimoto, Kleveno, Mike Nalapinski and Ingoglia of HEER meeting in the Honolulu HEER office. Fujimoto agreed to remove more soil from five areas until test results of samples taken from the contaminated areas came back equal to the recommended background levels. Six other areas, though, could be filled, since soils there were below the suggested clean-up goals. A few days later, Fujimoto met with Kim and Watada of Civil Defense and Jippy Mattos of the county Department of Public Works, to inform Public Works of the areas it could fill.
At the end of February, Alan Kuwaye of Allied Aggregate called Fujimoto about repaving the area in front of his business that had been dug up by HPM. Fujimoto assured Kuwaye that HPM would take care of it. Fujimoto did so, according to Hatada’s log, by calling Civil Defense to find out what the county Public Works Department was doing.
When Hatada then called Public Works, he was told that no order had come down from the administration. The next day, under Kim’s instructions, Hatada bypassed the administration and got in touch with Larry Capellas, an engineer in DPW. Capellas said he would send a work order to the road department to take care of Kea`a Street. It was paved as of March 27, 1991, one month after Allied made its request.
The repair of Kalaniana`ole Avenue, especially in the area of the sump, took a little longer, since the final excavation did not occur until late April.
But in May, Civil Defense again rode herd on Public Works. Kim had been assured that Public Works would get to it by May 23, but, when that day rolled around, the Kalaniana`ole job was postponed — “due to Kalapana emergency roadwork,” Hatada was told.
Other bureaucratic delays intervened, but on June 12, Public Works notified Civil Defense the job was “almost pau.”
Later that day, HPM’s Fujimoto called Hatada: The Kalaniana`ole job “looks good,” he said.
Volume 9, Number 3 September 1998
Leave a Reply