It\u2019s been seven months since the main line to Waikiki\u2019s Beachwalk wastewater pump station cracked open, causing the city to divert 48 million gallons of raw sewage into the Ala Wai canal. But while the six-day spill and its effects on Honolulu\u2019s beaches and waterways have been slowly eclipsed by more pressing news, discussion about the spill and lessons learned from it has continued in a quiet lecture hall at the University of Hawai`i\u2019s Manoa campus, with the university\u2019s Water Resources Research Center lecture series on various aspects related to the event, including everything from water and sand quality sampling methods to marine-related infections and diseases.<\/p>\n
This month, the series features a talk by Dolan Eversole of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources and Sea Grant about sand replenishment and discolored sediments, and Gerald Kato and Thomas Kelleher of the UH School of Communications will discuss the impact of the media on the development of public opinion, perception and action.<\/p>\n
While the series touches on a wide variety of subjects, enforcement of state and federal clean water laws is not one of them. And anyone looking to find out what\u2019s going on is likely to come up empty, at least until negotiations between all parties affected by the spill are complete.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s been frustrating for Libby Stoddard, an engineer with the state Department of Health\u2019s Clean Water Branch.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m in the middle of it and I don\u2019t even know what\u2019s going on,\u201d she says. For the past few years Stoddard has been in charge of overseeing the city\u2019s compliance with an April 2004 Notice of Violation and Order regarding the city\u2019s history of force main spills.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, when Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann sought an emergency declaration from Governor Lingle to allow the installation of a temporary sewage bypass line along the floor of the Ala Wai, letters from his office indicated that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Justice had planned to pursue a stipulated order regarding critical force mains and the March 2006 spill, and that the city and the federal government planned to finalize an agreement on upgrades to the city\u2019s critical force mains some time in early July.<\/p>\n
That never happened. Instead, the parties chose to negotiate, in lieu of pursuing costly litigation, Stoddard says.<\/p>\n
Ross Tanimoto of the City and County of Honolulu\u2019s Department of Environmental Services, speaking at the WRRC\u2019s first seminar in the series, admitted, \u201cThere are discussions, which I am not at liberty to discuss now, ongoing with the EPA and a third party, as far as how much effort should we place [on certain sewer projects]. I think we\u2019re coming to an amicable agreement. It is a high priority for the city, a high priority for the third party, and a high priority for EPA-DOH. The exact number, I\u2019m not at liberty to discuss at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
(The third party Tanimoto spoke of is most likely the hui of environmental groups including Hawai`i\u2019s Thousand Friends, the Hawai`i chapter of the Sierra Club and Our Children\u2019s Earth Foundation, which in July 2004 sued the city in federal court for alleged Clean Water Act violations resulting from more than 1,200 sewage spills since 1999. In October 2005, U.S. District Judge David Ezra dismissed most of the hui\u2019s charges, and the group subsequently moved to become a party to a prior lawsuit the state DOH and the EPA filed against the city, which resulted in a 1995 consent decree intended to force the city to repair and better maintain its sewage system and reduce its number of sewage spills. All parties involved in that case met in late September to discuss how to proceed, but no details of that meeting have been released.<\/p>\n
Donna Wong, director of Hawai`\u2019s Thousand Friends, told Environment Hawai`i that she is barred from discussing the case, except to say that the Ala Wai spill, the DOH\u2019s force main NOV, and a federal lawsuits regarding the city\u2019s sewage system are all related.<\/p>\n
EPA spokesman Dean Higuchi and DOH Environmental Health administrator Lawrence Lau also say they can\u2019t comment on the status of negotiations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really want to take our time on this. We don\u2019t want to negotiate in the media,\u201d Higuchi says, adding that a decision will be announced when negotiations are complete.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Stoddard says her force main Notice-of-Violation case is in limbo. The April 2004 order, issued shortly after a broken force main to the city\u2019s Ala Moana pumping station spilled two million gallons of sewage into Honolulu Harbor, required the city to assess its force mains and draft maintenance and repair plans. In October 2004, the city submitted a force main repair and upgrade program report, a force main contingency plan, a force main condition assessment program, and a force main preventative maintenance plan to the DOH for review and comment.<\/p>\n
In its reports, the city identified several critical force mains, including the Beachwalk force main, in need of immediate repair or construction. While the Beachwalk force main had never been physically inspected for structural or hydraulic defects, it was deemed critical because of its age (built in 1964), location (in the heart of Waikiki), amount of flow (an average of 12.7 million gallons a day) and because, unlike all other major force mains, it did not have a back-up line. Although the city had issued a contract in 1998 to begin designing a new Beachwalk force main, Tanimoto said that the project never got very far because the city was also planning to build a new Beachwalk wastewater pump station and was waiting to construct the new line until the new station site was determined.<\/p>\n
The current Beachwalk station, tucked away behind Nike Town in Waikiki, is a valuable piece of real estate, he added, and \u201cThere was a lot of talk about selling this particular property and relocating the pump station. This was during the Harris administration so there was a lot of delay based on where are we going to put this pump station. We were going to put in on the Ala Wai golf course, but apparently the Ala Wai golf course is like the most heavily used golf course in the world so we couldn\u2019t put it there. Push came to shove. We had a spill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While Stoddard says she began reviewing the city\u2019s force main plans soon after they were submitted, the Beachwalk force main broke before she could complete the review, the 48 million gallons were spilled, and the federal government basically took over her case.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I received the reports, I began to review them. Then I got involved in a DOT [Department of Transportation] consent decree\u2026 Then the Ala Wai spill happened and they said, \u2018What do you mean, you didn\u2019t send comments?\u2019\u201d Stoddard says, adding that she was told to \u201cdrop everything\u201d and finish the comments for the county. (The Department of Transportation consent decree, which was not final until January 2006, involved the DOT\u2019s failure to use best-management practices to prevent nonpoint source pollution.)<\/p>\n
So on June 1, Stoddard finally returned comments to the city. In her paragraph-by-paragraph review of the city\u2019s force main preventative maintenance plan, Stoddard states that the city merely describes activities which would be appropriate for the city\u2019s force mains, \u201cwithout stating that these activities are conducted on a regular basis, if at all. This falls short of the Order requirement to provide<\/u> regularly scheduled preventative maintenance.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added that while the city claimed that its preventative maintenance program was very effective at preventing spills, the facts proved just the opposite: \u201cIn fact, the Order cited fifteen spills to state waters between November 1996 and March 2004, a little over seven years, and \u2026 there have been at least twelve spills from force mains to state waters in the two years since the order was issued, indicating that the city\u2019s program is not very effective at preventing spills from force mains,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
She also noted that the city\u2019s force main contingency plan did not include the option of diverting flow to the nearest body of water, despite the fact that several force mains have bypass valves to divert flows to streams.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the case of the March 2006 Beachwalk force main wastewater diversion, the city used portable pumps to divert flow from manholes\u2026to the Ala Wai Canal,\u201d she wrote, and recommended that the city submit a flow chart that actually represented the city\u2019s response to force main failures.<\/p>\n
Although the Order requires the city to submit revised plans to the DOH within 30 days of receiving the DOH\u2019s comments, on June 26, Eric Takamura, director of the city\u2019s Department of Environmental Services, requested an extension, stating that submittal of the revised plan should coincide with the completion of the ongoing EPA negotiations.<\/p>\n
That letter, according to Stoddard, is the last correspondence she\u2019s received from the city regarding the 2004 force main NOV and Order.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a letter to send to the city with a nice do-able schedule.\u2026 But because everything is in limbo, people above me said, \u2018Sit on it,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
While all parties involved in this case have been tight-lipped about what the city will ultimately be required to do, Tanimoto described some of the city\u2019s plans on September 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are currently looking at various plans to evaluate all of our force mains [and] we are now categorizing them as far as criticality,\u201d he said. With regard to maintenance, he said the city is going to use a computer-based maintenance program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe already had that prior to the spill, but given the spill we are now more sensitized to this and the software becomes a more useful tool for us. We\u2019re looking at using other types of monitoring equipment in the sewer system. Not necessarily during events of catastrophe, but every day, taking a closer look at our collection system, pump stations, as well as our treatment plants. This has been an eye-opener, to say the least.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanimoto also explained that a lot of the infiltration of rainwater into the sewage system enters through cracks in pipes on private property and that \u201cefforts are underway to smoke test lines to bring private landowners into compliance.\u201d<\/p>\n
And to lessen the amount of flow directed into the Beachwalk pump station, Tanimoto said, the city is looking to divert some of the flow to a sewer line under the Ala Wai to the Ala Moana pump station.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are steps underway to minimize flows to the [Beachwalk] pump station\u2026 Another pipe is being designed\u2026 In addition to a backup force main, we\u2019re looking at reducing flow to the pump station…to a point where perhaps we could manage the flow should another event occur,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
— Teresa Dawson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n — Volume 17, Number 5 November 2006<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been seven months since the main line to Waikiki’s Beachwalk wastewater pump station cracked open, causing the city to divert 48 million gallons of raw sewage into the Ala Wai canal. But while the six-day spill and its effects … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-1454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-november-2006","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}