The entire Lanakila Homes project in Hilo was developed on about 29 acres of land that, from the 1870s until the 1940s, was in active sugar cultivation. The use of the land for sugar explains the high levels of arsenic found on the site once funds were available to begin preparatory work on what has become known as Phase IIIB and Phase IV of the Lanakila redevelopment project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time that this work began, however, new housing had already been built on the mauka half of the Lanakila area, stretching from Kapi\u02bbolani Street west to Popolo Street. Here, in one- and two-story buildings, more than 152 families had settled in, starting in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the land under these new buildings having been part of the same sugar plantation, no soil testing was done prior to their construction. Nor has any been done since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2014, a Department of Health staffer asked why.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo one ever thought of that,\u201d was the response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A 2003 change in rules at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which provided funds for the project, was then identified as the reason for the soil tests. For the earlier phases of the project, buildings were apparently tested for contamination before being razed, but no soil tests were conducted. The design \u201cwas done before 2003, so soil testing requirement wouldn\u2019t apply,\u201d was the answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Patricia Tummons<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The entire Lanakila Homes project in Hilo was developed on about 29 acres of land that, from the 1870s until the 1940s, was in active sugar cultivation. The use of the land for sugar explains the high levels of arsenic … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,525],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-16016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-june-2024","tag-patricia-tummons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16016","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=16016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}