State agency miscue will
delay Kona building

By Gary Kubota
Star-Bulletin

It was a case of one state agency not knowing what another required.

Now, Big Island residents can't use a new two-story administration building at Kona Community Hospital until it has a safe place to put its sewage.

Hospital officials planned to put the sewage into a new treatment plant and inject it into the ground -- that is, before they learned state groundwater protection rules now forbid new injection wells in the area.

A state environmental inspector ordered a halt to digging a new injection well about a month ago.

The building is part of a $5 million expansion and renovation project that includes a new wastewater treatment plant able to process 50,000 gallons of sewage a day.

The hospital is allowed to continue to inject up to 25,000 gallons of treated sewage into three old injection wells.

Joseph Wall, the hospital's chief executive officer, said use of the administration building may be delayed four to eight weeks or perhaps longer, depending on whether it obtains an occupancy permit.

The building was scheduled to open Aug. 5.

Wall said he didn't know how much additional money, if any, would have to be spent to comply with state wastewater rules.

He said the hospital assumed the treated wastewater could be injected into new wells and was surprised when it found out otherwise.

Wall said the plant was built to replace an old facility and expand the capacity for sewage treatment.

The treatment plant is slightly downhill from the old one, and a pump may have to be installed if treated sewage is emptied into an old injection well, he said.

Wall said the state Department of Accounting and General Services is supposed to take care of making sure a builder complies with state permit rules.

State Comptroller Raymond H. Sato said the design consultant was responsible for obtaining all the permits and had assumed the state would approve the new injection wells.

Sato said an underground injection control permit usually is not required to obtain a building permit, so construction began after receiving the building permit.

State Wastewater Branch Chief Dennis Tulang said the old injection wells are at their 25,000-gallon-a-day capacity.

Tulang said consultants are developing a plan to allow the 10,000 gallons a day from the new building to be used for irrigating the property.