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Water permit
spurs worries over
Kawainui Marsh

Several Kailua residents ask
Ameron about practices
at Kapaa Quarry

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By Mary Adamski
Star-Bulletin

A permit to allow the Kapaa Quarry rock-mining business to discharge rainwater overflow into the stream that flows into Kawainui Marsh has aroused Kailua residents' concerns about what's uphill of that protected body of water.

Thirty people turned out last night for an informational meeting sponsored by the state Department of Health Clean Water Branch at the request of the Kailua Neighborhood Board.

Most speakers focused on questions about Ameron Hawaii's management of the 400-acre site, where a series of ponds, pumps and pipes are used to contain normal Windward rainfall and allow for sediment to settle.

"All the grading you've done will wash out and go south," Toby Rushforth of the Kailua Bay Advisory Committee told Ameron officials.

"It looks like it's going to compromise the stability of H-3," said Kimberly Nichols, a Kailua Neighborhood Board member.

Some speakers misunderstood that a permit would not allow routine flushing of wastewater from the quarry. It requires the company to have containment capacity for 12 inches falling in a 24-hour rainstorm of the intensity to be expected only every 10 years. Only then would discharge into Kapaa Stream be legal.

The application is for a "national pollutant discharge elimination system" permit, but the pollution involved is soil sediment, a health department spokesman said.

"We don't discharge water from the site," said Linda Goldstein, Ameron's environmental, health and safety manager. "We use most of the water we collect" on dust control, on the reforestation and plant nursery and for washing down trucks, she told the crowd.

The quarry, which already has a five-year permit near expiration, discharged 7 million gallons in a 1997 storm, Goldstein said. The pollution in that case was 20 pounds of soil sediment, she said.

"We're concerned about what comes into Kawainui Marsh, what impacts it," said Susan Miller, president of the Kawainui Heritage Foundation. Kapaa Stream is already designated an "impaired" body of water by Clean Water Act standards, she said.

Goldstein said, "What we discharge is cleaner than the canal or the marsh."

Small amounts of lime and gypsum used to mix cement and oil or grease from rock-hauling trucks and bulldozers would be permitted and monitoring required, but otherwise there are no chemicals involved, she said.

Alex Wong, a supervisor in the Clean Water Branch, said Ameron has discharged water only twice, in 1996 and 1997. He said the permit process does not require a public hearing but the neighborhood board requested one. "Most of the questions don't address water quality. The public seems concerned about management practices."

Quarry manager George West said the permit places "onerous requirements, but it's what we must contend with." The company has developed its system of water containment over 20 years. The mining operation will be extended over the crater ridge, and water containment at the new site is a priority, he said.