DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
The NOAA research vessel Manacat will be used to survey Pokai Bay for munitions during the next two weeks. Ocean engineer Darren Moss showed Gov. Linda Lingle yesterday how to use the control box for the Stingray remotely operated vehicle or ROV while watching a computer screen. Congressman Ed Case, rear, looked on after just finishing using the control box.
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Feds scan for sunken ordnance
The state will join the search for munitions off the Waianae Coast
Federal researchers are scanning the ocean bottom in part of Pokai Bay for possible chemical munitions that the military maintains were not dumped there.
Scientists and state politicians attended a briefing at Aloha Tower's Pier 9 yesterday hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on its two-week underwater munitions survey project, which began Sunday and will conclude June 8.
Eric De Carlo, University of Hawaii geochemist, as part of the NOAA team will study the sediment and waters off the Leeward Coast. Scientists also plan to gather water, biological and sediment samples away from the survey area for comparison purposes. They hope to complete their report by the end of the year.
Michael Overfield, chief scientist for the $175,000 NOAA survey, said the starting point for the survey is an area near the Waianae sewage outfall known as Ordnance Reef. A 2002 Army Corps of Engineers limited underwater survey by divers uncovered more than 2,000 military munitions at depths from 15 to 240 feet.
Overfield said the majority of the munitions discovered in the 2002 Army study included World War II-era artillery shells, mortars and .50-caliber conventional weapons. "They are probably discarded military munitions, unfused and filled with TNT," he said.
According to Overfield, one of the three chemical weapons dumpsites might be northwest of Waianae at a depth of 1,600 feet.
DENNIS ODA / DODA@STARBULLETIN.COM
The ROV, equipped with cameras, lights, sensors and other tools, is launched into the water to search the bottom more closely. Here, the ROV surfaced during the demonstration.
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He said the new survey area was expanded to nearly a 6-square-mile area and will extend to 300 feet from shore. Overfield is a marine archaeologist who last year was involved in NOAA and the Navy's hunt for the 47-foot USS Alligator -- the Navy's first submarine. That search took place off Cape Hatteras, N.C., in the "Graveyard of the Atlantic," where the Civil War-era vessel was lost during a storm in 1863.
William Aila, a Democratic candidate for governor, was at the briefing to remind the researchers and the military that there seems to be "a large disproportionate number of cancer cases" along the Waianae Coast. "Past studies seem to indicate that there may be concentration of heavy metals near the outfall of the Waianae sewage treatment plant."
Aila said Mayor Mufi Hannemann and his staff have told Waianae residents that the source of these "heavy metals" isn't the Waianae sewage treatment plant because no industrial wastes are processed at the Leeward Oahu facility.
Because of his long-standing involvement in the battle with the Army to shutdown Makua Military Reservation and firing range, Aila said: "We are aware of the high incidents of heavy metals in unexploded ordnance."
Aila said people who collect aquarium fish also have noticed "a significant reduction of the number of invertebrates at about 40 to 100 feet."
Overfield said the project was initiated by the Pentagon and will be assisted by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources and the University of Hawaii.
The 42-foot NOAA research vessel Manacat, normally used to conduct whale counts, will be used to first survey the shallower parts of Pokai Bay using side-scan sonar and imaging equipment to a depth of about 125 feet.
Then the sonar mapping equipment will be transferred to a larger 50-foot UH vessel next week to survey the deeper sections of the area that extends to about 300 feet.
"There has been a lot of speculation," Overfield said, "of what is out there and the composition of the ordnance. We are taking an unbiased approach and hope to get rid of the speculation."
After the briefing, Gov. Linda Lingle told reporters that "hopefully this (survey) will be a model" to help the military pinpoint other areas used as munitions dump sites.