CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM Traffic was bottlenecked along Farrington Highway yesterday from the parked vehicles and pedestrians at Makaha Beach Park. Park users and community members are upset the city took out the only shower on the makai side of Farrington. A newer shower is on the mauka side of the highway, forcing pedestrians to cross the busy thoroughfare.

Beach users appeal for safer shower site

As far as Jimmy Keaulana is concerned, the city is asking for trouble by not installing a more convenient shower at Makaha Beach, makai of busy and dangerous Farrington Highway.

Recently, the city took down a comfort station that included a shower at Makaha Beach on the makai side of Farrington, leaving only one makai shower on the north end and another mauka of the road.

Now, beachgoers who want to shower have to cross the road to use a newer comfort station or walk much farther to get to the north-end shower. But it is not the walk that worries residents.

During the high winter surf, beachgoers say, the beach disappears underwater, forcing them to walk behind parked cars along Farrington.

"At least put back the shower," said Keaulana, who started a petition asking the city for a central makai shower at Makaha.

"Eighty percent of the people cross the street. You've got to minimize a lot of people crossing the street. I figure I'd better make a stand and do something," Keaulana said.

Yesterday at Makaha Beach, about a hundred vehicles lined the highway as hundreds of beachgoers barbecued, surfed and gathered with family and friends.

Vehicles stopped often for pedestrians crossing the street to use the comfort station, which is also next to a canoe hale.

"Farrington Highway is the deadliest stretch of road in Hawaii," said Melvin Puu, head lifeguard on the Leeward Coast. "It's a death trap waiting to be sprung."

CINDY ELLEN RUSSELL / CRUSSELL@STARBULLETIN.COM Jody Ragsdale and his son Jonah, 11, washed off yesterday after a visit to Makaha Beach.

Puu, who is also head coach of the Makaha Canoe Club, said the nearly 50 club members, half of whom are children, are endangered when they cross the road to shower.

"We need a shower for the kids. We need a bathhouse on the beach as a quick fix," he said.

About eight years ago the city built the mauka comfort station under a plan that would have rerouted Farrington Highway around the station and enlarged the parking lot, Puu said. The plan to reroute the road never came through.

"It's a nice bathhouse, but you risk your life to go use it," he said. "The city made a hazard."

Lester Chang, director of the city's Department of Parks and Recreation, said the city tore down the makai comfort station because it was only a temporary station and the bathrooms did not work. It was built after Hurricane Iniki and would have cost about $100,000 to repair. The showers were brought down as well because there was no foundation without the restrooms, he said.

"I'm looking at the possibility of how to put a shower back," Chang said, adding it would be unlike the previous shower, more like a stand-alone shower tree with a foundation.

But there are still concerns to be addressed, he said: "The big 'if' is the runoffs. We're going to try our best to do it."

Makaha resident Abraham Leedy supported the idea of another makai shower.

"Just a shower would be just right," he said. But he added, "I want them to finish that plan and reroute the road. You've got a highway going through the beach. That's not cool."