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Big Isle slogs HILO -- Three months after a torrential storm on Nov. 1-2 flooded east Hawaii, knocking out bridges and damaging roads and homes, millions of dollars in repairs are planned or under way.
through November
storm repairs
Floodwaters damaged roads
and exposed tarry soil at a
Hilo soccer fieldBy Rod Thompson
Big Island correspondentBut a soccer field at Hilo's Bayfront County Park, where scouring waters exposed decades-old petroleum pollution, may never be restored.
The Hawaii County's Public Works Department will give a detailed accounting of repair projects tomorrow.
The soccer field at the end of the $17.1 million Alenaio Stream Flood Control Project was completed in 1997.
Water from the Alenaio gouged a big pond in the soccer field.
"It probably won't ever be used again," said Pat Englehard, head of the county Parks and Recreation Department.
Mayor Harry Kim doesn't want to restore the field because it's supposed to be a flood basin, Englehard said. He would create a new playing field mauka of the damage zone, she said.
American Youth Soccer Organization official Bill Case said the county already had plans for a soccer field there, so abandoning the damaged area would still mean losing one of its seven fields.
Dave Brown, another AYSO official, said, "Nobody has come along with a viable alternative for 800 to 900 kids."
Meanwhile, the area is a wasteland of rocks and chunks of earth up to four feet wide imbedded with tar.
Gary Gill, a deputy state health director, said tests have been done on the tarry substance and more are under way.
"There is no immediate health threat," he said. "It's not too different from what might blow off a roadway from tires wearing on asphalt."
The stuff was created as a byproduct of processing petroleum to create cooking gas between the early 1900s and 1960, when a tsunami brought an end to a factory at the site, he said.
Authorities can't dig it up and move it until they find out what's in it and where dumping it is legal, he said.
Compared to these problems, fixing other storm damage is almost easy.
Another big problem in Hilo was the washing out of a culvert under Komohana Street, which normally carries traffic across town about a mile above downtown Hilo.
Work is well under way there on a $4.8 million bridge-like "box culvert."
Immediately after the washout, the loss of the major arterial caused major traffic headaches.
Police now have traffic moving around the area at a reasonable rate, said Sgt. Stephen Miller. "It's acceptable, although at a somewhat slower pace," he said.
When the original pipe culvert washed out, one of the pipes slammed into the home of former County Councilman Frank De Luz. "The culvert came out and whacked 'em," he said.
Insurance reimbursed De Luz for about half of his loss. Rebuilding has meant propping up the floor and an overhanging roof, replacing a large front window, and hauling in more than 100 cubic yards of soil to replace his yard, which washed down to bedrock.
Another major damage site was along the Hawaii Belt Road near Pahala in the Kau District.
Bridges in the area withstood storm-choked streams, but were too small to allow all the water to flow under them, said state Transportation Department spokeswoman Marilyn Kali.
The roadway on both sides of at least three bridges was washed away.
The gashes in the roads were filled and repaved and the highway through the district has been passable for some time.
The department has plans to replace the three bridges and to build a fourth bridge at a place where water is now allowed simply to flow over the road during storms, creating a ford which is sometimes passable but which has also been responsible for deaths in the past.
The department already had approved a $5.7 million bid for replacing the Keaiwi Stream bridge, but the contract had to be withdrawn when environmental issues arose, Kali said. The department hopes to seek a new bid soon, she said.
A public meeting on the bridge projects is set for today at 5 p.m. at the Pahala Community Center, Kali said.
A partial accounting of federal aid money has been released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which said $8.1 million in loans and grants were made to individuals and businesses. Tomorrow's presentation by the Public Works Department will give more details.