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Flooded residents LAHAINA >> Several Lahaina residents say the county should be doing more to prevent flooding along a section of Wainee Street that had some residences under 2 to 3 feet of water Tuesday and caused more than an estimated $120,000 in damages to homes and businesses.
press for action
in Lahaina
They say Maui County has done
Flood controls help Big Island
little to stop water damage
along part of Wainee StreetBy Gary T. Kubota
gkubota@starbulletin.comMaui County last year settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed amount of money with several Lahaina residents along Wainee Street for flooding in 1997. Residents said since then, little has been done to improve the conditions.
"This is tiresome," said Robert B. Sullivan, who said he suffered $83,000 in damage to his property in 1997, but was lucky this time because he built a tile wall around his home. He said when he saw the water rushing around his house he put sandbags at the entrance to the enclosure.
Sullivan said one of the reasons for the flooding is that two culverts under the state's Honoapiilani Highway empty into residences, then rush over the county-owned Wainee and Luakini streets.
Residents said an 18-inch-wide drainage culvert along Wainee Street also became plugged with debris, contributing to the backup of water and a settling pond mauka of Honoapiilani Highway was insufficient to accommodate the runoff.
Mike Anholt, a manager at Dan's Green House, said the flooding this year caused about $80,000 to $90,000 in damage to the store's nursery on along Luakini Street. Anholt said the flooding in 1997 did an estimated $200,000 in damage.
Troy Richardson estimated he and his wife, Rebecca, married five weeks ago, lost $40,000 in personal belongings in the Tuesday flood.
Rebecca Richardson said she only recently learned the county was aware of flooding problems. "I'm starting to get upset," she said.
County Public Works Director David Goode said more than 5 inches of rain fell in Lahaina during a short period and the water was flowing over Honoapiilani Highway.
Goode said a berm has been built mauka of the highway to channel water into reservoirs and into a canal at Puamana. He said he believes the berm system worked during the rains that occurred in November and December.
He said he will be examining the berm system to find out if there were breaks in it.
The county is planning a project to build an irrigation ditch to capture flood waters and redirect them to reservoirs and a canal at Puamana. But the Lahaina watershed project is still in the planning stages and would need to obtain federal and county funding, Goode said.
Meanwhile, on Lanai, Castle & Cooke officials were still reviewing the water damage to at least nine luxury homes near the Manele Golf Course, including one owned by its board chairman David Murdock.
According to the Maui Civil Defense, preliminary estimates had damages for each home ranging from $200,000 to $300,000.
HILO >> Civil Defense Director Bill Davis said flood-control projects built in recent years prevented major damage on the Big Island after Tuesday's rain. Recent Big Island
flood controls help to
prevent major damageStar-Bulletin staff
Chief among them was the $17 million Alenaio Stream project completed in 1997.
"It works very well. It has proven itself time and again," Davis said.
Although some city and rural streets flooded temporarily, the only significant damage was at a Puna home where a man reported his electrical generator damaged by water, Davis said.
Three of four bridges or culverts planned for Highway 11 in the Kau district were built, but one at the entrance to Pahala was not, said state highways chief Stanley Tamura.
There are no immediate projects to deal with two areas of broad, pondlike flooding at Ninoole and Kawa Flats which forced the closure of Highway 11 in those areas, Tamura said.