PHOTO COURTESY OF KING KAMEHAMEHA'S KONA BEACH HOTEL
Thatched buildings are seen on the rock base of Ahuena Heiau where it reaches into Kailua Bay from the right during a canoe regatta. Arching around the heiau from the left is the Kailua pier.
Pier fix upsets KAILUA-KONA >> The reconstructed Ahuena Heiau stands on the shore of Kailua Bay in Kona undamaged by the rebuilding of the nearby Kailua pier.
heiau’s keeper
The Kailua pier on the Big Island
undergoes renovations near
a Kamehameha I siteBy Rod Thompson
rthompson@starbulletin.comA modified form of pile-driving around the pier, less than 100 feet from the temple platform and thatched buildings, has not toppled them as some people feared.
Whether respect for the site associated with Kamehameha I has been damaged is another matter.
David "Mauna" Roy, the kahu, or caretaker, of the heiau, says wooden statues of the agricultural god Lono have been tilted. "I want them to stop pile-driving," he said.
The Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., on behalf of Roy, sued the state Department of Land & Natural Resources, saying the agency failed to follow state law, which requires consideration of the cultural impact of the work.
Circuit Judge Ronald Ibarra turned down a request last month to stop the pier work immediately. His ruling on the cultural issue is pending.
From 1813 to his death in 1819, Kamehameha lived on the shore of Kailua Bay, his living quarters facing the Ahuena Heiau. After his death, his son Liholiho overturned the old religion.
"No one disputes the heiau was destroyed by Liholiho in the 1820s," said Native Hawaiian Legal Corp. attorney Alan Murakami.
A pier was built into the bay in 1915. A replacement, the current pier, was built in the early 1950s. Kamehameha's house site and the heiau site were designated a national historic landmark in 1962.
In 1975, the Land Department and the community selected Roy to rebuild the heiau.
Roy's recent testimony in his suit against the state recognizes that the reconstructed heiau was not built with the same dimensions as the original, nor the same orientation, nor at the original location, although it is near it.
But Murakami said the spirit of the place is important. "The mana of the place has always been the same. It's revered because of Kamehameha's status," he said.
Meanwhile, the old pier deteriorated. Steel bulkheads under the pier were damaged in the 1980s. A 70-foot section of the approximately 500-foot pier was closed in 2000.
An oddity of its construction is that it is built on enclosed bulkheads instead of piles.
"I know keikis have gone underneath there," said Scotty Bell, president of the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce. "Someone could swim under there and drown," he said.
Mark McGuffie, manager of King Kamehameha's Kona Beach Hotel, which owns the heiau, wrote to Land Department head Peter Young, "We would like to see this project completed expeditiously and cautiously for the safety of our community at large."
McGuffie admitted concern at first.
"When the word pile driver was put on the table, we got nervous about noise and vibration," he said. "We have been, in the whole scheme of things, pleasantly surprised," he said. "There has been virtually no disturbance to our guests."
State engineer Hiram Young said the term pile driver is misleading. Temporary "guide beams" are first driven into the sea floor. Then a "vibratory hammer" grips 18-inch-wide, 50-foot-long sheets of metal and drives them into the coral rubble sea floor. Only about 5 feet of the length requires hammering into the sea bed, he said.
Four seismic monitors have been set up around the hotel, including one at the heiau. If vibrations reach a certain level, a flashing light goes on and work must stop. To date, the light has not flashed, Young said.
Roy thinks it is simply a bad design. He would like to see the pier rebuilt on piling, to allow water circulation underneath, and farther from the heiau. A 2001 environmental assessment for the project says that would raise the cost to $18 million.
The present cost is estimated at less than $4 million. Work is expected to take about a year.
Dept. of Land & Natural Resources
