Barriers a
short-term solution
for landslidesState officials say it is only
temporary for Castle Junction
State transportation officials say a temporary wall at Castle Junction should allow them to reopen part of a right-turn lane onto Kamehameha Highway from Kalanianaole Highway in a few days.
The 1,400-foot-long row of concrete barriers would allow crews to work on the landslide problem that closed the right-turn lane Monday, said transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa. The barriers, on most of the Kalanianaole right-turn lane, would give motorists a 3-foot-high wall that should protect them from future landslides, he said.
"We hope this will be a temporary fix until we can come up with a permanent solution," Ishikawa said yesterday."So there's two reasons we're doing this. One is to move drivers back 12 feet from the cliff side. The second reason, if there is another landslide, the dirt will fall on that side of the road and not on the vehicles," Ishikawa said.
Weather permitting today and tomorrow, transportation crews will close the Honolulu-bound lanes of Kalanianaole Highway at Castle Junction from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. to install about 70 sections of 20-foot "jersey" barriers.
During the installation, the town-bound lanes of Kalanianaole Highway will be closed, and officials will set up a contra-flow system in the Kailua-bound lanes.
The work is being done at night to minimize the impact on traffic, he said.
Once in place, there should be enough room for cars and trucks to make a right turn once the end of the turn lane is reopened next week. Ishikawa said the initial three-week estimated delay was because the department was uncertain whether it could find enough barriers quickly enough, but it did.
Earlier this week, state engineers and private contractors discovered cracks in the ridge above the highway. Those cracks were not there during a survey of dangerous landslide areas last year.
That report by Earth Tech Inc., conducted June 2000 to last November, placed the Castle Junction site as No. 5 on the list. Ishikawa said he does not know if it has moved up to the No. 1 spot, but after three landslides in the past two weeks, it has gotten their full attention.
Meanwhile, he said, the state is working on a solution to the landslide problem. One underlying issue is whether the property belongs to the state or to Hawaii Pacific University, which owns the adjoining land as part of its Hawaii Loa campus.
HPU officials have noted an easement on the master plan for the campus that places the slope in question under the state's jurisdiction. The state says it is still uncertain if it does own it.
Some options to prevent another landslide are to scale back the hillside further, spray a lime coating to slow down erosion or put up some kind of retaining wall. Ishikawa said the use of a steel mesh net, as was done along the rocky Makapuu hillside recently, probably cannot be done because the clay soil will not support the net.
Ishikawa said it is uncertain how much this project will cost or where the money will come from. The Makapuu landslide project cost $1.5 million, and that money came from a special maintenance fund, he said.
"We're going to have to step back and take a harder look at this, how we're going to deal with this landslide. We can't just go in there and start carving away," Ishikawa said.
"As I've said before, this is a man vs. nature thing, and we've got to do this right or else we're going to end up losers."