Ala Wai dredging
concludes ‘smoothly’The state plans to deny the
contractor's request for additional
payments for waiting
Ala Wai Canal dredging ends today as workers cover the last of the material removed to the Honolulu Airport reef runway.
The $7.4 million job was the first time in 25 years that the canal dividing Waikiki from the rest of Honolulu had been dredged. Deepening the canal was expected to help control flooding, reduce pollution and improve water quality and recreational uses.
A total of 185,801 cubic yards of accumulated muck have been scooped off the canal bottom since August 2002. Most of it was taken by barge and disposed of at an Environmental Protection Agency-approved deep-ocean site.
A final 1,650 cubic yards were mixed with cement and buried in a 130-square-foot, 3 1/2-foot-deep lined hole adjacent to the runway. Soil will cover it and airport emergency vehicles may occasionally drive on it, said Eric Hirano, engineering chief for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.
That material was given different treatment because it didn't meet EPA qualifications for ocean disposal.
"Everything went very, very smoothly," Hirano said.
American Marine Corp. did the work under contract with the state.
American Marine has asked the state for additional payment because of down time this summer while waiting for permits regarding material from the Kapahulu end of the canal. The state plans to deny the request, Hirano said.
American Marine workers and equipment now are doing some work for Hawaiian Electric Co. in the canal. They are removing two old, unused electric cables that run under the canal between McCully Bridge and the Kapahulu end, said HECO spokesman Bruce Benson. The job is expected to cost HECO less than $100,000, he said.
When that work is completed, HECO plans to bury active cables more deeply that now carry electricity under the canal. That work will be done in anticipation of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposal to dredge the canal to 13 feet deep from the current 10 feet, which would make it more effective for flood control, Benson said.
Hirano said the proposal might take place in five or six years, rather than the 10 years until the next maintenance dredging the state has planned.
