Digging begins for
Waikoloa ordnanceThe search for buried
WWII bombs dwarfs
the Kahoolawe project
WAIKOLOA, Hawaii >> When a brush fire burned near the village last year, Waikoloa Elementary School officials heard two explosions suspected of being from old munitions, said Principal Kris Kosa-Correia.
Children at Waikoloa Elementary get periodic lessons at assemblies and in the classroom on the dangers of munitions left over from a World War II Army training site, Kosa-Correia said. They even get warning lists with magnetic backing that they can stick on the family refrigerator.
Contractors working for the Army Corps of Engineers have begun clearing subsurface World War II explosives buried in 123,000 acres around Waikoloa Village in West Hawaii.
About 150 sites surrounding the village might have buried explosives, said Steve Hoffman, a resident who serves as a community liaison with the Army. As many as a dozen live rounds might lie in undeveloped areas inside the village, said cleanup project manager Chuck Streck.
Brief evacuations of parts of the town might be necessary in mid-March as old munitions are destroyed in place, Streck said.
Searches around Waikoloa using metal detectors began Feb. 2, part of the current five-year, $50 million phase of the cleanup, Streck said.
That is just a fraction of the $680 million needed for the overall cleanup of the former Waikoloa Maneuver Area, according to one Army estimate. Another Army estimate puts the recommended expenditure at $253 million.
The maneuver area was established in 1943 on 91,000 acres leased by the Navy from Parker Ranch. Later agreements expanded military uses to 123,000 acres. That is about four times the size of the Navy's Kahoolawe cleanup, costing $400 million.
Residents of the South Kohala district, where Waikoloa is located, have lived with remnants of World War II training for decades. Some of have died from it.
Despite a Marine Corps cleanup in 1946, two Parker Ranch employees were killed and three were seriously injured in 1954 when they found a live 81-mm mortar round. A road construction employee was also killed in 1945, and two servicemen were injured in 1983.
As recently as 2002, three live grenades were found buried at Waimea Middle School.
"People are pretty much aware this all exists," said Hoffman. "There is no one who is fearful here."
Waikoloa Village was created from scratch by the Boise Cascade company in rocky, semiarid upland plains bought from Parker Ranch in 1968. With World War II already two decades in the past, memory of live ammunition up to 155-mm artillery rounds was fading.
Will Sanburn, manager of the Boise project, recalls there was "a little bit of concern" at most.
Sanburn was driving into the project area one day, giving a tour to the visiting president of Boise, when they came upon a bulldozer in flames. It had hit a piece of live ammunition.
Waikoloa has grown to more than 4,800 people. Cleanup has become "time-critical," Streck said.
Work, which started in 1991, has included "walk-throughs" in certain sectors that found 38 pieces of live ammunition and 2,160 pieces of scrap metal on the surface.
That was the easy part. The cost per acre was estimated at $1,075. Now comes the hunt for buried material, estimated to cost $11,256 per acre.
The jagged aa rocks that make up much of the ground are up to 40 percent iron mineral, a project report says. Normal detectors do not work. New technology "light-years ahead" of those of 40 years ago make the hunt possible, said Hoffman.
But the sharp aa rocks and thorny kiawe trees around the village also discourage exploration in dangerous areas. "You're not going to do too much playing out there," Hoffman said.
