Arsenic in soil in Keaau
will require precautions
KEAAU, Hawaii >> High levels of arsenic in the soil will require special precautions during the building of a 60-room hotel at Keaau south of Hilo when work starts about August, officials told area residents this week.
Arsenic concentrations up to 75 times an Environmental Protection Agency "screening level" of 22 parts per million were found last year on 5.3 acres owned by W.H. Shipman Ltd., immediately mauka of the existing Keaau Shopping Center.
Concentrations above the "screening level," requires some kind of action, said John Peard, the state Department of Health official monitoring the hotel project.
Health effects from arsenic range from dark spots on the skin to damage to the heart, blood vessels, and liver, as well as cancer.
The people most at risk are young children who might swallow dirt on their hands containing arsenic, the Health Department said.
No one knows how arsenic got to the site, although the cause may be the use of the metallic element as an herbicide in sugar cane fields from about 1915 to 1950, Peard said.
The now-overgrown Shipman site was formerly used for plantation housing, not sugar production, Peard said. Alternate theories are that sugar workers used it as an herbicide around their homes or that it came from locally manufactured wallboard, called canec, that contained arsenic insecticide.
The Health Department and Shipman decided the best way to deal with the contamination is to place "geotextile" fabric over the acreage and then cover it with a foot of uncontaminated soil.
That will raise the cost of hotel construction, but Shipman has agreed to pay the added cost, said Shipman executive Robert Cooper.
The fact that a hotel is planned for Keaau was as much of a surprise to most people as the arsenic.
Cooper said the developer hasn't publicly announced his plans and still doesn't want to identify himself yet.
The developer uses the term "hotel," but the low-priced facility will be more like a mainland motel, Cooper said.
Besides tourists, guests might be people doing business at the nearby branch of Kamehameha Schools or at Puna Geothermal Venture, Cooper said.