EPA questions whether upgrades could have avoided Ala Wai spill

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to know whether last month's massive sewage spill in Waikiki can be blamed solely on unusually heavy rains or whether the city could have prevented it by upgrading sewer lines.

The federal agency and the state Department of Health will examine several questions before deciding whether to issue any fines.

"We've asked them to give us the details on the spill, what happened, how it happened, what caused it, what they've done to contain and control it," said Kathi Moore, chief of the EPA's regional Clean Water Act compliance office.

Moore said the agency would consider the stress on the sewer line caused by more than a month of nonstop rain when making its decision.

"I think we are going to find that out," she said. "Heavy rains can really, really be hard for a collections system to handle."

The city says it was forced to divert nearly 50 million gallons of raw sewage into the Ala Wai Canal last month to prevent waste water from reaching homes and businesses. A 42-inch sewer pipe, which cracked March 24 on Kaiolu Street, was repaired several days later.

Eric Takamura, director of the city Department of Environmental Services, has said the EPA approved the city's contingency plan to dump sewage into the canal.

Moore said the EPA approved a "generic" plan in 1999 to divert spills to "a water body." But she said "a lot of administrative orders for repair and maintenance" to the city's sewer system have been issued since then.

"It's the planning documents that could have been improved to give them better tools to respond to the spill," Moore said. "The sewer-system discussion has been going on for a couple of years."

The state Health Department on April 15, 2004, ordered the city to assess the condition of all its sewer mains, outline a program to upgrade and repair them, and create contingency plans in case they failed. The order was in response to 23 sewage spills reported by the city between November 1996 and April 2004 that expelled a total of 8.4 million gallons of raw sewage.

The city wouldn't be required to ask the EPA or state how to handle a immediate sewer-line emergency, Moore noted yesterday.

However, Moore said, since the document Takamura refers to was issued, "there have been a lot of improvements in the way people handle sewage spills across the country."

"Spill response plans can contain a spill, capture it, prevent it from entering waterways," Moore said. "This was a very large spill. Many small spills are contained."

City spokesman Bill Brennan could not immediately confirm the city's compliance with the 2004 state order.

It's unclear when the EPA and the state will reach a decision on whether last month's Ala Wai spill rates action against the city, Moore said, calling the review process "complicated."

The city was given 15 days to respond to the agency's request for information in a letter on March 28, Brennan said.

In related news, Bellows Field Beach in Waimanalo is closed to the public for the second straight weekend because of a sewage spill last week. The closure also affects camping-permit holders, according to the city. The city experienced numerous sewage spills during the March 31 downpour and water testing on Thursday showed elevated levels of bacteria off Bellows, Waimanalo, Kailua and Wailupe.