Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

---

Mayors hold their noses and hope

MAYOR Mufi Hannemann is correct to say that it was the previous mayor who let the city's sewer lines fall into such disrepair that a pipeline break in Waikiki recently caused something like 423 zillion gallons of "you know what" to pour into the Ala Wai Canal and then the ocean in general. The ca-ca catastrophe was what school kids would call "a monsta wiffa," a stink of such colossal proportions that merely holding one's nose isn't enough, duct tape is required.

The sewage has pretty much sailed away, but a stench remains. It is the stench that the mayor referred to, the sickly aroma that something's very bad in paradise. The odious affair served to remind us that mayors are almost genetically disinclined to address sewage line problems when they are in office.

I think every mayor in every town is elected with the hope that the sewer system doesn't fall apart until they have left office for higher office. For many cities, mayors are in a race with the devil to get out of office before the ticking da kine bomb explodes. (Mayor Frank Fasi doesn't fall into this category since he was mayor for so long he actually had to do something about keeping the sewer lines in working condition.)

Yes, Mayor Jeremy Harris was more intent on building those cute little "howdy" monuments at the entrance to every Honolulu neighborhood than he was heading off a future feces fiasco. That adorable little book he published listing all of his accomplishments at making Honolulu the jewel of the Pacific didn't include one picture of him standing next to a brand-new 87-inch sewer line.

Why do mayors have such antipathy toward modernizing sewer systems? Because its a yucky enterprise, involving digging up everything in sight, stinking up neighborhoods and causing traffic jams.

Ask residents of Kailua how much fun it's been to have a sewer line replaced in their neighborhoods for the past several years.

No mayor looking for higher office wants to offend that many voters all at once. So the answer is clearly to bring in a special "island improvement mayor." It would be a four-year-post for someone with no desire to be liked by anyone. He or she would be in charge of upgrading the sewers and water lines and burying power lines. We citizens would go through four years of misery but come out of it with a nice, shiny new city in which things actually work right.