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Newswatch
Star-Bulletin staff
and wire service
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Kapiolani Boulevard roadwork to restart
Around-the-clock water and sewer improvement work on Kapiolani Boulevard and Kamakee Street will resume Sunday. The work was halted during the holiday season.
The city will place electronic message signboards along both roadways to provide motorists traffic information.
The far left lanes in both directions on Kapiolani Boulevard between Pensacola and Kamakee streets will be closed 24 hours a day to allow for the placement of sewer bypass lines and pump equipment.
Through traffic in both directions on Kamakee Street will continue. However, the installation of new sewer laterals and manholes and the reconstruction of existing manholes will cause temporary lane closures and redirection of traffic in the area.
The city will also begin installing a new water main along Kapiolani Boulevard between Ward Avenue and Kamakee Street that will require digging an open trench.
The work will shorten the morning contra-flow lanes on Kapiolani, which will resume Tuesday, and preclude afternoon contra-flow. The morning contra-flow lanes will end at the McCully Street intersection.
The Kapiolani Boulevard Water & Sewer System Improvement Project will also include the installation of a new sewer force main on Kalakaua Avenue and new curb ramps at intersections for wheelchairs.
Pesticides ruled out in closing of school
The state Department of Agriculture has eliminated pesticides as the culprit that caused an odor closing a Kauai school in November.
The report, released earlier this week, has eliminated all causes of the odor except a local weed, ponohino iliohu, or wild spider flower weed.
The overpowering odor sent more than a dozen students home one day and closed Waimea Canyon Elementary and Intermediate School entirely on another day in mid-November. Kona winds pushed the odor from a local field leased by seed company Syngenta Seeds.
The report, which is 1,000 pages long, did find trace amounts of herbicide on school grounds but in tiny levels well below Environmental Protection Agency standards.
Since the field was plowed over, the odor has not returned to campus, said Doug Tiffany, an official with Syngenta.
Tiffany said the field is usually kept clean of weeds but left to grow as the land was kept fallow. That will not happen again, he added. They will continue to plow the fields.
Trace amounts of atrazine, a chemical used in Syngenta's herbicide Touchdown, were found on windows on campus buildings near the field. But the report said other chemicals from Touchdown were not found, while traces of atrazine were found in samples taken elsewhere on Kauai.
Leads sought in death of endangered seabird
Law enforcement officers with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are looking for information about the killing of a Laysan albatross on the Windward Coast earlier this month.
The bird was found shot with a .22-caliber pellet in the Keolu Hills area in Kailua and brought to Hawaii Sea Life Park for treatment on Jan. 5.
The seabird, which is endangered and protected by federal law, died two days later.
Anyone with information about the shooting can contact the wildlife service at 861-8525 or the state Department of Land and Natural Resources Hotline at 643-3357.
23 box jellyfish stings are recorded in town
Box jellyfish stung 23 people at Waikiki and Ala Moana beaches yesterday.
None of the stings was serious, said Bryan Cheplic, city Emergency Services Department spokesman.
City lifeguards posted jellyfish warning signs after collecting 182 jellyfish at Waikiki Beach and 100 at Ala Moana Beach.
More jellyfish are expected today, but yesterday was expected to be the peak of the influx.
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Police, Fire, Courts
Star-Bulletin staff
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HONOLULU
Man sought in attempt to kill his ex-girlfriend
Police are looking for a 47-year-old man who allegedly tried to kill his ex-girlfriend with his car.
Police said that at about 6:30 Thursday morning, a 45-year-old woman parked and slept in her car on a residential street in Kalihi to avoid any contact with her ex-boyfriend. The ex-boyfriend found her and got partway into the car before she woke up, police said.
The man assaulted the woman as she started the car, and then got out of the car as she drove off to avoid being dragged, police said.
He allegedly chased her in his pickup truck and rear-ended her vehicle at least 13 times. The woman crashed her car into a parked vehicle and a telephone pole, and then her ex-boyfriend drove away, police said. The woman was treated at the Queen's Medical Center for head trauma and facial contusions and released.
NEIGHBOR ISLANDS
Police seek suspect in multiple thefts
Kona police are looking for a 36-year-old Kailua-Kona man wanted in connection with five felonies and four warrants.
Police spotted Benny William Gordon at about 8 a.m. Wednesday on Highway 180 in Holualoa. After several officers pursued him in Holualoa town, he escaped into the brush.
Gordon is a suspect in at least three car thefts, a burglary and theft of jewelry and cell phones. He is considered armed and dangerous, police said. He is described as 5 feet 11 inches tall, 195 pounds, with short black hair, brown eyes and a medium build. Anyone with information concerning Gordon's whereabouts is asked to call the Kona police station at 326-4646, ext. 253, or the nonemergency number in Hilo at 935-2211.
