N. Kohala residents’ water supply fails
HAWI, Hawaii » Much of the Big Island's North Kohala district, with a population of at least 6,000 residents, was left without any residential water supply yesterday when the sole functioning water pump for Hawaii County's main system failed.
The Department of Water Supply immediately began trucking water in tankers to two sites: at the Department of Public Works base yard in Hawi and at Kamehameha Park at Kapaau. People were carrying water home from there in containers.
The water has to be trucked more than 20 miles from Waimea over the winding Kohala Mountain Road.
"There's no way we can keep up with the demand in that area," said department employee Daryl Ikeda.
Water Department spokeswoman Kris Aton said the earliest that repairs can be made is between tomorrow and Tuesday. Ikeda said even those repairs would be temporary until something more permanent can be done.
A separate residential system at Makapala and Niulii, which provides about a tenth of the piped water in the district, was functioning normally.
The breakdown of residential water is separate from the near absence of agricultural water in the Kohala Ditch since the big earthquakes of Oct. 15 last year.
Michael Gomes at Surety Kohala Corp., which owns the ditch, said his company has a new well and has revived an abandoned well. Those supply some agricultural water.
It would be easy to connect those wells to the county system, he said. The water is of the same quality that Gomes grew up drinking as a child in the district, he said.
But Ikeda said water from those sources is not treated and cannot be used by the county.
Gomes said the county has a second well on the same system as the one that broke down, but the pump at the second well has been out of service for several months.
Ikeda had no immediate information on the number of customers who lack service. Such a number would show how many families were affected but not the total number of people.
The 2000 census shows 6,038 people in North Kohala, but the amount of population growth since then is not clear.