The public “;scoping meeting”; last Tuesday evening for the Ala Wai Project's Environmental Impact Statement was informative and well organized, but at its end I left with mixed emotions.

As I wrote in last Sunday's column, the Army Corps of Engineers, in partnership with Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources and Honolulu's Department of Environmental Services, is currently studying the feasibility of various solutions for reducing flood hazards and restoring ecosystem functions throughout the Ala Wai Watershed.

This meeting was then held to gather opinions from those who live and work in the watershed neighborhoods of Makiki, Manoa, Palolo, McCully, Moiliili, Kapahulu, Ala Moana and Waikiki on the various measures under consideration as well as to gather new ideas.

The organizers of the meeting had good intentions I'm sure, but after attending remarkably similar meetings over the last decade, I was struck by the near absence of new solutions as well as by how few folks turned out to express their thoughts.

Perhaps the slack attendance can be attributable to current events such as the upcoming election or the downturn in the economy. And that may also explain why the 50-plus attendees were mostly those who have already devoted more than a fair share of their time to solving the problem.

But it seemed apparent that although the scoping meeting was a required element of creating an EIS, after years of kicking ideas around, the potential threats and their possible solutions have largely been identified for some time.

And worse, too much time and grant money has been funneled into habitat restoration rather than mitigating the most challenging threat on the meeting's agenda, what meteorologists call a “;100-year flood.”;

Such a flood, it was noted, could result in a water flow of 24,620 cubic feet (over 184,000 gallons) per second coming down the Ala Wai Canal and causing some $130 million in property damage in the surrounding neighborhoods.

To put that into perspective, those at the meeting were told that the waters from such a flood would be 3 to 4 feet deep at that evening's meeting site at Washington Middle School on South King St. And of course all of Waikiki would be submerged even further.

Some may disagree, but I think finding a way to alleviate such flooding in what has been called Oahu's economic engine should take priority over all else.

If, as has been suggested, creating an emergency detention basin at the Ala Wai Golf Course property to reduce the peak flood flow to the canal is functionally sound, work should begin tomorrow.

As one person at the meeting pointed out, “;Cleaning up a golf course will be a lot easier than pumping out Waikiki.”; And a whole lot cheaper, I might add.

Work, however, will not begin tomorrow or even next year. According to the Army Corps' proposed timeline - pending Congressional approval - construction on any major portion of this flood control project is not likely to begin earlier than 2013.

Interesting. That's when the University of Hawaii's study said the Ala Wai Canal should be dredged again.