Testing The Waters Off Magic Island and the Ala Wai
At Civil Beat, we put a high value on original reporting and source documents. Whether it’s taking you through 166-page state financial reports or obscure state statutes in our Topic Pages, we’re into doing our own research and sharing it with you.
So when we heard last Tuesday that a 700-gallon sewage spill into Palolo Stream (which connects to the Ala Wai Canal) had prompted the state Department of Health to post warnings for the public to stay out of waters off Magic Island, we decided to run some water quality tests of our own.
On Wednesday, one day after the spill, we met up at Magic Island with microbiologist Blair Ushijima from . Armed with what looked like a painting pole with clamps on one end to hold sterilized plastic bottles, she helped us collect water samples at three spots.
The first site was off the bridge near the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor where a gaggle of fishermen were casting lines for Hawaiian Manini and Mamo, despite a warning notice posted nearby.
Anthony Young, 18, of Manoa was throwing net near the second spot where we tested, east of the Magic Island parking lot, close to where Magic Island itself begins.
Wearing a wide-brimmed hat, muddy board shorts and tabis, he said he hadn’t seen the signs warning against swimming and fishing. That was hardly a surprise, as the nearest sign (one of only two we encountered) was tacked to a coconut tree about 50 yards away.
“I used to paddle here, but I never swam in here,” he said. Why not? “It’s dirty,” he said matter-of-factly. “One time during a race I saw a dead dog floating.” Does he eat his catch? No, they’re for his home aquarium, except that they die pretty easily, so he’s here about once a month to replenish his tank.
Our last testing site was one that wasn’t posted — the swimming lagoon at the end of Magic Island.
And while the three of us — reporter, photographer and microbiologist wearing a starched white lab coat — carrying a long pole and a large blue cooler up and down the beach certainly alarmed paddling coaches and sunbathers, our results weren’t all that alarming.
We tested for three bacterium: Fecal Coliform, Enterococcus and Clostridium Perfringens. The results were pretty bland.
All results are in CFU per 100 milliliters:
| Location | Fecal Coliform | Clostridium Perfringens | Enterococcus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bridge | 13 | undetectable | 31 |
| Near the Parking Lot | 110 | 3 | 53 |
| Magic Island lagoon | undetectable | undetectable | 29 |
The state standard for a single reading of Enterococcus is 89, but there’s no standard for fecal coliform for marine waters. Clostridium Perfringens is used as a secondary indicator to detect waste in the water.
The Hawaii Revised Statutes’ lists the standards for marine recreational waters.
The lesson? The waters at the mouth of the Ala Wai are pretty clean. Even the lagoon near the mouth of where the Ala Wai meets the ocean tested well.
“In general, the water is very clean,” said Dale Mikami, an environmental health specialist with the Health Department’s Clean Water Branch. “Basically, the only places of concern that we tell people about are where streams empty out to the ocean. The freshwater itself from streams carries a lot of bacteria.”
