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When a Waikiki sewage pipe broke in 2006, prompting city officials to dump 48 million gallons of raw, spewing waste into the Ala Wai Canal, something stirred in the mind of Suzanna Bradley.

A few days later, a local real estate agent and surfer fell in the Ala Wai boat harbor. He later died from massive bacterial infections.

“It was a big scare,” Bradley recalls. She was just 10 years old.

Fast forward seven years. Bradley is a senior at Punahou. She is also fed up with lawmakers and state officials who she believes are shirking their responsibility to clean up the perpetually polluted waterway. The issue is personal because Bradley treasures the canal that she and friends regularly canoe paddle on.

That is why she formed the last year. Along with her collaborators, she is lobbying lawmakers and health officials to comply with the federal Clean Water Act and clean up the the canal.

It is personal for the teenager, but it isn’t just about her. Bradley is one of about 1,200 local residents — adults and children — who paddle on the canal in the course of any given year.

Those who regularly spend time on and around the canal bear witness to some troubling sights. “We see everything,” Bradley explained, “from shopping carts and tires — one time we saw a boar’s head float by. We see cans, bottles, just brown water.”

That brown water hides other problems. Bradley says her coach and three of her teammates contracted skin infections last season.

Under the federal Clean Water Act — a landmark piece of legislation passed in 1972 that aimed to clean up such polluted waterways around the nation — state officials must implement a plan to reduce the canal’s pollution levels because they far exceed state and federal limits.

But officials at Hawaii’s Department of Health have said that cleaning the canal is not a priority given their limited resources and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t required the agency to comply with the law.

The Save the Ala Wai Coalition’s 20 active members have hosted booths at Magic Island, Waikiki Beach, Ala Wai Golf Course, Makapuu and Whole Foods to teach people about the canal’s pollution problem, and they have collected more than 1,600 signatures on a to urge state health officials to improve water standards. Bradley plans to present the petition to Hawaii’s Department of Health and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Meanwhile, she’s been meeting with state lawmakers in the hope that they will introduce a bill this upcoming session to tackle the pollution.

But the group’s efforts could turn out to be one of those coming-of-age stories where youthful activism faces off against government bureaucracy and inertia, political cynicism, or just limited public resources — but with no guarantee of a Hollywood ending.

Gary Gill, deputy director for environmental health at Hawaii’s Department of Health did not respond to an interview request. But in an email to Civil Beat he said that he was “pleased to see our young people take an interest in protecting the quality of our island water.”

Ultimately, he said, it is up to the public to elevate cleaning the Ala Wai into a state priority.

“By identifying the Ala Wai as an important recreational and cultural resource,” he wrote, it may convince policy makers to allocate more public funds for regular canal maintenance, increase the monitoring of water quality, and result in improvements like the construction of vegetated swales that filter runoff naturally before it reaches the canal.

For years, the Ala Wai Canal has consistently failed state and federal water quality standards. And while there have been voluminous studies on the canal’s dire pollution problem and numerous cleanup strategies have been batted around, there has been notably little action.

The city’s test data for the past six years shows that the canal’s bacteria levels are usually unsafe, and that they often spike up tens of times higher than levels that the state deems acceptable. The canal’s pollution can cause skin, nose, air and eye infections, as well as painful gastrointestinal illnesses, according to the EPA.

Even though the Ala Wai is one of the most polluted water bodies in the state, and it is heavily used for recreation, city officials recently stopped testing the water. State officials who are responsible for carrying out the Clean Water Act, for their part, have said they have no intention of picking up where the city left off.

Bradley and her group have met with Sen. Les Ihara and Sen. Brian Taniguchi, but it’s unclear what, if anything, will come of the meetings.

Taniguchi said by email that he didn’t “have any landmark ideas or innovative sources of money for potential legislative fixes, as the Ala Wai is not in my district.” (Taniguchi represents Manoa, Makiki, Punchbowl and Papakolea. Manoa and Maikiki are part of the Ala Wai watershed. Upland streams in these districts carry pollution down into the canal.)

Nonetheless, Bradley said that she was encouraged by her meeting with Taniguchi, who she said was supportive of “the concept of a bill.”

The group’s meeting with Sen. Les Ihara was more discouraging. Bradley said the senator “was generous with his time and really nice to us,” but that the canal no longer seems to be a priority for him.

“It was his opinion that cleaning the canal was a ‘nice-to-have’ as opposed to a ‘need-to-have,’ and projects to clean the canal would be far too expensive,” Bradley recounted via email. “He said that because there are no consequences for violating the Clean Water Act, we needed a new angle or demonstration that would make an impression besides the simple fact that the state is not complying with federal law.”

Ihara has direct experience trying to improve the canal; he was a founder of the Ala Wai Watershed Association. He was actively involved in trying to clean up the canal more than a decade ago and he noted to Civil Beat that he helped to secure funding to have the sediment dredged.

While he hasn’t been dealing with the problem in recent years, he said that he plans to take another look. “I know how hard it was back then,” he said of efforts to clean up the waterway. Ihara advised the group to broaden its constituency beyond paddlers in order to gain more traction.

Despite the sobering meeting, Bradley said the group’s spirits remain high. “I am happy to say that SAC is now more determined than ever!” she said by email.

The group has gone beyond simply trying to force federal and state regulators to comply with the law. Bradley is researching how other states have dealt with polluted waterways. After all, the Ala Wai is far from unique among public waterways when it comes to urban pollution.

Municipal officials in Santa Monica have installed a storm water runoff system to protect California’s Santa Monica Bay, where water quality has improved dramatically over the last few decades.

Bradley suggests that Hawaii should seriously consider replicating Santa Monica’s actions.

Read Civil Beat’s series on the canal, its history, current problems and murky future. Ala Wai Canal: Hawaii’s Biggest Mistake?