Ala Wai Flood Plan A Poorly Vetted Proposal
Water retention basins for Manoa and Palolo valleys would massively disrupt the natural water flow.
Please do not support the Ala Wai Flooding Abatement Project until further discussions are held.
This is not petty politics. I don鈥檛 care about politics.
I live just off of Waiomao Road where houses there and on Kuahea Loop are sliding down the hill and their foundations are crumbling.
Just Thursday night an entire 9-foot retaining wall heaved over as a result of underground water, and rubble covered both lanes of Waiomao Road until our fine firefighters manually cleared at least one of the lanes. That was so that hundreds of residents could use that one lane to get to work Thursday morning by working out their own contra-flow with inbound vehicles.
Years ago, the city had to buy dozens of homes to avoid lawsuits from homeowners that were issued building permits in the 1940s and 1950s to build on unstable land below the old quarry above Waiomao Road.
Water runoff from this disturbed quarry area has doomed those homes and continues to wreak havoc on many of the remaining homes and causes countless ongoing repairs to Waiomao Road at considerable city expense. The city is at a complete loss as to how to correct or mitigate the situation.
The water retention basins proposed for the Manoa and Palolo valleys would massively disrupt the natural water flow through each valley, which was established over hundreds of years, with similar unintended consequences to residents, roads and structures.
Who will take responsibility for these damages now that the city has been warned of the unintended consequences?
These are not hypothetical consequences.
These are real consequences that the city is already unable to contend with today from a similar intrusion and land disruption from the old quarry above Waiomao Road and Kuahea Loop.
Options with less city liability exist and must be considered before moving ahead with this poorly vetted proposal.
GET IN-DEPTH
REPORTING ON HAWAII鈥橲 BIGGEST ISSUES
Community Voices aims to encourage broad discussion on many topics of community interest. It鈥檚 kind of a cross between Letters to the Editor and op-eds. This is your space to talk about important issues or interesting people who are making a difference in our world. Column lengths should be no more than 800 words and we need a current photo of the author and a bio. We welcome video commentary and other multimedia formats. Send to news@civilbeat.org.聽The opinions and information expressed in Community Voices are solely those of the authors and not Civil Beat.
