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The state’s Department of Health has fined the City and County of Honolulu more than $400,000 for the recent spike of bacteria levels in treated sewage released from the Kailua Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Those excess levels of the bacteria enterococci, which occurred over 13 days in April and May, violated the city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, state environmental health officials said in a press release Wednesday. The city’s full fine is $434,350, according to that release.

The health department fine comes after that state agency’s director, Kenneth Fink, joined Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi at a May 18 press conference to say that the city had not downplayed the situation, as asserted by Fink’s subordinates at the Clean Water Branch. The city, Blangiardi said, treats any health concerns as a top priority.

Those clean water officials, however, had told reporters earlier in the week that the high bacteria levels on a couple of days exceed by more than six times what’s considered acceptable, and that the city had “downplayed just how high these exceedences were.” That prompted them to release their own press release to try and warn the public of the situation.

Meanwhile, the Department of Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock said in a city release Wednesday that the division’s “staff investigated the exceedances, and we made immediate corrective actions, in addition to further optimizing the plant performance.”

Test samples have shown the bacteria levels “well within permit limits” since May 5, Babcock added.

The Environmental Protection Agency has separately demanded that the city take action to more effectively treat the bacteria in the Kailua sewage with what’s called an “administrative order on consent.”

City officials say they’re working on upgrades to the plant and requested $34 million in the city’s 2024 budget to improve the handling of solid waste there. 

The city is also spending $11 million on a backup system to treat the sewage with ultraviolet light and assure enterococcus levels stay in check, according to Environmental Services Deputy Director Michael O’Keefe.