Frothy brown water filled with the sediment and trash from hundreds of homes and businesses would surge into the Ala Wai Canal. The canal would soon top its banks and a flood of major proportion would bury Waikiki in a wall of water that could reach five feet high.

The water would move so quickly that people would be knocked off their feet. Basements, parking garages and the lower floors of homes, hotels and high-rises would be deep in water and muck. Power lines, sewers and water service would be out of commission, likely for days if not longer.

Floodwaters would cover the 1.5 square miles that make up Waikiki, from Diamond Head to Ala Moana and from the shoreline up to Moiliili.

It’s a tourist mecca that brings in $10.6 billion annually for the state, often described as Hawaii’s economic engine.

So it鈥檚 hard to imagine the destruction a flood like that would cause and the economic devastation to a state that depends on the tourism industry, especially in Waikiki, for its very life.

But the scenario is very real, and one that government officials like Derek Chow of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers have been worrying about for years. Led by the Corps, government engineers and planners have been working 鈥� some say too slowly 鈥� to pull together a plan to re-engineer the Ala Wai Canal in an effort to prevent massive destruction.

The flooding would be “catastrophic,” said Chow, and people would likely have little time to prepare.

“It’s not unusual for us to see in Hawaii鈥檚 flashy systems, flashy drainage systems, where it鈥檚 raining in the mountains, and half an hour to an hour later the streams are flooded,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o that gives you an idea of how little time people have to react.鈥�

The 鈥�100-year-flood鈥� is so named because it鈥檚 not supposed to happen very often. But 25- to 40-year floods swept through Waikiki in 1965 and again in 1967. And climate change has everyone worried that a catastrophic weather event is a distinct possibility.

A century ago, Hawaii鈥檚 territorial government and business leaders thought that diverting the streams flowing from Manoa, Palolo and Makiki into a single canal that emptied out into the ocean at the present day Ala Wai Boat Harbor was a good way to control flooding in Waikiki. Engineers decided at the last minute not to make a second outlet near Kapiolani Park, fearing currents would carry pollution back to the west and right on to Waikiki beaches.

The construction of the canal eliminated vital wetlands that absorbed and filtered the runoff and allowed it to flow relatively gently into the ocean. In place of wetlands, farms and fields, homes, hotels and high-rises have taken shape over the decades along paved streets and asphalt parking lots.

Now, there are few places for the water to go, and the Ala Wai Canal has left Waikiki in a precarious position in the event of an extreme storm.

鈥淭his is in effect a tsunami coming in from the sky,鈥� said Karen Ah Mai, executive director of the Ala Wai Watershed Association, a community group involved in flooding and pollution issues. “The fact is we have become so developed, I don鈥檛 think we could stop the damage. We don鈥檛 have anywhere to put the water.鈥�

The decisions made in the 1920s have turned out to be a costly mistake, too, one that engineers are only fully beginning to realize as they brainstorm expensive ideas to make it better against budgets that are growing thinner, especially as federal dollars run short. New flood control measures are expected to cost at least $100 million.

Government leaders have been aware of the flooding problems since at least the 1960s, when heavy rains twice overtopped the canal鈥檚 banks leaving cars stranded and pedestrians wading through knee-deep water.

In the 1970s, flood analyses for Waikiki, completed under the National Flood Insurance Program, added to the worries about the flood risk.

In the late 1990s, local officials reached out to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for help. Federal, state and city officials have been working since at least 2001 on a solution.

But while it鈥檚 been a concern for decades, the agencies have been slow to accomplish anything. And activists and business leaders say the intensive, decade-long collaboration of governments to fix the canal seems to have stalled despite all that鈥檚 at stake.

鈥淲e were very interested in working with the various government agencies on a solution, but then the effort seemed to lose momentum,鈥� said Rick Egged, president of the Waikiki Improvement Association.

鈥淭here is definitely a problem in that there are a lot of fingers in the pie and yet nobody wants to own the pie, because there is a lot of money and responsibility that goes with that.鈥�

Federal officials acknowledge delays, but say the overall planning process is still moving forward.

A Growing Threat

The flood risk is gradually getting worse, officials say.

Erosion, particularly in Manoa, where there is limited plant-canopy cover to slow the absorption of rainwater, has exacerbated runoff.

In the 1800s, the land was used for taro farming and growing various crops. But dairy farms moved in around the turn of the century and hoofed animals decimated native plants. In the 1920s, Manoa was reforested, but instead of native plants, fast-growing trees like albizia were planted.

As the trees have matured, their expansive leafy branches have choked out lower level plants that helped absorb water and slow erosion. Albizia trees’ upward sloping branches and smooth trunks also act as a .

“Water comes down in a sheet,” said Ah Mai.

Removing just a single tree costs between $6,000 to $12,000, she said.

Increasing erosion and growing urbanization means more water flows downstream into the canal every time it rains, said Chow.

Climate change is also adding urgency to the need for flood control measures. As the sea level rises, there is throughout Waikiki, which could exacerbate the damage in the event of a flood.

Underground parking lots in Waikiki are already experiencing increased flooding during high tides, said Chow.

By 2050, sea level is expected to rise by one foot, according to John Marra, the Honolulu-based climate services director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He said that the result would be more intense flooding, where water would pond quicker and longer.

鈥淚t doesn鈥檛 take a whole lot,鈥� said Marra. 鈥淥ne or two feet doesn鈥檛 seem like a lot, but one or two feet is going to be huge in terms of the potential impacts.鈥�

Tackling the Problem

When the Corps, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and city officials began collaborating to fix the canal in 2001, the focus was on tackling the flood problem as well as trying to restore the waterway’s impaired ecosystem.

But it鈥檚 been a slow and expensive process that鈥檚 already cost taxpayers more than $9 million just to study the problem.

An initial 2001 report concluded that in order to control floodwaters, engineers would need to build walls up to 13 feet high around the canal. There were also plans to widen the canal from the McCully Bridge to the Ala Wai Boat Harbor and turn the Ala Wai Golf Course into a basin to catch floodwaters.

In 2004, the Corps of Engineers projected that flood prevention measures would cost $60 million. A final report was anticipated to be submitted to Congress in 2006.

But then a flood hit Manoa on Halloween Eve 2004, causing $85 million in damages to the University of Hawaii. And government officials decided to extend flood studies to include the upper Ala Wai watershed area.

Since then, millions have been spent on engineering, environmental and economic studies that have yet to be released, as well as public outreach.

Last year, officials decided to scrap work on ecosystem restoration despite all of the studies. It would cost too much and take too long, said Chow, and there were no species of national significance, such as endangered plants, that needed saving.

Currently, government officials are evaluating the flood control options, which have evolved from stopgap measures constructed around the canal to potential fixes in the upper watershed. These include building a dam in upper Manoa and small water detention basins throughout the watershed. Creating a rain basin at the Ala Wai Golf Course is still a consideration, as are levees around the canal. But the 13-foot-high walls were not politically popular, so the vision is for lower walls that could also double as bike paths.

Officials are also looking at developing a flood warning system and flood-proofing some homes, businesses and public buildings.

Critics, like Ah Mai, have accused the Corps of Engineers of taking too long to come up with a solution.

She is frustrated because there hasn’t been a public meeting for two years.

“It seems to have gone into an utter funk,” she said of the planning process.

Athline Clark, who has recently taken over management of the project for the Corps, acknowledged that there was some down time due to budget and logistical issues. But she said that things were moving forward on schedule, with studies expected to be completed by 2015, followed by design plans.

Clark said while there may not have been public meetings, people who are interested in the situation have been kept up to speed via email and other communication.

Nothing Is Certain

Ultimately, there is no assurance that the flood plan will ever be implemented.

Not all flood projects end up making the cut or they can be delayed for decades, said Joseph Bonfiglio, a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers.

The plan has to be endorsed by numerous federal agencies and then goes to Congress for authorization.

Congress must also appropriate funds, which Chow said could be more difficult to justify within the current fiscal environment. The state will have to match 35 percent of the flood plan costs. He said that approvals will take the support of Hawaii’s congressional delegation.

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz says he met with officials from the Corps of Engineers in March and stressed to them the importance of the project.

鈥淲ith a central Honolulu location and a watershed stretching from Manoa up makua down to Waikiki, it is hard to overstate the importance of the Ala Wai watershed鈥檚 health,” he told Civil Beat in an email. “The Ala Wai needs comprehensive planning and cooperative management to protect the UH campus and other communities from flooding as well as to safeguard hotels and visitor attractions.”

Richard Rapoza, a spokesman for Hawaii Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, said that it was premature to predict what type of support the plan will have in coming years, noting that it’s still in the study phase. He said that Hanabusa “will provide support where appropriate.”

Carty Chang, chief engineer for DLNR, said that the federal process could be Hawaii鈥檚 only chance at fixing the canal. He said it’s unlikely that the state and city could afford the canal improvements on their own.

Meanwhile, most people give little thought to what some residents call the 鈥淣ew Orleans of floods.鈥�

It could happen tomorrow. Or it might happen 100 years from now.

鈥淚t鈥檚 something that we are concerned about,鈥� said Egged of the Waikiki Improvement Association. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 hard to get anyone excited about it because there just hasn鈥檛 been many problems in recent history.

“That is not a good reason because we know at some point we are going to have a problem. The question is when.鈥�

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鈥淚t happens all the time,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t can be bad. It can be really bad. The staph, if it is staph, is the one problem that all paddlers in the Ala Wai face.鈥�

Another paddler displays a deep scar on his hip where an infection had to be drained.

Sophie Cocke/ Civil Beat

It鈥檚 an all too common problem.

Every year, hundreds of canoe racers, from children to adults, paddle out into the murky waters of the Ala Wai Canal even though the water 鈥� by the state鈥檚 own standards 鈥� isn鈥檛 safe for recreation.

For , the canal has regularly failed state and federal water quality standards for recreational bodies of water, limits that are in place to keep people from getting sick.

But there is little if any thought given to banning public use of the Ala Wai Canal and some health officials shrug off their own data on high bacterial counts.

Markus Owens, a spokesman for the city of Honolulu’s Department of Environmental Services, says he doesn’t think the data is a good indicator of health risks.

But many paddlers say that the health problems in the canal are rife. One paddling coach, who contracted , a staph infection that can be life threatening, says he advises his paddlers to take preventive antibiotics.

In 2006, a man died from bacterial infections he contracted after he fell in the canal soon after the city had dumped raw sewage into it.

And taxpayers have been forced to pay at least $200,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a surfer who also suffered from life-threatening bacterial infections related to sewage dumping in the canal. She was surfing off Waikiki Beach and was infected after she cut herself on coral.

But some say that the canal’s pollution amounts to more of a nuisance than a serious health hazard.

“We don’t have bodies lying in the street,” said June Harrigan-Lum, a former state health official. “That is where there would be a serious investigation and enforcement. Yes, people do get infections and they get sick and the infections clear up and not much is done.”

Even the paddlers themselves say they鈥檇 rather put up with the scabs, boils and rashes then give up their prime recreational site. In fact, they worry that bringing attention to their health problems could prompt the government to shut it down.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to complain because we like using it,鈥� said Rachel Orange, who coaches one of the competitive paddling teams that regularly train on the Ala Wai.

Long A Smelly Mess

The Ala Wai is classified as a Class 2 body of water under the 1972 Clean Water Act, landmark federal legislation passed to clean up the nation鈥檚 polluted waterways. The the state must keep the canal safe for recreational use 鈥渋n and on鈥� the water, as well as protect its aquatic life.

But a Civil Beat review of the past seven years of data on enterococci 鈥� a bacteria the state uses as an indicator for dangerous levels of pathogens 鈥� shows that the canal fails state standards the majority of the time. Bacteria levels in the canal rarely fall below the state鈥檚 safe limit for recreational bodies of water and often spike tens of times higher than acceptable levels.

A toxic soup of other pollutants have been detected in the canal over the years, too, including heavy metals, pesticides and excessive levels of nutrients that can cause algae blooms and can be harmful to human health.

While the federal Clean Water Act requires states to set a safe standard for recreational bodies of water, if a waterbody fails the standard, there’s no requirement to shut it down.

“You don’t remove the use because the standards aren’t met,” said Janet Hashimoto, a manager for water quality standards in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s San Francisco office, which oversees Hawaii.

“The expectation is one of these days it will meet the use of the standards.”

But past data on bacteria levels suggest the state is far from on its way to meeting those standards.

Legal Action Also Lacking

Environmental attorneys have sued the state in the past in order to force action on water quality. But even they have little inclination to take on the Ala Wai Canal again.

They say there is no federal requirement to shut down the canal. The state is required to come up with a federally approved plan to reduce the bacteria counts, which it hasn’t done, and the EPA, which has the power to intervene, hasn’t made the state comply, environmental advocates say. That means the only recourse is to sue the state for failing to comply with Clean Water Act regulations, they say.

Both state and federal officials said the lack of resources is the real problem and that the state health department doesn’t have enough people or money to address all the water pollution throughout the state.

Right now the state鈥檚 priorities are on tackling pollution in areas such as Hanalei Bay on Kauai, where the water contains high bacteria counts, and west Maui, where injection wells could be polluting the nearshore waters, says Watson Okubo, who supervises water monitoring for the state health department鈥檚 clean water branch.

Dean Higuchi, a spokesman for the EPA, acknowledged that the state was required by federal law to come up with a plan to reduce the bacteria levels in the Ala Wai Canal. But the EPA has no intention of cracking down. He said that the state’s limited resources could be put to better use in other areas.

鈥淭he Ala Wai (watershed) is a very large, large area that will take an immense amount of resources,鈥� he said. “If you sink all your resources into the Ala Wai, then others get neglected.鈥�

Daniel Cooper, an attorney for San Francisco-based Lawyers for Clean Water, said that the Clean Water Act doesn’t have “a lack of resources exception.”

鈥淪o the state says, 鈥極h it doesn鈥檛 matter.鈥� But they are violating federal law right now,鈥� Cooper said.

He said it鈥檚 鈥渄isgraceful鈥� for the EPA to take the position it has no legal obligation to try to force the state to comply.

Paddle At Your Own Risk

Karen Ah Mai, executive director of the Ala Wai Watershed Association, says she became involved in trying to clean up the canal years ago out of concern for her daughter, a paddler.

鈥淓very mom鈥檚 horror story is that their child will overturn their canoe in the Ala Wai Canal,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd after she did that twice, I said, my God, I need to do something about this because moms have nightmares about their children falling in the Ala Wai Canal.鈥�

Ah Mai also worried that her daughter could get sick simply by swallowing the contaminated water.

鈥淚f they should accidentally drink some of that water, I dread to think what would happen to their systems,鈥� she said. 鈥淲hen the kids are paddling during the high school season, we know that most of the kids are going to get an infection.鈥�

Health experts say that the pollutants in the canal can cause skin, ear, eye and throat infections, as well as painful gastrointestinal illnesses. More serious concerns center around bacterial infections that can be resistant to antibiotics.

Paddlers with open wounds are at particular risk.

鈥淵ou really have to get those cleaned out well because that is a broth of bacteria,鈥� said Dr. Jim Ireland, a kidney specialist and former emergency services director for the city.

But despite the warnings of health experts and the concerns of paddlers and parents like Ah Mai, there鈥檚 little support for banning paddling, and in particular, outrigger canoe racing 鈥� Hawaii鈥檚 state sport and an interscholastic high school sport.

The Ala Wai Canal is one of the best places to practice and race because of its flat, controlled environment.

In the evenings, paddlers gliding along the canal have a view of the thousands of lights that illuminate the Waikiki skyline. And as they head out past the mouth of the canal and into the open ocean they鈥檙e greeted with the turquoise Waikiki waters lit by the brilliant hues from the sun setting along the horizon.

Outrigger canoe paddlers say that the Ala Wai Canal is one of the few places to practice around Honolulu that has an exit to the ocean. Waikiki and the beach at Ala Moana have been off limits for years.

Clean Up the Canal

People, including local environmental advocates, say they just want government officials to clean up the canal.

鈥淪hould the state or city make it illegal to enter the Ala Wai? I don鈥檛 know, that鈥檚 a hard one,鈥� said Chris Sproul, an attorney who represented local environmental groups in a lawsuit to force the city to fix its leaking sewage collection system.

Sproul himself used to paddle on the canal with the Lokahi Canoe Club in the late 1990s. He says he too contracted a bacterial infection from the water.

鈥淚 hulied and I lived to tell about it,鈥� he said, a reference to capsizing a canoe.

鈥淚t was well known to us then that it was a health hazard and we probably shouldn鈥檛 have been paddling there,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut that is where the club was.鈥�

Rather than banning paddling, he said he鈥檇 rather see officials clean up the canal, install showers and do more to raise awareness about the water鈥檚 health risks and the importance of disinfecting any open cuts.

But there’s no indication that conditions in the Ala Wai Canal are going to improve any time soon given how complicated officials say it is to clean up the water. And the Ala Wai Canal has not been on on the state’s list of priority waterbodies to improve for years.

Other paddlers said that while the water is polluted, bacteria infections are a part of many sports.

鈥淚t鈥檚 always dirty. The main thing you don鈥檛 want to do with the Ala Wai is eat anything out of it,鈥� said Orange. 鈥淚n general, your skin does a pretty good job of protecting you. As long as I don鈥檛 have open wounds I don鈥檛 worry too much.鈥�

Click here to view Civil Beat’s charts on bacteria levels in the canal.

Check out the full series or watch the video, “Is The Ala Wai An Asset Or A Liability?”

Coming Thursday: Flood control efforts aim to keep Waikiki from disaster

The post Ala Wai Canal: If It Makes You Sick Why Not Shut Down Public Access? appeared first on 天美视频.

A few days earlier, he’d gotten into a bar fight near the Ala Wai Boat Harbor and was either pushed or fell into the dark waters of the harbor.

Unfortunately for Johnson, city officials had just finished diverting 48 million gallons of raw sewage into the Ala Wai Canal after a pipe broke in Waikiki, spewing waste onto the streets of the state鈥檚 main business and tourism center.

Johnson was dead within days. He鈥檇 contracted three bacterial infections, including the flesh-eating kind, that spread throughout his body and cost him a leg.

His gruesome death in 2006 is perhaps the most public symbol of pollution in the Ala Wai Canal.

But even now canoe paddlers regularly complain of infections and residents recoil from the smelly brown water where tires, plastic food wrappers and beer bottles float in the near stagnant canal.

The canal is the most heavily used inland waterway in the state for recreation but it regularly fails state water standards for recreational bodies of water.

Yet there is little political or public interest in banning recreational activities. Even the paddlers themselves say they鈥檇 rather put up with oozing sores and itchy scabs then lose their broad, smooth waterway where hundreds compete in popular races.

Signs warn against eating fish and crabs from the canal but people still do it anyway. Civil Beat interviewed one man who said he routinely sells his catch in Chinatown.

Civil Beat had samples of Ala Wai fish and crab independently tested. Results showed excessive levels of the kind of bacteria that causes food poisoning, along with detectable levels of heavy metals, including arsenic, lead and mercury.

But the true extent of the public health threat remains as murky as the waters of the Ala Wai.

Canal contamination has been studied since the 1970s. And over the years, tests have shown cancer-causing chemicals in soil sediment, high levels of heavy metals in fish and crabs, and bacteria levels many times the limit considered safe for recreational use.

But state officials haven鈥檛 regularly monitored contaminants in the canal since 1999, according to the Hawaii Department of Health, which is responsible for enforcing the federal Clean Water Act that sets standards and limits on contaminants.

The department had been testing the canal as part of its program to monitor and improve Hawaii鈥檚 inland waters. But in 2000, Congress passed the which established strict testing and public notification requirements for coastal waters.

That shifted the state鈥檚 focus away from inland waters to the coasts, said Gary Gill, deputy director for environmental health.

Although the state, which owns the Ala Wai and manages it through the Department of Land and Natural Resources, could have continued to monitor the canal on its own, it didn鈥檛.

Watson Okubo, who supervises water monitoring in the health department鈥檚 clean water branch, says he hasn鈥檛 had the money or the manpower to test Hawaii waterways, including the Ala Wai Canal, for many years. Budget cuts in 2010 further reduced his monitoring staff on Oahu, from five to one, he said.

Even though the state hasn鈥檛 conducted its own monitoring, the city has been required to test for enterococci levels in the canal since 2006 to make sure that an emergency sewage pipe isn鈥檛 leaking. Enterococci 鈥� a bacteria, commonly found in human and animal guts 鈥� is the EPA鈥檚 main indicator for detecting fecal matter and potentially high levels of pathogens that can cause skin infections, disease and gastrointestinal illnesses.

The massive six-day sewage dump in 2006 that claimed the life of Oliver Johnson caused the level of enterococci bacteria to spike to more than 4,000 times the safe limit established by the EPA. Offshore, bacteria levels also rose during the 2006 dump, sickening at least one woman who won a major settlement from the city.

A Civil Beat review of city data from 2006 through April 2013 shows that the canal has for most of that time far exceeded the state鈥檚 safe level for enterococci.

Points near Kaiolu Street, the Date Street Bridge, the McCully Bridge and Waikiki Yacht Club at times tested nearly 1,000 times higher than the level considered safe. The enterococci counts were so high at times that they exceeded even the levels detected during the early days of the 2006 sewage dump.

Since 2006, there have also been at least six additional raw sewage spills in the Ala Wai Canal, according to city data.

And while there is no data since the 1990s because no tests have been done, the Ala Wai Canal also tested positive for pesticides and heavy metals linked to cancer, birth defects and damage to the nervous system. This includes dieldrin, chlordane and DDT, insecticides now banned by the EPA. Heavy metals detected in the canal in the past include arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium, copper, zinc, nickel and chromium.

鈥淚 can honestly say that I think the pollution continues,鈥� says the health department’s Okubo. 鈥淲hether it鈥檚 better or worse (over the years), that is debatable.鈥�

Complacency Leaves Ala Wai Problems Largely Forgotten

Fifteen years ago, the Ala Wai Canal was the focus of much environmental and regulatory scrutiny.

In 1998, a task force comprised of 250 people, including elected officials, community groups and government agencies issued a report outlining strategies to clean up the canal. The panel recommended that the waterway be tested regularly to see if the state was meeting its goals.

The mission of the task force, which grew out of a slew of litigation against the city for violations of the Clean Water Act, was to help clean up the canal.

The panel suggested re-vegetating stream banks and finding ways to better flush the canal. The task force encouraged public outreach campaigns to educate people about the use of fertilizers and to pick up trash that routinely flows into streams that run down into the canal.

The task force also recommended that the state test the fish and crabs in the canal for contaminants every five years to see if water quality goals were being met.

The 鈥渋ncidence of contaminated fish is a parameter which indicates the level of public health risk,鈥� according to the report.

But the state health department doesn’t test the fish and crabs, either. Similar to water quality testing, the agency hasn鈥檛 tested the fish and crabs since 1997. And again, state officials blame a lack of money for the shortcoming.

Fish Struggle to Breathe

Some parts of the Ala Wai Canal and boat harbor are so oxygen starved that schools of tilapia, an aggressive, hardy fish from Africa introduced to Hawaii in the 1950s, gulp for air at the water鈥檚 surface. The fish are trying to tap surface water where oxygen levels are higher, says Kevin Hopkins, director of the Pacific Aquaculture and Coastal Resources Center at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

Scientific studies by the UH have tied the lack of oxygen in the canal to decaying sediment and excessive levels of nitrogen and phosphorous.

High levels of the nutrients not only deplete oxygen levels, but make the water murky. They cause algae blooms, can kill fish and create toxins and bacteria that make people sick, according to .

Both are naturally occurring in the environment, but major runoff from upland streams, as well as fertilizers and automobile exhaust, lead to toxic levels of the nutrients.

The state health department set out to combat the nitrogen and phosphorous problem in the Ala Wai Canal back in 1995, establishing a plan to reduce the pollutants, as required under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

As of 2002, the state was the canal’s nitrogen content by 65 percent and its phosphorous content by 50 percent in order to meet water quality standards.

But the state hasn鈥檛 tested for phosphorous or nitrogen since establishing the reduction plan, so there鈥檚 no way of knowing whether that requirement is being met.

Cleaning Up The Canal Is Complicated

Prior to the canal鈥檚 construction in the 1920s, extensive wetlands naturally cleansed the fresh water descending from streams in the Manoa, Palolo and Makiki valleys before it washed into the ocean off of Waikiki.

The canal destroyed this natural filtration system. And as urban growth exploded in the mid-20th century, the canal became a catch basin for all the pollution and trash from the the ridges and valleys that form the Ala Wai Watershed area.

Even before the canal was finished in 1928 engineers realized the design was seriously flawed. The eastern outlet was never built because they didn’t want pollution being swept west past Waikiki Beach. The semi-closed system means the canal doesn鈥檛 regularly flush, so contaminants build up in the sediment and the water.

In 1929, Oahu had a population of about 200,000. Today, it鈥檚 nearly 1 million. Tens of thousands of cars and trucks travel through the Ala Wai watershed area daily, leaving behind heavy metals and chemicals that are washed into storm drains and into the canal when it rains.

Rain also flushes pesticides, pathogens, dead animals, debris and sewage into storm drains and streams leading into the canal. While the city is primarily responsible for keeping the streams clean, the situation is complicated by hundreds of property owners who own parts of the streams.

In 1998, the task force estimated that 1,500 truckloads of sediment a year were being washed into the canal 鈥� a rate that would turn the canal into a mass of muck in about 50 years if not dredged, the panel predicted.

Cleaning that contaminated sediment out the canal is an expensive proposition. So far, cleanup has been largely through dredging, with tons of contaminated sediments dumped offshore.

Still, the canal has only been partially dredged three times in its history 鈥斅爄n 1967, 1978 and 2002.

The 1998 task force said it needed to be dredged every 10 years 鈥� a cost the group estimated to be $10 million each time.

But there are no current plans to dredge the canal again, according to Carty Chang, chief engineer at Hawaii鈥檚 Department of Land and Natural Resources, which owns the canal and manages it.

Chang said that the department is waiting to see if dredging is part of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposal that is expected to recommend ways to redesign the canal to prevent flooding.

The Problem Is Us

Federal law prohibits the flow of high levels of contaminants into the Ala Wai. But since most of it is simply runoff, it鈥檚 coming from sources that are hard to pin down let alone regulate.

鈥淲hen you are talking about thousands of individual property owners who are contributing to the overall degradation of the canal, who do you want me to fine?鈥� said the health department’s Gill.

Environmental activists argue the state could be doing more to control runoff, even from residential property.

鈥淭he state of Hawaii has done a horrible, horrible job in gaining control of nonpoint source pollution that is damaging our waterways and hurting our economy,鈥� said David Henkin, an attorney for Honolulu-based Earthjustice.

In this year鈥檚 legislative session, Gill pushed for a bill that would have expanded the health department鈥檚 authority to combat runoff, including sewage from residential cesspools that is suspected of flowing into waterways when it rains.

But the bill died. Broader requirements in the legislation affected more than just homeowners’ cesspools. Agricultural and industrial interests also would have been required to control runoff from their properties, some of which flows into the Ala Wai. Major businesses and developers lobbied against the measure, including Alexander & Baldwin, the General Contractors Association of Hawaii and the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation.

The contractors association argued that the bill would increase costs and unnecessarily burden the construction industry, while the Hawaii Farm Bureau said it would add a 鈥渃ostly bureaucratic hurdle鈥� to local food production.

So the Ala Wai will continue to build up with sediment, chemicals and other contaminants 鈥� at least for now.

鈥淭he Legislature dealt a huge blow to water quality improvement in the state,鈥� Gill said.

To check out the full series, click here. Watch the related video, Building The Ala Wai Included Design Flaw.

Coming Wednesday: Should people still use the canal?

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