A March of Feces, Then April Fools
Posted on February 05, 2007 @ 11:04 AM
While no recommended limits exist for chlordane or
pathogen values in Hawaiian sediment, the potential public
health concerns are evident. Fish swim in the stuff, and ill surfers
can wipe out head first on the reef. Furthermore, when non-point
source infiltration and surface runoff combine with degrading
waste and streambed sediment during floods, an already bad
situation can be exacerbated by the creation of long-term
carcinogenic compounds.
FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS
Sixteen days after April Fools Day, rumors abound among the
public, yet Waikiki beaches remain open for business. But …
community groups form. Inspired by sewage roundtable meetings
spearheaded by Peter Cole, a legendary surfer and Chair of the
Oahu Surfrider Foundation, I began creating an educational film
documentary on the recent sewage spill.
“We’re not really here today for the blame game of who
should’ve, who could’ve,” Cole said. “We’re mainly here to try to
come up with some positive solutions for the future, so that we
never have a situation like this again. We want to make sure that
surf sites and the ocean are not the dumping grounds for sewage
in the future. And that’s the reason why Surfrider Foundation is
so interested and involved in this.”
“The issue of most concern to people today is, are the waters
safe to swim?” said Dr Bruce Anderson, who spent a dozen years
as director of the Hawaii State Department of Health (HI DOH).
“How can we do better about getting the word out? When
there is a sewage spill, we have to post the warning signs first,
and do the tests next,” said Larry Lau, Deputy Director of HI
DOH. “The point is, we don’t wait for tests. The ones we use take
24 hours and are imperfect.”
“We’ve had good weather and I anticipate the counts to drop
significantly within the Ala Wai canal and the boat harbor,” said
Watson Okubo, Director of the HI DOH Clean Water Branch. “We
noticed that there was a plume heading towards Diamond Head area, so we went and tested the surface water of surrounding surf
zones and saw that most areas were declining in number
[of toxins] except Ala Moana Bowls.”
One issue persists: The State of Hawaii DOH Clean Water
Branch only tests for sewage-related contaminants of surface
waters; no federal or state recommended safety limit exists for
sewage pollution in streambed or surf-zone sediment. So, very
little data exists on how fecal matter trickles into tropical island
soils or sediment. “When there are no regulations to do it, it is
a very difficult test to carry through,” said expert soil and water
microbiologist Dr Roger Fujioka of the Hawaii Water Resources
Research Center.
In a 2005 report issued by the Natural Resources Defense
Council, it was stated that: “The Clean Water Branch of the
Hawaii Department of Health runs a statewide beach waterquality
monitoring program. Hawaii’s bacteria standard is
one of the strictest in the nation, but the department does not
always close a beach or issue an advisory if the standard has
been exceeded. The department asserts that fecal bacteria are
indigenous to soils of Hawaii, and therefore do not always
represent fecal contamination from people and animals.” The
US Environmental Protection Agency does not recognize the
department’s claim that enterococci represent an indigenous
source of Hawaiian soils.
Most published research and assumptions made about fecal
bacteria sources of tropical islands focuses on soil data collected
from the heavily urbanized overpopulated islands of O‘ahu,
Guam, and Puerto Rico, where non-point source microbial
contamination greatly surpasses more rural undisturbed tropical
islands. Water samples collected from an upper elevation
uninhabited forested stream of north side Kauai from 2004-2005
showed average enterococci values at about 10CFU/100ml, safe
according to the federal recommendations.
“We don’t have a combined stormwater/sewage system
here in Hawaii,” admitted Dr Bruce Anderson. “Sewage systems
leak in some areas. So whenever it rains, we have a lot of
intrusion into these systems. Water goes into the manholes,
essentially overwhelms the systems, and sewage flow increases
dramatically.”
“In some places the pipes are actually cracked, and some of
the pipes are in seawater-groundwater areas and stuff leaks in,”
Lau explained.
“We need money for a lot of this, and the money should
be there, and if the money isn’t there, we should do something
about getting the money there,” said Cole. “The Ala Wai could
be an integral part of a sewage-treatment system using native
Hawaiian plants to filter out pollutants.”
The Sierra Club has been entangled in legal issues with the
city for a number of years, trying to convince the municipality
to move towards a sustainable sewage management system.
The city had been warned about the 42 inch main that finally
ruptured catastrophically in March. The same Waikiki line had
smaller ruptures in 1993 and 2004. “The Sierra Club, Hawaii’s
Thousand Friends, and Our Children’s Earth asked to intervene in
the proceedings,” said Jeff Mikulina of the Sierra Club. “The city,
believe it or not, hired a mainland law firm which asked for $2.5 million to fi ght our intervention in coming up with solutions to
our sewage problems.”
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