Fish Struggle to Breathe In Dangerously Polluted Waikiki Waters

Fish Struggle to Breathe In

Dangerously Polluted Waikiki Waters

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/05/21/19074-ala-wai-canal-oversight-is-as-murky-as-the-water/

 

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’s 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 information from the EPA.

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 required to reduce 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’t tested for phosphorous or nitrogen since establishing the reduction plan, so there’s no way of knowing whether that requirement is being met.