Federal law prohibits the flow of high levels of contaminants into the Ala Wai. But since most of it is simply runoff, it’s coming from sources that are hard to pin down let alone regulate.
“When 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?” said the health department's Gill.
Environmental activists argue the state could be doing more to control runoff, even from residential property.
“The 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,” said David Henkin, an attorney for Honolulu-based Earthjustice.
In this year’s legislative session, Gill pushed for a bill that would have expanded the health department’s 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 “costly bureaucratic hurdle” to local food production.
So the Ala Wai will continue to build up with sediment, chemicals and other contaminants — at least for now.
“The Legislature dealt a huge blow to water quality improvement in the state,” Gill said.
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