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’d 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’t 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’s inland waters. But in 2000, Congress passed the
BEACH Act which established strict testing and public notification requirements for coastal waters.
That shifted the state’s 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’t.
Watson Okubo, who supervises water monitoring in the health department’s clean water branch, says he hasn’t 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’t 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’t leaking. Enterococci — a bacteria, commonly found in human and animal guts — is the EPA’s 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’s 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.
“I can honestly say that I think the pollution continues,” says the health department's Okubo. “Whether it’s better or worse (over the years), that is debatable.”
