Waikiki Ala Wai Canal Is Dangerous, Bacteria Infested Water - Paddle At Your Own Risk

Waikiki Ala Wai Canal Is Dangerous, Bacteria Infested Water - Paddle At Your Own Risk

 

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/05/22/19076-ala-wai-canal-if-it-makes-you-sick-why-not-shut-down-public-access/

 

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.

“Every mom’s horror story is that their child will overturn their canoe in the Ala Wai Canal,” she said. “And 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.”

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

“If they should accidentally drink some of that water, I dread to think what would happen to their systems,” she said. “When the kids are paddling during the high school season, we know that most of the kids are going to get an infection.”

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.

“You really have to get those cleaned out well because that is a broth of bacteria,” 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’s little support for banning paddling, and in particular, outrigger canoe racing — Hawaii’s 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’re 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.

Waikiki Ala Wai Canal A Long Smelly Mess

Waikiki Ala Wai Canal A Long Smelly Mess

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/05/22/19076-ala-wai-canal-if-it-makes-you-sick-why-not-shut-down-public-access/

 

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’s polluted waterways.

The classification means the state must keep the canal safe for recreational use “in and on” the water, as well as protect its aquatic life.


But a Civil Beat review of the past seven years of data on enterococci — a bacteria the state uses as an indicator for dangerous levels of pathogens — shows that the canal fails state standards the majority of the time. Bacteria levels in the canal rarely fall below the state’s 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.

 

[VIDEO] Part Three: Is The Ala Wai An Asset Or A Liability?
 

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.

Waikiki Ala Wai Canal: Makes You Sick - Shut Down Public Access?

Waikiki Ala Wai Canal: Makes You Sick

- Shut Down Public Access?

 

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/05/22/19076-ala-wai-canal-if-it-makes-you-sick-why-not-shut-down-public-access/

 

Twain Newhart is about to take off in a one-man kayak on the Ala Wai Canal. He lifts up his leg and points to a black scab.

“It happens all the time,” he says. “It 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.”

Another paddler displays a deep scar on his hip where an infection had to be drained.
It’s 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 — by the state’s own standards — isn’t safe for recreation.

 

For more than two decades, 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 MRSA, 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’d 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.

“I don’t want to complain because we like using it,” said Rachel Orange, who coaches one of the competitive paddling teams that regularly train on the Ala Wai.

VIDEO: Waikiki Canal Builders Didn't Look To The Future

VIDEO: Waikiki Canal Builders Didn't Look To The Future

 http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/05/20/19079-video-canal-builders-didnt-look-to-the-future/

 

 

Hawaii civic leaders hoped the Ala Wai Canal would bring economic prosperity and stop the spread of disease they thought was coming from the fields and wetlands. In the 1920s, no one gave much thought to what the destruction of the ecosystem might mean for a future filled with a million people.

 

Hawaii civic leaders hoped the Ala Wai Canal would bring economic prosperity and stop the spread of disease they thought was coming from the fields and wetlands. In the 1920s, no one gave much thought to what the destruction of the ecosystem might mean for a future filled with a million people.

VIDEO: Waikiki Canal Builders Didn't Look To The Future

VIDEO: Waikiki Canal Builders Didn't Look To The Future

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/05/20/19079-video-canal-builders-didnt-look-to-the-future/

Hawaii civic leaders hoped the Ala Wai Canal would bring economic prosperity and stop the spread of disease they thought was coming from the fields and wetlands. In the 1920s, no one gave much thought to what the destruction of the ecosystem might mean for a future filled with a million people.

Hawaii civic leaders hoped the Ala Wai Canal would bring economic prosperity and stop the spread of disease they thought was coming from the fields and wetlands. In the 1920s, no one gave much thought to what the destruction of the ecosystem might mean for a future filled with a million people.

DATA: Waikiki Ala Wai Water Bacteria Danger Levels Off The Charts

DATA: Waikiki Ala Wai Water Bacteria Danger Levels

Off The Charts

 

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/05/22/19127-data-ala-wai-bacteria-levels-off-the-charts/

 

The Ala Wai Canal far exceeds the state's safe standard for bacteria levels associated with skin, nose, air and eye infections, as well as well as painful gastrointestinal illnesses.

The charts below show the levels of enterococci bacteria detected in the canal since 2006. Tests for enterococci suggest whether there's fecal matter in the water, whether from human or animal sources. The test also indicates whether there are high levels of other pathogens that can make people sick.

The data, provided by the city of Honolulu, shows that enterococci levels far exceed the state's standard for recreational bodies of water, which is 33 CFU per 100 milliliters. The numbers spike into the tens of thousands, as shown in the charts on the left. The charts on the right have been cropped and show that the levels of enterococci rarely even come close to falling below the safe limit. Results are in CFU per 100 milliliters.

McCully Street Bridge

Kaiolu Street

Waikiki Yacht Club

Date Street Bridge

VIDEO: Is The Waikiki Ala Wai An Asset Or A Liability?

VIDEO: Is The Waikiki Ala Wai An Asset Or A Liability?

 

http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2013/05/22/19081-video-is-the-ala-wai-an-asset-or-a-liability/

 

The Ala Wai Canal is at the center of one of Hawaii's most congested and most developed regions.

 

Pollution and other problems abound, but it remains a Honolulu landmark.

The question now: what to do about it?

 

Ala Wai Canal: Oversight Is As Murky As The Water

Ala Wai Canal: Oversight Is As Murky As The Water

 

 

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

 

 

 

Oliver Johnson, a 34-year old mortgage broker and surfer from Honolulu lay in Queen’s Medical Center, his body swollen beyond recognition, blisters covering his skin and his left leg amputated above the knee.

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’s main business and tourism center.

Johnson was dead within days. He’d 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’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.”