On a mild, sunny Saturday morning last month, a young Kailua Bay Advisory Council staffer and his intern, Kia Weaver, set up shop in a small, breezy room at the YWCA’s Camp Kokokahi on the edge of Kane’ohe Bay. Preparing for another of KBAC’s regular workshops to educate the public on varying aspects of nonpoint source pollution, Mike McMahon and Weaver set out refreshments, folding chairs, and tables for their presentation, which this day addressed the subject of water quality monitoring.
A bright-eyed and tousle-haired McMahon, KBAC’s Geographic Information Systems coordinator and education point man, eagerly awaited the arrival of the day’s audience. This day, starting about 9 a.m., about a dozen people moseyed in one by one, grabbed some coffee and a Danish, and took a seat. Among those in attendance were a student at Hawai’i Pacific University working with interns with the Friends of He’eia State Park to monitor streams; an employee of AECOS, a water quality monitoring laboratory in Kailua; Windward Ahupua’a Alliance co-founder Shannon Wood; a retired University of Hawai’i professor interested in cleaning Kailua’s waterways to improve kayaking, and a few citizens motivated by a curiosity about their slice of O’ahu.
The first speaker of the day was Dave Krupp, a pony-tailed and mustachioed professor at Windward Community College, whose power-point presentation focused on how to test water for the presence of nonpoint source pollution. For a little over an hour, amidst the occasional chorus of “KIAAAAH!” from a keiki martial arts school next door, the audience listened intently, interjecting the occasional question (“Does it really matter if it’s point or nonpoint?”). After Krupp finished, Weaver walked the audience through a relatively new feature on KBAC’s website that she and McMahon have created. The new site, still under construction, allows people to get a picture of water quality at dozens of sites from Waimanalo to Kualoa, without having to slog through endless pages of raw data from the state Department of Health’s Clean Water Branch.
Nonpoint source pollution – that kind of water pollution that is made up of “little smidgens of amounts from each of us,” as Krupp says – is difficult, if not impossible, to control. “We’re all producing something,” he told his audience, from the pesticides on our lawns, to the brake dust that sloughs off our cars, to invasive aquarium plants dumped into streams.
The mere thought of trying to manage the content of every trickle edging its way toward the sea is enough to make one surrender before the battle is ever joined. Yet the cost of doing nothing is formidable. As John Dickey of the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation warned at an American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in February, “If left unattended, nonpoint source pollution will undermine the health and welfare of all Americans. [Controlling] it will require permanent changes in the behavior of all Americans.” While nonpoint source pollution can’t be controlled “by immediate, site-specific action,” he continued, “it can be controlled. As a nation, we’re fully capable.”
Although the problem is enormous in its scope, perhaps more than any other environmental problem it requires a local focus, of the very kind that KBAC and other watershed alliances across Hawai’i are beginning to provide.
Of them all, KBAC and their partners are leading the way. With their regular workshops and stream walks, combined with the development of a comprehensive yet easily navigable website, the Kailua-Kane’ohe coalition is bridging the gap between windward O’ahu watersheds and the people who live in them – one sunny Saturday at a time.
Troubled Waters
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the waters of Ko’olaupoko were in trouble: The state Department of Health was consistently detecting high levels of disease indicator organisms at Ka’elepulu Stream in Kailua. Canoe paddlers who practiced there would get skin infections that never seemed to heal. Swimmers along Kailua’s beaches often found themselves surrounded by orange, bubbly slicks. Further north, in Kane’ohe Bay, researchers were finding oysters, collected near two major stream mouths, with dangerously high levels of the banned pesticides chlordane and dieldrin, both used extensively for termite control.
In 1992, Save Our Bays and Beaches, Hawai’i’s Thousand Friends, the Sierra Club, and the Surfrider Foundation filed a lawsuit in federal court contending that repeated releases of sewage from the City and County of Honolulu’s Kailua and Kane’ohe treatment plants violated the Clean Water Act.
University of Hawai’i researchers at the time argued that stream runoff, not the sewage plants, were the real cause for concern, but whatever the cause, District Judge David Ezra found that the city had violated the Clean Water Act thousands of times between 1989 and 1992. The city settled the case by giving its Kailua treatment plant $4.8 million in upgrades, with an additional $3.1 million to be used to support what would become the eight-member Kailua Bay Advisory Council.
Under an October 1995 consent decree resolving the case, KBAC was charged with studying the sources of nonpoint source pollution in Kailua, Kane’ohe, and Waimanalo; developing an implementation plan to address the pollution; and overseeing a volunteer water quality monitoring program.
Ko’olaupoko extends from Kualoa Point, at the north end of Kane’ohe Bay, 23 miles south to Makapu’u Point. The entire watershed encompasses 72 square miles and 11 ahupua’a (land divisions). Each one varies in its makeup. Some, like those from Waiahole to Kualoa, remain mostly rural. Others, like Kailua and Kane’ohe, are heavily populated and urbanized.
Not long after KBAC was formed, the Department of Health determined that Ko’olaupoko was one of five severely threatened watersheds in Hawai’i. Kawa Stream and its discharge basin, Kane’ohe Bay, as well as Kapa’a and Waimanalo streams were all designated by the DOH as Water Quality Limited Segments in 1997 (WQLSs are places where water quality doesn’t meet Clean Water Act standards).
Kawa Stream, in the southern part of Kane’ohe Bay’s drainage system, crosses the urban and residential areas near Hawaiian Memorial Park, Castle High School, and Bay View Golf Course, before discharging near the Waikalua Fishpond. As a result, the steam, which is partially channelized, has exceeded acceptable standards for turbidity (cloudiness), nitrate, nitrite/nitrogen, total nitrogen, and total phosphorous.
Floating algae, water hyacinths, and oil can be seen floating in and around Kapa’a Stream above Kawainui Marsh. The stream receives runoff from Kapa’a Quarry and a closed landfill, both of which contribute to high levels of nitrogen, phosphorous, and sediments.
Waimanalo Stream collects runoff from agriculture, roads, a golf course, and Bellows Air Field Station before discharging into Waimanalo Bay. Noted for its algal blooms, the stream consistently exceeds water quality standards for total nitrogen, nitrate, and nitrite.
For the past several years, KBAC, the DOH and the Coastal Zone Management program have been assessing Ko’olaupoko’s natural resources and pollution sources, determining sites where mitigation may be appropriate, assigning priorities for action, and developing implementation plans.
Big Plans
In July 2000, the DOH came out with its Implementation Plan for Polluted Runoff Control Program; into 2002, it held public hearings on enforcement rules for nonpoint source pollution; and this year, the DOH expects the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to approve its Coastal Nonpoint Pollution Control Program.
In August 2003, KBAC received state approval of its plans for Ko’olaupoko, enabling it to vie for federal Clean Water Act funds. In November, KBAC released its master plan to address nonpoint pollution in Ko’olaupoko. Earlier this year, KBAC contractor Tetra Tech, EM Inc., held public meetings on its draft Kailua Waterways Improvement Plan.
Some of the proposed high-priority actions included in KBAC’s master plan range from the general (educate, study, monitor) to the specific:
- North Kane’ohe Bay: To control sedimentation, install storm drain filters and monitor for compliance; plant stream banks and denuded areas with “appropriate species;” coordinate mauka development with a flood control project at the estuary; and study retrofitting channelized streams.
- South Kane’ohe: Install storm drain filters, dredge, educate and train residents on how to report and enforce violations.
- Kailua: To address urban runoff, increase the frequency of opening the sand plug that keeps Ka’elepulu Stream from draining into Kailua Bay; dredge and remove vegetation at Kawainui Marsh; and “study the link between pollution and habitat and alternatives such as the ‘living machine’ approach.”
- Waimanalo: Physically restore streams; educate farmers and residents on best management practices; and replace alien plant species with natives where appropriate.
A draft of the Kailua Waterways Improvement Plan includes specific demonstration projects for Kapa’a Stream, including a landfill buffer and a landfill cap to prevent seepage of leachates from the closed Kailua landfill.
Other Best Management Practices could possibly include bioretention areas, vegetated swales, and filter strips, the plan states. And as for the Kawainui March, which receives Kapa’a Stream and connects to Kailua Bay, the plan calls for constructing wetlands to treat stormwater runoff.
“Mini-wetlands and retention ponds can be developed at key points in the stormwater system to capture storm runoff before it enters Kailua Bay,” the plan states. “A number of drainage swales and ditches tributary to it are ideal candidate sites… The banks of these ditches and the Oneawa Canal can be planted with various native and Polynesian-introduced species, particularly shade trees such as milo and hau.” the plan states.
Act Locally
For Ko’olaupoko, plans are in place and priorities have been set. But how do you get people to know or care enough about them to generate the money and manpower needed to fulfill those plans? As Krupp says, “The best way to control [nonpoint source pollution] is through education.”
In the late 1990s, WCC and KBAC entered into a cooperative agreement to develop a watershed mapping project that utilized Geographic Information Systems. With WCC providing around $100,000 in grants and a home base and KBAC providing the web server, the two, with support from the city, created a place where university students could become versed in GIS technology and help KBAC provide information to the public.
“The purpose of the watershed mapping project is to allow for the cultivation of a deeper respect for the watersheds, simply by getting to know it better,” states a paper Krupp and KBAC contractor Donna Ashizawa presented at the Joint Water Resource Conference in 1999.
“A consistent problem with many community water quality monitoring projects is the disconnect between the data collection process and the availability of the results,” they wrote. “Often, community volunteers do not have access to the reports and findings that were based on the data they collected” – a situation that discourages volunteers from participating in future projects.
During Ashizawa’s time with KBAC, the partners created an interactive, online map with data collected by WCC students. Using that site as a prototype, McMahon, directed by the Office of Planning’s Scott Derrickson (a KBAC member), set up a mapping system with a different server in Canada to add more data.
Every other month, KBAC sponsors a stream walk and awareness study, where volunteers assess a particular Ko’olaupoko stream for acidity, clarity, stream life, channel and streamside features, and land use. KBAC has organized ten surveys to date. To allow past volunteers see how the stream they walked compares to others, McMahon began posting stream evaluations on KBAC’s website about four to six months ago. Depending on how good or bad they were, streams were given a rating that ranged from excellent to poor.
For example, Kapa’a Stream received a fair grade overall: good stream life, fair water clarity, fairly poor channel features, fairly good land use, and poor streamside features.
It was while posting these assessments that McMahon thought, “Why not do this for a more complex data set?”
With the arrival of UH horticulture student Kia Weaver early this summer, McMahon began tackling the technical water quality data available on government websites. At the August KBAC water quality workshop, Weaver stated that there are 66 monitoring sites in Ko’olaupoko being tested for 43 parameters. She and McMahon have spent the last few months taking data from the state Department of Health, the city’s Department of Environmental Services and other sites and importing them into KBAC’s interactive map. Weaver and McMahon have crunched the raw data, calculated major trends for each site, and, where applicable, compared the most recent data with the Hawai’i Water Quality Standards for safe swimming and fishing. The site, [url=http://www.kbac-hi.org/kwqid,]www.kbac-hi.org/kwqid,[/url] is meant to be a “one-spot stop to view water quality data for Ko’olaupoko,” and will eventually combine data several organizations.
KBAC used to have links to the DOH’s raw water quality data. Although the new data on KBAC’s site are still technical, one can easily find out if the most recent coliform levels, for example, are greater or lesser than the average for that area. A quick browse finds the following:
- The temperature, turbidity and chlorophyll A levels in Central Kane’ohe Bay in October 1997 were too high, and dissolved oxygen levels were too low.
- Water samples taken at Lanikai in 1998 had high clostridium, entercocci, and turbidity levels, and low dissolved oxygen.
- Waters under Keolu Bridge, last sampled in 1977, had high coliform levels, and, again, low oxygen.
The webpage only seeks to present a general knowledge about these sites and “is by no means a definitive portrayal,” a disclaimer says. Indeed, the site does have its flaws: When determining whether a parameter, say, dissolved oxygen, is remaining stable, increasing or decreasing, one compares a subaverage of the 10 most recent data points for that site (also known as a geometric mean) with an overall average. Using a geometric mean helps control for what McMahon calls “outliers,” individual events that could skew the data. But since many sites listed have had spotty coverage at best, KBAC compares only the most recent data with an overall average of all the data KBAC has for that site. One problem with this approach is that a recent data set used for comparison purposes may have been taken after a storm event, and not be representative of the site’s current health.
Another drawback that McMahon hopes to remedy soon is the fact that the KBAC’s site only includes DOH data that the department has posted on its web site, not the most recent data available. So even the most recent data for many sites can be years behind.
In addition to getting the most recent data it can put its hands on, KBAC is also looking at historical literature and at past reports from the University of Hawai’i’s Water Resources Research Center.
KBAC has recently added data from KBAC contractor ‘Ahahui Malama I Ka Lokahi, which is testing Kawainui Marsh; Oceanic and AECOS laboratories, which have worked on Kapa’a Stream, and the Makawai Stream Alliance. By the end of next month, the site should also include data from the University of Hawai’i’s Hawai’i Institute for Marine Biology, which is studying organochlorine levels in Enchanted Lake, and Friends of He’eia State Park.
While the U.S. Geological Survey also monitors some sites, McMahon chose to provide a link to the USGS page, since the data there are presented in real time.
Water quality data aren’t the only measurement of stream health. As KBAC’s master plan notes, another issue “that has only just begun to be addressed is the biological effect of chemical residues in streams. Chemical water quality analysis does not … adequately predict or reflect the condition of aquatic resources. Routine water quality monitoring, for example, will detect the effects of nutrient enrichment and chronic acidification, but does not normally detect trace levels of toxicants or contaminants, or flooding pollution events such as spills, short-lived toxicants and pesticides or combined impacts. Small amounts of these residues can amass in the tissues of aquatic organisms.”
When asked if the KBAC site could one day include other data that reflect the health of ecosystems, such as chemical concentrations in sediment cores or in aquatic organisms, McMahon says, as long as it’s number-based, it should be relatively easy. “The hard part was building the site.”
Despite giving several presentations in windward O’ahu about KBAC’s website, it hasn’t seen much traffic, McMahon says, with fewer than 100 hits in mid-August. Still, McMahon says, someone with the DOH’s Clean Water Branch informally asked if KBAC did contract work. The state Coastal Zone Management branch is also interested, he said, since it’s also “putting something together for water quality monitoring statewide.”
Although he’s been asked by many to give presentations about the website, McMahon admits that he’d like to improve the site before he shops it around too much. But even in its current state, the site allows people to easily identify data gaps. For example, while many places have been tested regularly throughout the years, no one seems to have done any research at Waiahole Beach Park since October 1975 or Keolu Bridge since 1977.
And that is a significant problem with assessing nonpoint source pollution. As Pixie Hamilton of the USGS’ National Water Quality Assessment Program said at the AAAS meeting, “Sampling needs to be frequent to determine peak and low concentrations.” Once a quarter-century doesn’t make the grade.
The Future
Across Hawai’i, the number of projects set up to address nonpoint source pollution are as many and varied as the sources themselves. Many are low-key, grass roots efforts, such as those whose chief goal is to remove litter from streams. Several are more elaborate and well-financed, including efforts to protect and restore Hanalei Stream on Kaua’i and Manoa Stream on O’ahu. Last spring, the Department of Health jump-started projects in seven different watersheds across the state; with $122,000 in funds from the EPA, it contracted with the University of Hawai’i Environmental Center to set up watershed councils in Waimea and Hanapepe on Kaua’i, Kahana and Waialua bays on O’ahu; at Kahului and Kihei on Maui; and in Hilo, on the Big Island. The initial intent is to shake down in one place everything that has been written or is known about the selected watersheds, as well as to develop a core group of interested individuals.
Unlike most other groups, KBAC began with a significant, secure funding source. And while the consent decree gave KBAC three years to complete its work, to date, that has stretched to about seven. Three years ago, KBAC was criticized for not fulfilling its duties, for making it too hard to get grants, and for not making public its revenues and expenditures. That year, James Andrews, Carroll Cox, and Joseph Ryan filed a lawsuit in federal court asking for KBAC to be disbanded and for the court to transfer remaining funds to other watershed councils in Ko’olaupoko. The suit was eventually dismissed, KBAC weathered the storm and, especially in recent months, seems to have made significant strides in meeting its decree objectives.
KBAC executive director Maile Bay admits that the volunteer monitoring program (which was to have provided data for KBAC’s technical program, then meant to feed into an implementation plan) did not fly as well as members had hoped. By the time she joined KBAC three years ago, the $300,000 designated in the consent decree for monitoring had pretty well been spent with “minimal data” to show for it. Still, Bay says, using existing studies on water quality, KBAC has done rather well with its technical program and is in an active implementation phase, with “12 projects ongoing at any one time.”
Bay estimates that KBAC’s remaining $1 million is enough to carry it through another few years, and McMahon seems confident that someone will be around to maintain the database in the long term. In its master plan, KBAC talks about establishing a permanent entity to continue the work KBAC has started, perhaps applying for federal funds under Clean Water Act Section 319(h) (the section addressing nonpoint source pollution).
With the recent appointment of two new members, Bay, who was first hired to look at long-range options, says the council is still working on consensus about the future of KBAC. Public meetings last March revealed that most in the community want to see the group’s work continue, she says, but how that work will be governed once the consent decree is fulfilled has yet to be determined (Right now, four members each are appointed by the city and the plaintiffs in the 1992 lawsuit).
Despite its shortcomings, the website KBAC and its partners have built is what Bay calls a “clearinghouse model” that could help focus governmental and community watershed protection efforts. As the Windward Ahupua’a Alliance’s Wood said after Weaver finished her presentation, “We hope this goes island-wide.”
— Teresa Dawson
Volume 14, Number 3 September 2003
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