In Collapse of Tunnel at Hakalaoa, Geologic Time Breaks Human Clock

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The time is late April 1989. The place is the face of the cliff behind Waipi`o Valley’s Hakalaoa Falls, which, dropping some 1,200 feet to the valley floor, is one of the highest waterfalls in Hawai`i.

Weakened after centuries of weathering by near-constant water flows, loose volcanic rock at a plunge pool halfway down the cliff face begins slowly to crumble under the additional burden of recent heavy rains. A few stones are dislodged, and streams of water begin to flow behind and around larger boulders. Soon they, too, come crashing down the pali.

On the floor of the valley, no one notices. The taro lo`i of the village of Napo`opo`o have not been cultivated for decades. The old Peace Corps training site was abandoned years ago.

Within days, there is a “catastrophic peeling of the face of the pali,” as the hydrologist John Mink later described the event. Such events “occur infrequently on a human time scale,” he wrote, but happen “virtually continuously on a geological time scale.” And, while “further catastrophic collapse is unlikely for a long time… eventually over geologic time another collapse will come about. This collapse phenomenon is how canyons are formed in the volcanic terrain of Hawai`i.”1

Exposure

Anyone looking at the falls from Waipi`o Valley would probably not have noticed anything amiss. Hakalaoa Falls and its twin Hi`ilawe would have appeared from a distance to be unchanged.

But at Kukuihaele, perched on the rim of the valley, the effects of the collapse were felt, if not understood, almost immediately. As the cliff face retreated, it exposed a 20-to-30-foot-long section of the tunnel that carries water from the back of Waipi`o Valley to the cane fields along the Hamakua coast. Some 80 years before, the tunnel had been dug about 25 feet behind the face of the cliff. All the water that the tunnel carried from other streams feeding into the valley was now cascading into the pools at the foot of Hi`ilawe Falls. Where the tunnel emerged into the Lower Hamakua Ditch at Kukuihaele, the water had abruptly stopped.

On May 5, Mink toured the area with personnel from the Hamakua Sugar Company and the Hawaiian Irrigation Company, a wholly owned subsidiary. The following day, he outlined three approaches to dealing with the collapse: driving a new tunnel further into the rock behind the cliff face; straddling the lost length of tunnel with a large-diameter pipe; or straddling the lost portion with a flume, which, to protect it against debris carried by Hakalaoa Falls, would need to be shielded somehow.

Diversion

Within weeks, Hamakua Sugar Company had decided to go with the flume. The stream above Hakalaoa Falls was diverted into a channel linking it with the stream feeding Hi`ilawe Falls. A helicopter brought in equipment, material, and workers to do the repairs, and when the work was finished, bright blue tarpulins were stretched across the open top of the flume, providing a minimal shield against falling debris. With nothing more than that to protect the flume, the company decided that Hakalaoa Falls should remain shut off.

By late 1991, the company was still weighing its options for a more permanent solution. On December 3, 1991, Steven Wishard of HSC wrote David Morgan, company vice president, describing two options that would allow Hakalaoa Falls to be restored. “If the diversion to Hi`ilawe Stream is removed,” Wishard wrote, “Hakalaoa Falls would be ‘turned on’. Water cascading down would threaten the flume or sluice that was built in May of 1989.” To avoid that, Wishard said, the flume could be encased in reinforced concrete. Alternatively, a new tunnel could be bored behind the cliff face. In either case, the cost of restoring a trail to the worksite would be the same: $99,600, he estimated. Encasing the flume would run an additional $65,700, while boring a tunnel could cost anywhere from $375,000 to $900,000, he said. Cost of obtaining permits would be the same in either case — about $100,000.

Rationalizaton

Nothing was done. A few months later, residents of the valley who had spoken with company representatives about the need to restore the falls, finally decided to talk with state authorities about the illegal stream diversion. According to a memorandum for the record written by Sherrie Samuels, then of the staff of the Commission on Water Resource Management, Chris Rathbun called on March 17, 1992, to request he be sent a copy of the stream channel alteration permit filed by Hamakua Sugar Company. Rathbun informed Samuels that he had been in touch with Tim Lui-Kwan, attorney for the company, who had informed Rathbun “that Hamakua Sugar had obtained a stream channel alteration permit for the work that they did.”

Samuels said she “told Mr. Rathbun that I had no application on file for this project and, as such, no permit for review. I indicated that we were not aware of this project, but would investigate and report our findings to him.”

A Water Commission report on the subject describes what occurred next: “On April 8, 1992, a meeting was held between Mr. David Morgan, vice president and general manager of Hamakua Sugar Company, Mr. Tim Lui-Kwan, attorney with the firm Carlsmith Ball Wichman Murray Case Mukai and Ichiki, and Mr. Yoshi Shiroma of the commission staff, concerning the complaint.”2

According to a write-up of that meeting made by Shiroma, when Morgan was asked why no permits were sought before undertaking the work, “Mr. Morgan replied that the ’emergency’ nature of getting the irrigation system operating made him overlook the permitting requirements. Mr. Lui-Kwan rationalized that a permit was necessary in this case because emergency repairs were being made to an existing flume to save it from further damage… Mr. Morgan presented a plan which shows the proposed work to permanently connect the LHD [Lower Hamakua Ditch] sections within the cliff walls by tunneling approximately 150 feet then restore flows at Hakalaoa Falls… However, because HSC [Hamakua Sugar Company] is experiencing some financial difficulties at this time a definite construction start date was not given.”

As a result of the meeting, the company submitted after-the-fact applications for a stream channel alteration permit and a stream diversion works permit, along with a petition to amend the interim instream flow standard.

Within two months of the application, however, Hamakua Sugar had filed for bankruptcy. Unable to pay its debt service, its insurance, and its other basic obligations, the company was in no position to initiate any construction or repairs except those deemed essential for plantation operations. Restoration of Hi`ilawe Falls was forgotten.

Initiative

Forgotten by the company, perhaps — but not forgotten by some valley residents. In November 1994, employees of an engineering company preparing an assessment of the Lower Hamakua Ditch discovered someone had begun to construct a dam to divert the diversion — in other words, to put water back into the stream above Hakalaoa Falls.

The state Department of Agriculture was notified of this in a letter dated November 22 from Ernest Alfonso, Jr., one of the people hired by the state to maintain the ditch on an interim basis. “It was brought to our attention last night … that someone has started to construct a dam to divert the stream back to the falls… Wai Engineering has pictures showing the construction of a foundation using cement, rebars and rocks to form a dam. Our concern is that if they accomplish this task with the heavy rains we are experiencing these past few weeks, the debris accumulating on the unfinished dam would create a diversion of the water back to the fall which in turn could destroy the ditch that is located under the falls.”

In a follow-up conversation that took place on December 2 between Bill Hewetson, now working for Wai Engineering, and Yoshi Shiroma, of the Water Commission staff, Hewetson said that the rock dam appeared to have been built “several years ago by persons unknown. The dam has been placed across a channel which was constructed … to divert water from one stream to another so that work to repair a damaged flume on the cliff of Waipi`o Valley below a waterfall could be accomplished. Hewetson explained that the purpose of the rock dam was to block off stream flows diverted to the new channel and create water back-up so that the original channel will continue to supply water” to the turned-off falls.

Later Shiroma spoke with Alfonso, who “described the potential effects to the Lower Hamakua Ditch flume,” if the stream flow to Hakalaoa Falls were reopened. “I explained that the dam does not require a SCAM [stream channel alteration permit] and no water code violation” had occurred, Shiroma wrote in a memo for the record.3

A New Regime

Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate is the new owner of the land where the diversion occurs, above the valley rim, as well as the watershed area at the back of Waipi`o Valley where the flume was built. But it has not asked to have itself substituted as the applicant for the permits sought from the Water Commission. With Hamakua Sugar now dissolved, there seems to be no applicant at all for the permits required.

More than six years after the illegal diversion occurred, and more than three years after it was brought to the attention of the Water Commission, the commission met in Honoka`a on July 5 of this year to hear a report on the subject and to take testimony from the community.

Sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of the restoration of Hakalaoa Falls. Time and again, the commission was reminded of the importance of the falls in Hawaiian legend, according to which they represent two ill-fated lovers: the beautiful Hi`ilawe, of Waipi`o, and the handsome Hakalaoa, of Puna, who transformed themselves into the falls so that they might keep their vows never to part. Time and again, those testifying asked the commission to demand the falls be restored and the after-the-fact applications for permits be denied.

Urging the commission to delay any action, however, was Peter Simmons, manager of forestry and natural resources for the Hawai`i Island Asset Management Division of the new landowner, Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate. Simmons appeared to accept responsibility for bringing the matter to some resolution, while at the same time deferring any decision until engineers hired by the estate had completed their studies and until the state and federal watershed plan for the Lower Hamakua area was completed. “We request that the commission allow the time needed to sort out the issues that orbit about the Hakalaoa diversion,” Simmons, said, “and do what is necessary to allow the correct outcome to emerge in what are currently murky waters… We ask that the commission defer scheduling a formal hearing on these applications until” early 1996.

The commission continued to take testimony on the diversion, but set no date for further action.

1. Memo from John F. Mink to Jack Hewetson, manager, Hamakua Sugar Company, May 6, 1989.
2. Status Report on the After-the Fact Stream Channel Alteration …, prepared for the Water Commission meeting of July 5, 1995.
3. Memo for the Record from Yoshi Shiroma, December 2, 1994. This is in the Water Commission files for SCAP-HA-116.

— Patricia Tummons

Volume 6, Number 2 August 1995