Hawaii must fix infrastructure

Hawaii’s aging infrastructure, which tends to fare poorly though short of dead last in national rankings, landed in the bottom spot on a recent report bluntly titled “States That Are Falling Apart,” which was based on four criteria: condition of roadways, how much is spent on highways versus overall public spending, structural fitness of bridges and safety of dams.

The dams did us in.

Hawaii had the highest percentage of dams in the country with a “high-hazard potential” rating, 93 percent. Nationwide, an estimated 17 percent of all dams — 15,500 in total — are categorized as high-hazard, meaning their failure would almost certainly result in loss of life.

The report — released by 24/7 Wall St., a Delaware-based financial news and commentary website — warns: “It is becoming increasingly clear that many older dams in the United States will not be able to withstand heavy sustained rains or earthquakes. And by 2025, 70 percent of all dams will be over 50 years old.”

Hawaii’s lawmakers and other leaders must take note, as slightly more than 100 of our 133 dams are already well over that age. Most were constructed before 1940 to support the sugarcane plantations.

Regardless of size, structure or ownership, each dam needs regular maintenance to fend off catastrophic failure. Nationwide, the vast majority of dams fall into low-hazard potential rating. Hawaii must do what it can to lower its alarming hazard potential rating.

In the aftermath of the March 2006 collapse of Kauai’s Ka Loko Dam, the state Legislature passed a Dam and Reservoir Safety Act, which aims to ensure dams and reservoirs are properly maintained and that public safety is protected. With all but a half-dozen dams now rated as having a high-hazard or “significant-hazard” potential, we need to reassess protections.

Shoddy maintenance was the culprit in the Ka Loko Dam collapse, which sent nearly 400 million gallons of water crashing into Kilauea Bay. Seven people died when a breach in the earthen dam caused flooding from Ka Loko Reservoir. Most of the dams in the islands are privately owned, earthen structures used for irrigation purposes. Satisfactory upkeep hinges on owners working in tandem with the state to address matters such as deferred maintenance.

In the “Falling Apart” report’s roads category, 29 percent of our roadways were rated as being in poor condition, ranking Hawaii as the fifth-worst state in the nation. The national average for subpar roads was 11 percent. Hawaii’s not-surprising placement was based on 2015 statistics from the Federal Highway Administration, which reported on safety and congestion as well as pavement serviceability and roughness.

Motorists tend to measure roughness in potholes. And they’re, of course, plentiful. Last year, the state Department of Transportation (DOT) reported that it had patched an average of 40,000 a year in the previous decade along major roads on Oahu.

The report ranked Hawaii as 10th lowest for highway spending as a percentage of total government spending, at 4.5 percent. Of Hawaii’s more than $12.3 billion in total expenditures in 2015, nearly $555 million was spent on our highways, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Finally, the report also placed us in the 13th-lowest ranking nationwide for bridge fitness, noting that the FHA has tagged 65 of the state’s 1,142 bridges as structurally unsound.

Here’s hoping that Jade Butay, Hawaii’s deputy transportation direction in charge of administration, who next month will begin serving as the DOT director — overseeing 2,500 highway lane miles statewide as well as 15 airports and 10 commercial harbors — can improve upon Hawaii’s lackluster standing in those categories.

While President Donald Trump has promised to spend $1 trillion on fixing the country’s infrastructure, allocation remains uncertain. Meanwhile, the estimated cost of repairing the nation’s roads, bridges and dams is projected to top $2.4 trillion by 2025.

Bottom line: Hawaii must step up its attention to repairing and upgrading aging infrastructure. Opting for drawn-out deferrals could yield dangerous and costly results.