Construction of an assisted-living facility is on hold and other major projects from Halawa to Pearl City could be in limbo while the city works to improve sewer lines at two Central Oahu sites.
The improvements, budgeted at $60 million, are expected to take at least four years to complete.
Until then no sewer connections that increase the amount of flow into the system will be allowed from Halawa to Pearl City, according to a memo last month from the city Department of Environmental Services.
"Our whole focus is responsible management of the system," Tim Steinberger, director of environmental services, said in an interview.
According to the memo, dated April 20, the Pearl City pump station has reached its limit of 28.4 million gallons of wastewater per day. Any additional flow will put it over capacity and at greater risk of sewage spills.
The Pearl City station shares transmission pipes with the Waipahu pump station. To relieve the situation, a new transmission pipe, known as a force main, is being constructed at Waipahu while two force mains where breaks have been appearing are being repaired at Pearl City.
Steinberger said the city must take mitigating action, preferably to decrease the risk of a broken line, or face legal action from the state Department of Health or U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
"To decrease our risk, obviously, is to do the project," he said. "To keep it level means restricting the flows that are allowed into the system for a period of time."
Steinberger calls the moratorium an interim measure because some sewer connections will be allowed under certain conditions.
Permit applications are being reviewed on a case-by-case basis and may be approved where a sewer connection already exists, such as construction of a new home or business on a site where an existing structure is torn down. Home additions such as a half or full bathroom also would be allowed, but not additional residential units.
"We call it an interim measure because a real moratorium means nobody can have anything," he said.
At least two major projects could be affected while the sewer work is being done.
At the site of the former Kam Drive-In theater, Robertson Properties Group is proposing five towers 150 to 350 feet high containing 1,500 residential units, along with 143,000 square feet of retail space anchored by a grocery store and 80,000 square feet of office space or a 150-room hotel.
That project is in the environmental impact study phase and is still a few years away from applying for a sewer permit, a spokesman said.
MW Group is planning to build its fourth senior living center under The Plaza brand at Pearl Highlands on a vacant 2-acre lot. The project includes a five-story, 100-unit building for assisted living in Phase I and a two-story, 34-unit structure for memory care in Phase II.
The developer’s sewer permit application was denied last month, a few weeks before the city’s memorandum was issued, said Steve Metter, chief executive officer of MW Group.
MW Group is working with the city to see whether a solution can be found to allow construction to continue.
Metter said one proposal would be to install a retention tank underground to catch all of the project’s wastewater during the day. The wastewater would be connected to the sewer line but its contents released only between 2 and 5 a.m., when the line is at its lowest capacity.
"That’s clearly a solution that should work," Metter said. "We’re optimistic that we can make it happen."
Steinberger said the city wants to work with developers such as MW Group so that the construction and jobs associated with it are not lost. Metter said the new facility would employ about 375 workers for construction, then 100 full-time workers.
"They’re coming in with a plan, and they said that they believe they have a workable plan, so that’s what we want to see," Steinberger said. "When you leave it up to the engineers to come up with something, usually they’re pretty good about coming up with something."
As for how the situation arose, Steinberger said one factor was the withdrawal of a major development project that would have included all the necessary improvements to increase capacity at Pearl City.
Waiawa by Gentry, which had planned for years to build a 12,000-unit housing project before it was terminated in 2009, was to pay for and perform all of the necessary sewer work.
Right around that time, from 2009 to 2010, there were three breaks on the pipe from Pearl City to Waipahu in a short period of time, indicating that something more needed to be done to relieve pressure on the system, Steinberger said.
"That kind of triggered the next phase, which was, it’s obvious we have to do something with the Waipahu side of the pipeline," he said. "Although the Waipahu side of the pipeline wasn’t breaking, we needed to relieve the pressure that was building up between the Pearl City pump station and the Waipahu pump station."
Even if the Waiawa by Gentry project had been completed, the additional pipe at Waipahu might still have been needed, he said.
