The Honolulu Board of Water Supply plans to spend an estimated $9.5 million on a 30-year master plan that will include an investigation of how climate change could affect the island’s water resources and delivery system.
The plan, which will be conducted in three phases over the next 21⁄2 years, will also have an assessment of the condition of BWS pipelines and other infrastructure, and will determine capital improvement priorities for the future.
"The idea is to develop a 30-year upgrade and replacement program," said BWS Manager and Chief Engineer Ernest Lau. "It provides the department a road map into the future."
This is the first time BWS has undertaken an effort of this scope to determine the effects of global warming on its infrastructure and its water supply.
Scientists predict sea levels will rise in Hawaii by 1 meter in 100 years, causing flooding in several areas and potentially damaging infrastructure.
Climate change is also expected to result in less rainfall.
"If we become drier, we need to (ask), How do we handle that?" Lau said.
Lau said the plan will not only inform upcoming work, but could identify potential cost-saving opportunities by determining whether some aging pipes that are scheduled for replacement might have some more life to them.
City Council members support the board’s efforts to kick off a long-term planning effort, though they said they would look into why the plan has such a big price tag.
City Councilman Stanley Chang, chairman of the Public Works and Sustainability Committee, said many of the island’s water mains are "decades if not a century old," so it’s time to start planning for their replacement or repair.
He added that he doesn’t want the plan to spur massive capital improvements that are covered solely by increases in water rates.
"Water rates are already very high," Chang said, adding he will encourage the Board of Water Supply to "not just look at raising rates as the only possible solution for raising resources."
The master<$o($)> planning comes as the board is in the midst of a five-year, $345 million capital improvement plan that was kicked off in mid-2011. The CIP plan includes replacing 40 miles of pipeline and repairing 216 wells and booster stations.
To help pay for the improvements, the board approved a 70 percent increase in water rates over five years in 2011. More recently the board has eyed the possibility of redeveloping parking areas at its Beretania Street complex as a way of generating revenue.
The new CIP plan is aimed at building on the CIP gains made from 2005 to 2010. Over that period, crews repaired 35 miles of pipeline and fixed or replaced 64 wells and booster stations.
Lau said the 30-year master plan will help guide further capital improvements efforts, and could also change priorities in its five-year plan.
In addition, the master plan will include a study of the causes behind water main breaks, a perennial problem for the agency.
From July 2011 to January, there were 209 water main breaks on Oahu, according to figures reported to the board.
There were 305 in all of fiscal year 2012, which ended June 30, and 401 in fiscal year 2010.
The agency oversees about 2,100 miles of pipeline islandwide, and about half of those pipes are more than 40 years old.
"We do have an aging infrastructure," said Jason Takaki, program administrator at the board’s capital projects division. "It’s a continuing effort."
In addition to water pipelines, BWS has to continually repair its reservoirs, though most repairs center on small cracks that form because of age.
Takaki said the board spends about $4 million a year repairing reservoirs.
Last year those repairs caused major problems in Aina Haina and Kalaeloa, when a new method of repairing cracks and leaks caused a gel-like grout material to get into at least two water tanks.
In August workers spotted "noticeable quantities" of the material floating on top of the water at the Aina Haina reservoir, a 300,000-gallon tank, and took it out of service. The work had been done about a month earlier.
Four other reservoirs where cracks were repaired —in Kalaeloa, Waialae Iki, Moanalua and Manoa — were also inspected, and the material was found at one of them, a 3 million-gallon tank in Kalaeloa. Repairs at the reservoir had been conducted eight months earlier.
"The debris (at Kalaeloa) looked like thin sheets of amber colored cellophane," according to a BWS letter to the Department of Health in October.
As with the Aina Haina reservoir, the other four tanks were taken out of service to be cleaned and inspected, the letter said.
Takaki said a toxicologist hired by BWS to test the water from the affected reservoirs found no cause for concern. Any chemicals from the grout material were diluted by the large amounts of water in the tanks, the toxicologist determined.
Takaki added in the wake of the episode, "We’ll be more careful."
