Board of Water Supply crews completed overnight repairs to a broken 12-inch main on Waialae Avenue in Kaimuki on Saturday morning, just in time to turn their attention to a leak in a 6-inch main in the same area.

The break to the 12-inch main was discovered Friday near Liliuokalani Elementary School, prompting police to close all Diamond Head-bound lanes of Waialae Avenue between Koko Head Avenue and 12th Avenue, as well as Koko Head Avenue between Waialae Avenue and Harding Avenue.

Twenty-four customers were left without service as a result of the break.

The work on the main was completed around 8 a.m. and a paving contractor was repairing the roadway when a leak in the 6-inch main was detected around 10 a.m.

Police closed one Ewa-bound lane of Waialae Avenue between 12th and 13th avenues as well as the makai-bound lane of Koko Head Avenue between Waialae and Harding avenues.

Waialae and Koko Head avenues reopened about 6:15 p.m.

Road to improve public access to Big Island forest reserve

A new road will make areas of the 61,000-acre Ka’u Forest Reserve more accessible for public hunting, recreation, and cultural and educational programs, the state announced Thursday.

The public access route was formally agreed to on June 22, when landowner Edmund C. Olson signed a memorandum of agreement with Department of Land and Natural Resources Director Suzanne Case.

The Land Board must first approve an easement over the Edmund C. Olson Trust No. 2 property, and then construction will begin on improvements to the area, said DLNR spokeswoman Deborah Ward. There is no set opening date.

"The soonest would be by the end of this year," Ward told the Hawaii Tribune-Herald.

Park will use copters to spray invasive pines in Haleakala

Haleakala National Park will be flying helicopters in September and October to 3,000 invasive pine trees growing on cliffs and terrain inaccessible by foot and spraying an herbicide tree by tree, the Maui News reports.

The problem with the Monterey, Mexican weeping and maritime pines stems from a fire in Poli Poli in 2007 that burned 600 acres of pine forest outside the national park, Polly Angelakis, chief of interpretation and education for the park, said in an email Friday. The fire spurred mature pines to release their seeds into the Kona winds that spread them across East Maui and into the crater.

Thousands of non-native pines, which were introduced to Maui by foresters in the early 1900s, have sprouted in the national park since then and have created environmental problems. From 1982 to 2006, only 22 pines had to be removed from the crater, she said. Those pines were removed by hand.