State land officials are touting their latest efforts to shield Oahu residents and their homes from potential rockfalls, with a new protective fence going up on the hillside below the popular Lanikai pillbox trail.
That fence will aim to guard the houses that rest below the pillboxes from any falling boulders or other debris coming off the steep, rocky hillside above, according to a state Department of Land and Natural Resources news release. Crews flew in the materials by helicopter Tuesday to the Windward-area site, prompting officials to close the pillbox trail during that transport.
The $1.2 million fence is finally going up after a 2007 rockfall sent a boulder crashing into a house at 1063 Koohoo Place, according to the release. The state land agency has a deal with the homeowners to place the fence across their property to help protect it from the state-owned hillside above. An association of eight property owners has agreed to take over responsibility of the fence’s maintenance and upkeep once it’s completed, the DLNR release stated.
The project is the island’s latest effort to stay vigilant against the constant threat of rockfalls, which are often a natural side effect of erosion. In recent years, heavy rain has helped dislodge boulders and send them careening into homes, including one day in January 2013 in which boulders smashed into houses in Kalihi and Hawaii Kai within hours of each other. In the Kalihi incident, residents there reported that the boulder slammed into a bedroom wall and came to rest within inches of the occupant’s head.
While touting the efforts at Lanikai, state DLNR officials said they were not immediately able to list the agency’s other rockfall mitigation projects underway or in the planning stages. They said they would need more time to put that information together. The state Department of Transportation, which also handles rockfall hazard projects, said the same thing Tuesday.
In 2010 the state DOT completed a yearlong project at Makapuu to keep large rocks from tumbling down onto Kalanianaole Highway, where gravel-size to basketball-size rocks had been known to fall onto the roadway — with a lot of near-misses to cars.
The city Department of Design and Construction, meanwhile, reports having completed four rockfall protection projects on county land this year. They were done along Sierra Drive in Palolo, Prospect Street in Punchbowl, Pupukea on the North Shore and along Moanalua Loop in Aiea, according DDC Deputy Director Mark Yonamine.
The DDC is starting two more rockfall hazard projects: one at Pacific Heights for $601,000 and another near Alencastre and Dole streets for about $300,000, Yonamine said.
The city uses a 2012 study that identifies sites in its jurisdiction that pose rockfall hazards to prioritize which projects get done first, he said. How many of those projects get done in a year is “budget-driven,” Yonamine said. Figures provided by the city show the DDC’s budget for rockfall hazard projects has steadily slipped in recent years, going from $2 million in 2013 to $500,000 in 2016. Nonetheless, Yonamine said the city has the dollars it needs to fix its top-priority sites.
“We’re working through that list,” he said Tuesday. “This type of construction is specialized. It’s dangerous — you have to scale the side of a mountain, so we don’t want to flood the industry and not get qualified contractors.”
The city Parks and Recreation Department also had a $500,000 annual budget in recent years for rockfall hazard projects, but in 2016 that budget was trimmed to zero. A spokesman with Mayor Kirk Caldwell’s office wasn’t able to confirm the reason for that cut with park officials late in the day Tuesday.
