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It was once owned by King Kamehameha I and Queen Kaahumanu, who maintained a summer resort residence on the shore nearby.
And it’s the exact place where Queen Kaahumanu is said to have renounced the ancient kapu system for the first time on Oahu in 1819, clearing the way for Christianity to spread in the island’s Hawaiian community.
By all rights, Kalauhaihai Fishpond on the shore below Niu Valley should have become a mere footnote in history, obliterated by the same luxury coastal home development to which so many other ancient Hawaiian fishponds fell victim.
But not this one. Due to a combination of hard work, dedication, a little luck and maybe even divine intervention, this one survived as one of only six fishponds on Oahu.
And now it appears Kalauhaihai Fishpond, also known as Lucas Spring, is on its way to a full and glorious restoration following the recent demolition and removal of two dilapidated residential structures that shared the beachfront property along Kalanianaole Highway.
The state Department of Land and Natural Resources this week said officials are now aiming to launch phase 2 of the project: a study to determine the feasibility of restoring the fishpond’s underground freshwater source.
“It’s amazing this is finally happening after all these years,” said Chris Cramer, president of the Maunalua Fishpond Heritage Center, the nonprofit overseeing the community effort to revive the pond. “It’s small but there’s a lot of history and legacy over there.”
The center is the same outfit that helped to save and revive the nearby Kanewai Spring pond.
Under the group’s direction, hundreds of volunteers also worked at Kalauhaihai over the last four years to clear away a tangled forest of weeds covering the fishpond, including haole koa trees several stories high.
The place has been transformed.
But while snails, ducks, dragonflies, herons and other water critters have returned, the pond’s lava tube water source is still largely missing, cut off by construction when the highway was widened in the early 1990s.
Without that primary water source, the aquatic cycle that supports the fishpond is interrupted, with spring water unable to flow into the ocean to create the conditions under which seaweed will grow and attract the ideal pond fish, Cramer said.
The timeline from ancient fishpond to ancient fishpond-on-the-mend is a circuitous one.
King Kamehameha gave the land, including the spring and pond, to Capt. Alexander Adams, a Scotsman who served in the British Royal Navy before joining the Kingdom of Hawaii navy.
The pond was later used for a family dairy by Mary Papapaupu Lucas, the granddaughter of Adams. His descendants, who include Myron Thompson Jr. and his brother, Nainoa Thompson, remained in the area.
In the 1960s, Tad Hara lived in a two-story wooden house built on stilts over the pond. The home was designed with a glass floor to allow Hara to view the aquatic life below. An adjacent house was occupied by Hara’s real estate business partner, Larry Lee.
Hara and his sons and daughters lived in harmony with the water feature for 23 years, and dutifully registered the fishpond with the state Water Commission.
However, during the project to widen the highway from four lanes to six, a contractor damaged the freshwater spring that fed the fishpond, turning the vibrant aquatic pool into mud.
Hara wanted the state Department of Transportation to repair the spring, but the department figured it would be less costly to acquire the property through condemnation. Hara fought the agency in court but lost.
For years DOT planned to auction off the properties but, for various reasons, nothing ever transpired. Community members argued for preservation, and the state Legislature finally got involved, enacting a 2010 law prohibiting the sale.
Meanwhile, the property was overrun with invasive weeds, and the abandoned homes deteriorated over years of neglect.
Although a subsequent city project to repair the sewer to prevent freshwater infiltration resulted in more water flowing to the fishpond, it wasn’t enough to flush all the way to the ocean, Cramer said.
Finally, in May 2012 the “ownership, jurisdiction, maintenance, liability and operation” of the fishpond property was transferred to DLNR.
Later that year the Maunalua Fishpond Heritage Center requested a right-of-entry to conduct activities on the fishpond, including biological monitoring, weed and graffiti control, ongoing maintenance and a free public education program on the cultural and biological values of the fishpond.
Last summer, R.M. Towill Corp. and Close Construction Inc. were retained by DLNR to carry out a $164,940 demolition project that was completed in September.
In addition to bringing down the structures, crews removed Hara’s thick bulletproof glass floor intact, and the center is keeping it in storage for potential use at the fishpond for educational purposes.
“Right now, you can see a view that hasn’t been able to be seen in 60 years,” Cramer said.
Correction: An earlier version of the story described Myron ‘Pinky’ Thomspon as a descendant of Capt. Alexander Adams, but he was not. He married into the family.
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