Editorial: Kapalama Canal renewal

The one-mile stretch of the Kapalama Canal, from Houghtailing Street in Kalihi to Honolulu Harbor, runs past residential neighborhoods, commercial and industrial properties and schools, including Honolulu Community College.

The waterway, built in 1938 to facilitate drainage and flood control, is showing its age. Most of the canal’s banks are inhospitable, overgrown with vegetation or fenced off to keep people from dumping garbage into the dirty brown water.

But to the city, the canal is an $80 million diamond in the rough. For years now, the city and community leaders have pursued aspirations for transforming the canal into the centerpiece of a lively retail, recreational and residential hub — while shoring it up against sea level rise.

Those ambitions took a significant step forward in recent weeks with the filing of the June 2021 Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Kapalama Canal Catalytic Project. The draft EIS was filed last August. (Download the 1,766-page PDF of the FEIS at oeqc2.doh.hawaii.gov/_layouts/15/start.aspx#/EA_EIS_Library/Forms/AllItems.aspx).

In some respects, the project resembles a miniature version of successful riverfront redevelopment projects in large cities, from Milwaukee to New York, where rivers that served factories were reclaimed as a natural resource and catalyst for urban renewal. Once-grimy industrial areas blossomed into places where you wanted to be — dining, shopping and living along a clean, expansive waterfront.

Of course, the Kapalama Canal is hardly a river (although it does roughly follow the original course of the former Niuhelewai Stream). But the potential for transformative change is there. The project envisions an attractive waterway, properly dredged and cleaned, with spacious boardwalks and bridges along its banks, a landscaped linear park with picnic pavilions and public art.

It’s hoped that the initial investment would draw new high-density housing development, especially the affordable kind, close to the planned rail station.

This complex, long-term project will require unprecedented cooperation. Stakeholders include the city, state and federal governments, and multiple private landowners along the canal. The area, rich in pre-contact Hawaiian history, could contain historical and cultural artifacts. And, of course, the project must serve the interests and needs of the residents of Kapalama.

If successful, the Kapalama Canal project could inspire more urban renewal in neighborhoods where it’s sorely needed on Oahu. That in itself would make the investment a wise, and important, one.