Biggest ‘swimming pool’ on Oahu could soon welcome swimmers

‘No swimming” signs might come down soon at the Wai Kai Lagoon in Ewa Beach.

Hawaii legislators are considering a pair of bills that would effectively end a prohibition on swimming in the 52-acre recreational amenity serving over 1,000 residents at Hoakalei Resort where hotel development is also planned.

The prohibition arose in 2018 after a state Department of Health inspector responded to an unfounded complaint about water quality in the coastal basin, which was excavated over a decade ago by Hoakalei’s developer and naturally filled up with a mix of fresh and salt water through porous rock.

Though the lagoon’s water quality has been shown to be better than some Oahu beaches, the agency said in 2018 that it had to regulate Wai Kai as a public swimming pool under its rules and state statute.

Under threat of fines up to $1,000 a day, Hoakalei’s developer, Haseko Hawaii, removed play equipment from the lagoon, installed “no swimming” signs and informed about 1,500 homeowners about the prohibition.

Peter Oshiro, a department program manager whose duties include public swimming pool oversight, said the enforcement was an unintended consequence of outdated regulatory language.

The state regulations say that any “man-made enclosure, structure, basin, chamber, or tank containing an artificial body of water” is a swimming pool if it is used for swimming, diving, recreational bathing or therapy by humans.

Furthermore, all public swimming pools must meet certain standards, including 100% exchange of water at least once every six hours and the ability to spot a high-contrast object at the deepest point of the pool when looking from the surface.

That’s not possible at Wai Kai, which contains 300 million gallons of water and is about 20 feet deep in most places with a seaweed-covered floor.

Wai Kai’s water quality, however, has been shown through ongoing testing by Haseko to be cleaner than some beaches, in part because of the presence of the seaweed and an estimated 2.5 million gallons of groundwater that seeps out of the lagoon into the ocean daily and is replaced by more groundwater.

The two bills were introduced by lawmakers at the request of a Haseko representative and are supported by the Health Department.

“We recognize the existing rules are outdated,” Oshiro said. “It was forcing the department to enforce an impossible standard.”

The proposed change via House Bill 1743 and Senate Bill 2804 would amend the definition of swimming pool to a “watertight artificial structure containing a body of water that does not exchange water with any other body of water either naturally or mechanically” if used for swimming and the same other purposes.

Two different bills backed by Haseko last year attempted to achieve the same goal using different language, but were opposed by the Health Department and failed.

Oshiro said the new bills represent a welcome short-term fix to the regulatory glitch, given that the department has a goal to update its rules to be in line with modern national standards for swimming pools that would also address the lagoon issue.

Oshiro said the bigger change has been in the works for over five years, and wasn’t triggered by Wai Kai. He noted that the issue can apply to other recreational bodies of water, including the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium, which is controlled by the city and owned by the state but has been off limits to the public for decades partly because of city decisions and the pool regulation issue.

The oceanfront natatorium, built in 1927 as a monument to Hawaii soldiers killed in World War I, is naturally filled by seawater but was closed in 1979 because of unsafe structural conditions.

The basin at Hoakalei was long planned for a boat marina. But in 2011, before a channel to the ocean was dug, Haseko announced that market conditions no longer supported a marina and that the basin would serve as a recreational lagoon where homeowners, guests of future hotels and the general public could use canoes, kayaks, paddleboards and other things.

After that, the lagoon became a popular place for some homeowners to swim, and the subsequent prohibition disappointed some.

“We spend a lot of time down here,” Hoakalei homeowner Brendan Baran said in 2018. “Now we’re told we can’t swim.”

The prohibition also gave rise to a petition for Haseko to make surface openings to the ocean so that the lagoon is more like what exists at Ko Olina and Magic Island.

At the Legislature, SB 2804 was advanced on Feb. 4 by the Senate Committee on Health but encountered a hitch at a hearing held Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee after no one submitted any testimony on the measure.

Oshiro said he meant to testify but missed the hearing after participating in a hearing on the House version of the bill a bit earlier on the same day.

As a result, the Judiciary Committee deferred the bill with the intent to rekindle it in a do-over hearing.

“I don’t have any substantive issues with the bill, but have been trying to not move things forward where no one is interested at all,” Karl Rhoads, Judiciary Committee chair, said at the hearing.

Haseko hasn’t testified on the bill, but said it supports the measure as well as the Health Department’s initiative to adopt revised administrative rules that would achieve the same outcome for the lagoon.

Mac Narahara, Haseko Hawaii president, said in a statement that the regulatory change would benefit more than recreational swimmers, allowing professional organizations to hold events like triathlons at Hoakalei Resort.

“The lagoon has long been a place for recreational water activities, such as kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding, and those activities will continue,” Narahara said.