Extremely Polluted Water In Hawaii....

General Discussion
1

From the Surfrider Foundation Oahu Chapter page:

http://www.surfrider.org/oahu/index.htm

Knowing the Ala Wai and knowing local politics, I ask our Oahu brothers what’s REALLY going on. I sense there’ll be an ongoing bacteria problem unless the Ala Wai is completely dredged (was a couple of years ago at a cost of millions of $$). High bacteria counts, flesh eating bacteria, 48 million

gallons of raw sewage in the canal - hey is this Tijuana???

There was alot of $$ earmarked for a new sewer system aound and in Waikiki but somehow, it was never started. Finger pointing is starting up big time. Meanwhile, I wonder how far they will try to fool the tourist because of their dollar. Tourists equals money, and Hawaii equals clean water - or so we thought. Clean water equals tourists.

Does anyone know what’s really going on??

2

The more time I spend here, the more mystified I am. The cops here don’t get the respect that a minimum wage security guard commands on the mainland. The public works projects(road improvements) just keep going on forever and don’t seem to make any difference once done. The traffic around Honolulu can be gridlocked for hours out of every day. Major drug and homeless issues. The economy is booming, property values through the roof, but all is not perfect in paradise.

Roger(Ewa Beach)

3

Oliver Johnson local surfer, mortgage banker, friend of Stephanie Sofos a powerhouse in real estate mogul here got in a rucus at a bar by waikiki and claims he was pushed into the ala wai canal during the sewage outflow

He got cut up some trying to crawl out of the canal.

three days later he dying from toxic shock and what the papers classify as flesh eating bacteria which caused them to amputate his left leg below the knee and his body to swell up like a balloon. According to reports his internal organs are all failing due to the infection and he’s in danger of dying. Three to four days after being exposure to water with waikiki Cr*p in it.

All the while visiting surfers have been surfing in a diluted version of the stuff right off shore.

The locals including the paddlers are scared

green limu is brown and things look and small bad. Mother nature is telling them something is wrong.

The tourists don’t know better and there’s talk that the hotels pressured the state to take down the pollution signs. Meanwhile people are going to the hospital with cases of strep caused by just walking on the beach at waikiki and NOT swimming or going in the water. The state now says the sand will store the bacteria worse that what in the water…

Tuesday while at a banking conference at the Sheraton Moana I ate lunch watching a bunch of locals and tourists surfung in the pollution in waist to shoulder high waves outside the hotel. Glad I didn’t step on the beach.

Guys swimming at Kailua have down with the runs and severe stomach cramps. Makes you wonder what these folks will come down with. Maybe we don’t need the bird flu here to make veryone sick.

The health department is now warning everyone of a mosquito epidemic that’s coming from all the puddles of stagnant water from the rains. Who knows maybe malaria is next…

Pretty interesting about the potency of that ala wai water.

Didn’t realize that the sh*t from waikiki tourists and all the yuppie wannabee townies was that poisonous…

But I guess the truth is out…

Even their poop is bad for the aina and wa’a…

Gonna kill us off one way or another…

4

HPD could not solve 90% of the felonies in Honolulu - over 40,000!!! What do they do all the time, park and live at Dunkin’ Donuts???

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051018/NEWS01/510180341

Almost 4,000 felonies a month seems WAY to much for a city that size

5

I live 6 miles east of the Waikiki and the water is still brown in front of my local fishing hole. There is no way that I’ll be getting into the water over here for a while to come. Good thing though is that I’m, forced to drive a bit to surf better waves instead of going to old faithful.

6

Choco poo water is craziness. I spent last week just watching an empty Ala Moana Beach Park with some small South swell energy from my condo. Unreal to see waves at Courts, Concessions, and Kewalos go unridden in clean conditions. You can smell the shtt out there when a soft breeze blows. The crazy thing is that every once in a while, guys would paddle out like nothing was out there.

What happened to Mr. Johnson is aweful:

http://starbulletin.com/2006/04/05/news/story02.html

And kind of scary.

Oh yeah, Oneula. Just buy whatever wetsuit is cheaper if you’re going to be in SoCal for a couple days, and if you’re not planning on doing the cold water thing again anytime soon.

7

two words

drugs

money

in a society increasingly split between the haves and the have-nots

you get a situation like this…

look at rio brazil

and you can see where we’re going

besides an entrenched socialistic oriented government doesn’t help when the economy starts to split like this.

look at Paris now and you can see where we’re going.

when it gets bad enough the haves will just pack up and leave like they always do

then the havenots will become haves again…

and drugs and crime won’t need to be the outlet to equalize the imbalance.

every major city has gone thru this circle of life

growth

death

re-birth

8

My cousin was recently caught up in the drug world in Honolulu. He tells me stories about crooked cops tipping off syndicate leaders, bodies being tossed into the canal, the enormity of the Ice problem. I live in Oakland and it boggles my mind to see hookers standing across the street from the police station.

Had someone break into my car in a parking lot in broad day light. Never had anything stolen from me before and I’ve lived in Oakland (which has a bad rap) all my life.

Just feels like there is a very strong “good ol’ boys” or maybe a “good ol’ local boys” vibe going on. And it’s so small everyone knows eachother. Someone is always a friend of a friend or a relative. If you speak pidgeon and went to the same highschool as the cop chances are he’ll let you off.

I asked my cousin why they can’t catch the syndicate guys and he said when the police plan a raid the dirty cops call them and tell them a raid is coming.

Just strange to me that it always feels so close when I’m there, but maybe that’s just because of my cousin. I mean that guy can’t get away with anything, he must have a guilty face. And now you guys have “Dog the Bounty Hunter” :stuck_out_tongue:

9

Johnson had been drinking at a bar across the street from his one-bedroom condominium at the Tradewinds before he fell into the boat harbor early Friday morning, Dela Cruz said. He had cut himself while climbing out and had open wounds on his feet and legs.

Over the weekend, Dela Cruz and other friends said, Johnson complained of leg pain. By Sunday, he had trouble breathing and called for an ambulance to take him to Queen’s, where he was later placed on life support, they said.

My God, this is gotta be the worst case of bad luck I’ve ever read.

My Honolulu bud called last week complaining about the rains and sewage…basically he said he aint goin anywhere near the water.

How ironic…life supporting rain wreakin havoc…so sad. Looks like your political leaders need to get busy. Wish you guys over there better water times soon.

10

And now we find out the city never obtained permission for the dump:

http://starbulletin.com/2006/04/07/news/story02.html

The city also could’ve avoided all of this if they had followed a mandate back a couple of years ago, to fix this problem before it explodes! Someone dropped the ball and people should get fired over this. I am appalled.

They also had to option of NOT dumping into the Ala Wai and just let it all backup into hotels and businesses, which is what they SHOULD’VE done. The gross mistakes of people should not be dumped unto nature. Let them be responsible for their actions. So what if it hits them in the pocketbook? To ignore the warning signs of impending trouble is their own fault.

That’s my soapbox for the day!

11
Quote:

two words

drugs

money

in a society increasingly split between the haves and the have-nots

you get a situation like this…

It’s hard to get around organized crime /politics / and environmental catastrophe when the powers at hand don’t fight for the right reasons.

The city of Santa Barbara adopted measure B, or D, to clean up its urban creeks and restore native steelhead trout and clean up the watersheds. The simple concept of cleaning creeks has now become so mangled in administration, and administrators making$100,000.00 / year, that the measure B funds are funneled off so 40% goes to the administration. A lot gets talked about over and over. Measure B is a tax on tourists, something of a bed tax, approved by the voters. The politicians seem to fight over those dollars. There is some good coming out of it, but it’s amazing the amount of money spent on things other than cleaning the watershed.

I can’t say much on organized crime, but I bet tourist in Hawaii are taxed up the wahzoo. When the tourist money stops coming in when the unsafe beach signs go up maybe the municipalities can upgrade their infrastructure to handle the flow. A self sustaining system would be nice, but every time I’ve come over and stayed in Town, It’s madning watching the consumption in such an endless one way cycle.

12

kin of timely I guess…

This morning’s headlines: 3 officers indicted in gambling bust They are accused of warning a North Shore operation of impending HPD raids

must say something when in a meeting tuesday I had with the head of the local FBI office, he told us that their primary mission here is to combat political and other forms of corruption. Next to that was their mission to combat terrorism…

When corruption and racketeering ranks higher than terrroism among the feds that says something about the environment.

the ongoing and continuing problem here in hawaii is the significant stake that the “underground economy” or unreported income and cash based transactions plays in the survival of normal folk in a convolutedly inflated economy. Especially when most of the jobs here are serviced based and most of the profits are shuttled immediately off island. Drugs are just another form of income and robbery just another part time job. Tourists never press charges and the people who come here only want to go home once they get disallusioned about the place. Its a place always in a constant state of flux so it’s hard to set a stake in the ground to push a real agenda.

most of the impact to Hawaii comes from the outside and that’s because of the flow of the dollars that line a certain groups pockets (those that decide what happens here). Hawaii will continue to be used and bled for the profit it’s natural beauty provides to those sucking away it’s life blood until there’s no more value it can provide them. Then they will just go somewhere else leaving behind what they leave behind. It’s really like the great alaskan gold rush (property wise) in disguise. Once the value prop disappears to the outside investors those that remain will be allowed the opportunity to rebuild it back to what it was again…

But that’s many decades down the road and probably well after I’m gone…

meanwhile you do what you can do

that’s all god expects out of you

13

Update:

Oliver Johnson died last night due to his infections

Another lady surfer a Ms. Kennedy has reported come down with four types of infectious contaminations after surfing in waikiki with an open cut after the spill and before the warning signs went up on the beach.

I’m sure there’s more to come…

EPA says the city was wrong to divert the sewage to the Ala Wai instead of running lines to another line. The canal was closer and an easy option for the city workers…Probably a bad onsite call in the pouring rain conditions at this time this happened. Someone will lose their job over this if the union doesn’t fight it. City and State workers have strong local unions that allow them to get their reputation as workers… Good or bad depends whether you’re in one of the unions out here or not…

14 
Howzit oneula,Haven't read todays paper yet but yesterdays Advertser article about how the sewage fed and made the flesh eating bacteria spread was very interesting. What a shame the guy died, but then again the idea of going through life with out any limbs is a scary thing also. The state is probably going to get sued to the hilt over this. Aloha,Kokua
15

The city also could’ve avoided all of this if they had followed a mandate back a couple of years ago, to fix this problem before it explodes!

You should be appalled. Sounds like Katrina. In the long run, its always cheaper to avoid major problems. Wouldnt it have been great if those levees were upgraded well before the storm? Or upgraded sewer treatment in Honolulu before the rains?

This is all so bizzare…

16

Then Houston wouldn’t have so many N.O. felons running amuck…but ya know, the ocean is Hawaii’s heart and soul and what brings the millions of tourists every year. Watch, coverups are in progress and finger pointing as we speak.

17
Quote:

Update:

Oliver Johnson died last night due to his infections

Another lady surfer a Ms. Kennedy has reported come down with four types of infectious contaminations after surfing in waikiki with an open cut after the spill and before the warning signs went up on the beach.

I’m sure there’s more to come…

EPA says the city was wrong to divert the sewage to the Ala Wai instead of running lines to another line. The canal was closer and an easy option for the city workers…Probably a bad onsite call in the pouring rain conditions at this time this happened. Someone will lose their job over this if the union doesn’t fight it. City and State workers have strong local unions that allow them to get their reputation as workers… Good or bad depends whether you’re in one of the unions out here or not…

The city was wrong to do that and its really sad to see.

Ill tell you im not going anywhere near town beaches for a long time. Even the sand on the beach is contaminated…no thanks

The city has focused on tourism and other things to the point where we didnt even maintain our own city with antiquated sewage system and roads so full of holes you need a 4X4 to drive around.

18

Let me preface this by saying that I agree with everything that’s been said here. Hawaii is indeed being exploited by evil forces that plot destruction.

That being said, last I heard Hawaii was still a democracy. Find out who is responsible and THROW THE BUMS OUT!

Rgds,

P.O.P.E.

19

Damn,I never thought hawaii would have a sewage problem like we do here in california.Hope they fix the sewer lines and it never happens again!!

20

word out is alot more people are getting sick…

it’ll be kept underground for now HIPPA and all.

until the lawsuits startup…

most were too stupid to heed the warnings and are now looking for help to resolve their ills.

sometimes I don’t understand why surfers/people like this don’t head the warnings or obvious common sense decisions and then want someone to help them after they screw up…

My bro and I talked about that maybe this is the gods way of clearing the lineup of idiots or at least teaching them a very scary lesson.

I wonder if they ever thought about wanting to swim in a cesspool before they made such a stupid decision as to get exposed…

what’s this line of thinking again?

Oh yeah I’m indestructable… (not)

Oh yeah I’m on a longboard…

Oh yeah I’ll spit it out…

Oh yeah I’ll wash with soap after…

idiots all

they deserve what they get for dipping their heads in their own toilet…

Again sometimes I don’t understand these kind of people act like an embicile then sue for their own stupidity.

Most of us here saw what happened and knew better and have stayed away from the temptation why didn’t they…

And as far as Oliver Johnson.

It was never his intent to get thrown or fall into the Ala Wai it was bad fate that befell him and it is very sad.

35 yrs old

an dead less than a week after getting beat up and being exposed.