Water department may waive upcoming bill for Big Island customers impacted by Hurricane Lala
Some of the 1,200 customers in the system were cut off from water, others lost their water meters, and some had to boil their water for safety.
Department of Water Supply customers in the Ka‘ū District could see their next bill waived if their water was cut off or they were under a boil notice for more than a month due to damage or destroyed infrastructure from Hurricane Lala.
Keith Okamoto, manager and chief engineer of the water department, presented the proposed bill waiver to the nine-member Water Board during Tuesday’s meeting in Kona. The waiver would be for customers charged by consumption.
Okamoto said the department also is considering waiving bills for some customers charged a fixed minimum, also called a standby monthly service based on their meter size, due to approximately 100 water meters that were washed away in the Aug. 15 storm.
“The last time we read meters was July 6 in that region,” Okamoto said. “Normally, we would have read again in the early part of September on a two-month cycle, but we had meters that were gone.”
More than a month after the Category 1 storm brought heavy rain and mud to the rural district, Okamoto said residents are still recovering.
“It didn’t sit right with me that we would charge them full price for a product that wasn’t full quality,” Okamoto said, adding waiving the upcoming bill “just seems like the right thing to do.”
Lala destroyed 27 homes and did much damage to many other homes, with Hawaiʻi County estimating $53 million in damages to its facilities and infrastructure, including 3,000 linear feet of water mains.
The pipe has not been replaced in some portions of the water system and some customers do not have their meters back.
“It’s not fair to even assess standby for those customers,” Okamoto said, “and definitely even those people that might have had water but were on a boil water notice this whole time. We weren’t providing the product that they’re typically getting from us.”
According to the latest update from the water department, approximately 98% of customers in the Wai’ōhinu-Nā‘ālehu Water System have water service. Recovery efforts continue to focus on customers who remain without service in the Wai’ōhinu Homestead service area.
The precautionary boil water notice was canceled only five days ago, on Sept. 18.
The board was in support of waiving the upcoming bill for those impacted customers and advised Okamoto to come back to the next meeting with a concrete recommendation.
Board Member Guy Alameda, who represents portions of Hilo, praised the department for bringing forth a plan to provide relief for customers impacted by Lala.
“You guys want to put relief on the customer during that time, and even extend it because of the quality of the product is not being up to par,” Alameda said. “I don’t think the electric company does that, or any other company would do that.”
Wai‘ōhinu- Nā‘ālehu Water System has about 1,200 accounts and includes South Point, Discovery Harbor and Green Sands, along with Wai‘ōhinu and Nā‘ālehu.
The system is fed by three water sources. The primary water source, Mountain House Spring, is five miles north of Highway 11, above Wai‘ōhinu. Because the piping to the natural spring has been damaged or destroyed, water is now primarily coming from the Nā‘ālehu well, which requires generators to pump the water to customers.
The well’s capacity is 350 gallons per minute. Okamoto said that was more than adequate to supply the needs of the system.
The Hāʻau Spring in the system, which feeds South Point, is still functioning. However, Okamoto said, the output from the spring is low.
After the storm, Okamoto said the partially buried pipes from the spring were completely exposed because of the “big washouts.”
“Those pipes now would be like 10 feet up in the air because that’s how much ground got washed away,” he said Tuesday.
Also, Okamoto said it was anticipated that stormwater got into the system after Lala, so a boil water notice was put in place. That notice was lifted after water was tested for bacteria in several locations and nothing was found.
The department has estimated the pipe repair to the Mountain House Spring to be completed in two months, but Okamoto is hoping it will be sooner.
He said hard blue rock is beneath the pipes where they originally were laid. The plan is to secure the new pipes in the rock with concrete encase to harden it for future weather events.
Since the Nā‘ālehu well is pumped by motors, Okamoto said it’s critical to get the pipes restored to the spring before those mechanisms go down.
“If that goes down, we’re going to really be in a world of hurt,” he said. “That’s why we’ve got to get that back online.”
Okamoto didn’t have cost estimates for the repairs and meter replacements, telling the board that the department would try to get reimbursed with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The next water board meeting will be Oct. 27 in Hilo.
