The Nawiliwili Watershed Council will host a “pre-spring cleaning” of Kalapaki Bay and Nawiliwili Stream Thursday afternoon. Volunteers meeting at Nawiliwili Park on the jetty side will, between 3 and 6 p.m., help clean up the jetty and Kalapaki Beach.
The Nawiliwili Watershed Council will host a “pre-spring cleaning” of Kalapaki Bay and Nawiliwili Stream Thursday afternoon.
Volunteers meeting at Nawiliwili Park on the jetty side will, between 3 and 6 p.m., help clean up the jetty and Kalapaki Beach. They’ll also paddle up the stream in donated kayaks to remove trash, said Dave Martin of the council.
“Everybody’s welcome and there is definitely no cost to attend. We are asking that people bring gloves” for the trash pickup, Martin added.
He said that in addition to the cleanup, the event is being held to call attention to the environmental problems at Kalapaki Bay, where an effluent spill last month at Kaua’i County’s Lihu’e wastewater treatment plant poured between 50,000 and 250,000 gallons of treated sewage into the bay and nearby ground.
“It doesn’t seem like they (county officials) are doing that much” to fix the wastewater plant system failures, Martin said.
In addition to the Kalapaki spill Jan. 6, which closed the bay for four days to swimming and other water activities, there was a 10,000-gallon spill of raw sewage spill Port Allen Feb. 1 from another county wastewater plant.
Both mishaps were attributed to failures in the county’s automated systems for monitoring plant operations.
County spokeswoman Beth Tokioka said Tuesday that a technician from O’ahu spent three days last week inspecting the county’s plant systems. “We are awaiting his final report,” she said.
“While he was here, he did find some irregularities in the wiring of the systems, and that was corrected. Upon the technician’s final inspection last week, both systems (Port Allen and Lihu’e) were working properly,” Tokioka said.
She said the county is pricing another alarm system and considering taking out a maintenance service contract on the systems. If pursued, both purchases would be done under an emergency purchase provision to speed the process.
Additional information on Thursday’s cleanup is available from Martin at 823-8077 or Cheryl Lovell-Obatake, another watershed council representative, at 245-8783.
Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and mailto:dwilken@pulitzer.net
