Hawaii County on Wednesday moved one lot closer to completing the long-sought Mamalahoa bypass, but the administration won’t make its mid-2013 target date to begin construction of this phase of the highway.
Instead, construction likely won’t commence until March, said Senior Deputy Corporation Counsel Joe Kamelamela. Public Works officials have estimated the road will take 18 months to complete.
The County Council on Wednesday approved paying the Edward Seiji Ikeda Revocable Trust $54,050 for a 3,393-square-foot parcel to be used as road right of way and drainage. The road will be a two-lane highway, with room to widen to four lanes in the future.
The county also agreed to remove an existing large mango tree and plant a new mango tree in a location agreed upon by the county and the trust, according to the six-page memorandum of agreement. The county is also required to install a septic system with a leach field, as well as guardrails.
That leaves five more parcels to be acquired, Kamelamela said.
The southern corridor of the bypass road will run from Halekii Street to Napoopoo Junction in South Kona, extending from the road Hokulia developers built several years ago. It will also include improvements on Halekii Street from its intersection with Mamalahoa Highway Bypass Road to Kona Scenic Park.
The road now runs from Alii Drive in Keauhou to Halekii Street in Kealakekua.
Kamelamela said the tentative schedule is to complete memoranda of agreement with the owners of the remaining five parcels by October, and, if possible, put the project out to bid by the end of December. That would allow construction to begin in March.
Public Works Director Warren Lee late last year estimated a mid-2013 construction date.
“Construction was supposed to start by the end of the third quarter this year,” South Kona/Ka‘u Councilwoman Brenda Ford told Kamelamela. “What’s holding it up?”
“It’s taking longer than expected to do the final construction plans,” Kamelamela said.
Hawaii County officials have planned for a Mamalahoa bypass in South Kona since the late 1970s. Years of litigation followed when the Coupe family, one of the landowners along the route, sued, saying the county’s condemnation action was illegal because it was done for the benefit of a private developer. Eventually, the county won the lawsuit after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request to hear the case.
Lee said Wednesday the county has to wait until it gets a $20 million payment from the bonding company before it can start building the $30 million project. That money is anticipated to come through early next year.
“If there was a delay, it was not a significant delay,” Lee said of the construction date.
He said the construction may take longer than 18 months, depending on how the plans tackle the Napoopoo Junction. That intersection will be tricky because of its angle and slope, especially if construction is to continue while traffic is using the road, he said.
Ford said she’s disappointed the road work has been postponed again.
“I was told we would have construction under way by now and here we are still trying to complete the purchase of land,” Ford said. “That should have been done a long time ago.”