Depending on whom you ask, Ocean View waited somewhere between 15 and 40 years to get its first well.
But the second one could come a lot sooner. Residents of the subdivision are organizing a committee to help bring the key element on which progress depends: another source of water.
The release of a recent $725,000 legislative appropriation for that purpose hinges on the community working with Hawaii County to determine where the second source should be located. Without the additional well, homes and businesses can’t hook up even to existing county sources. That lack has hindered the area from progressing socially and financially, community members say.
“We dream of having a school and a hospital,” said Fortune Otter, president of the Ocean View Community Association. “We need water redundancy before we can get any of these things.”
Ka‘u and South Kona Councilwoman Brenda Ford said the $725,000 — gained last session by State Rep. Richard Creagan, D-Naalehu — would cover design, engineering and land purchase once a well site is determined. Ford is hoping the full council will back her upcoming request that the Department of Water Supply put the well on its five-year plan.
Ocean View’s single well does not have a distribution system. Instead, it links to two spigots, one for commercial water haulers and one for individual use. The water is safe for drinking but is salty enough that some residents don’t like the taste.
The county has capped pumping of the existing well at one million gallons a day, in the interest of making sure the aquifer is not degraded, Ford said.
“We get a lot of traffic through the spigot station,” said Ocean View flower farmer Loren Heck. “It’s pretty much a line all day. Some people think we’re drawing too much from that source.”
The $6 million well was completed in 2012 following years of delay and frustration that led to a probe by an investigative committee of the Legislature.
“People are moving here expecting to get water and they can’t,” Heck continued. “There’s a new shopping center going in that can’t get water. They have a lot of plans. They want to put in a bank, but they’ll have trouble attracting businesses if they can’t offer water.”
The state appropriation is essentially planning money that marks a better start than previous attempts to get the first well, Creagan said.
“It’s a problematic area for a lot of reasons, but without water, it’s tough to have proper living conditions,” Creagan said.
The lawmaker said he is also willing to pursue funds for a small desalination plant if the community decides it wants such a facility to treat water from the existing well.
“Australia has put in desalination plants in the northern Marshall Islands,” Creagan said. “They’re run by the community. If people in remote northern islands can do it, Ocean View can do it. But the goal at this point is to get the second well.”
The cost of building a well and reservoir is $7 million to $9 million and is typically financed by bonds, Ford said. The second well would likely be situated somewhere within 5 miles of the first well, somewhere mauka so the water could feed by gravity through a transmission line to a connection with the first well’s line, she said.
“Hopefully it will dilute the salt if we are pulling from a different part of the reservoir,” she said.
Ford said the cost of drilling could be reduced 30 percent by bringing in drill trainees via Innovative Readiness Training, a program of the Department of Defense. She has requested meetings between the IRT and county water supply leadership.
The new advisory committee of Ocean View residents is set to meet for the first time next month to forge recommendations for well placement.
“We’re going to try to come up with a location that the DWS is happy with,” Heck said, “somewhere close to where a school could be.”