The beach may be manini, but the parking problems aren’t.
And a solution has been a long time coming. But the Hawaii County Council is scheduled today to put the finishing touches on a bill officially making roads around Manini Beach no-parking zones.
Since January, residents in the area have appealed to the county to restrict parking along the traffic-choked narrow roadways, a problem exacerbated by state work on Napoopoo Road and the closing of a parking lot at the wharf area of Kealakekua Bay State Historical Park.
Manini Beach Road, Kahauloa Road and Kahauloa Street were so blocked by parked vehicles, residents were concerned that emergency response vehicles couldn’t get through. It was a safety issue, South Kona/Ka‘u Councilwoman Maile David said Monday.
“It was unreal,” David said. “Everybody was parking on that little one-lane road.”
The county Department of Public Works, on an emergency basis, has already erected no-parking signs along the roads. Bill 107, set for its final reading in Hilo today, makes the no-parking zones permanent.
“These amendments are being proposed based on a concern that cars are parking in this heavily used beach area in places too narrow for parking,” Public Works Director Warren Lee said in an Aug. 15 letter to the County Council. “Approval of these amendments would allow for the appropriate no-parking signs to be installed and for proper police enforcement to be done.”
David said she and county Managing Director Wally Lau have met with area residents who had hoped the county could put a parking lot in the area. But land simply isn’t available that would meet the county’s needs, David said.
The no-parking bill, she said, “just addresses the first and foremost safety issues.”
Residents and beachgoers in the area Monday questioned why the parking lot at Kealakekua Bay State Historical Park had been closed, and wondered why the county couldn’t work with owners of vacant lots to acquire more parking space.
In the meantime, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources is working on a Kealakekua Bay State Historical Park master plan that should further alleviate parking problems in the area.
Sporadic planning stretches back decades. The latest round started in 2008 for 221 acres around the bay, but the inclusion in 2012 of the bay itself and the Napoopoo landing and wharf area increased the park size, giving planners another 315 acres to study. In May, state parks officials and consultant Belt Collins Hawaii LCC resumed studies of the bay’s resources, traffic and parking and began a survey of marine resources and ocean recreation.
These efforts — plus a public meeting originally scheduled for late summer or early fall to gather input from the community — are geared to create a draft management plan, to be followed by an environmental impact statement.
Some residents want the plan to include a 3-acre parking lot off Napoopoo Road about 300 feet mauka of the water, where kayak vendors can consolidate, and a 5-acre area of county land that could be turned into parking for Manini Beach so that vehicles would not edge onto private property.
Comments on the master plan/EIS process can be shared by email (Kealakekua@bchdesign.com) or by calling John Kirkpatrick at Belt Collins Hawaii LLC at 521-5361.
The County Council meeting begins at 9 a.m. today in Hilo. Council committee meetings are scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. The public can testify at the meetings in Hilo council chambers, or by videoconference from the West Hawaii Civic Center, Waimea council office, conference room adjacent to the Hisaoka gym in Kapaau, the Naalehu state office building and the Pahoa neighborhood facility.
(West Hawaii Today staff writer Graham Milldrum contributed to this report.)
