KAILUA-KONA —Hawaii County Department of Water Supply finished repairs on the recently downed Keahuolu Deepwell ahead of schedule and it is up and running as of Wednesday afternoon, according to an update issued by Hawaii County Civil Defense.
DWS has rolled back more stringent restrictions for North Kona it enacted last week after Keahuolu faltered.
Those restrictions, which remained in place until 4 p.m. Wednesday, were an intensified version of the 25 percent mandatory water usage reduction that has been in effect for the region since January and returned with the recent repair.
The mandatory 25 percent usage reduction remains in effect and will likely persist late into the year, despite another downed deepwell at Waiaha is scheduled to return to active service at the end of July. The reduction asks, for example, residents to limit irrigation but doesn’t call for an outright ban on it as the more stringent restriction did.
Keith Okamoto, manager and chief engineer with DWS on Hawaii Island, summed up the dire quality of the situation in simple terms Monday when asked via email how close North Kona was to disruptions in water service to its more than 11,000 accounts.
“This is the closest we’ve been,” he wrote.
How we got here
When the initial restrictions were announced in January, Robert Ravenscraft, water district supervisor in Kona, told WHT they may only persist for a handful of weeks. At the time, four wells in North Kona were down. Only 13 wells service the area.
The measures early this year were largely precautionary, as the well at Keahuolu was scheduled to return to service in March and was set to cut the number of inoperable wells from four to three. The well at Waiaha remained on track to return to functionality in late July, which officials said at the time would bring the number of inoperable wells down to only two, assuming any further interruptions were avoided.
Then in March, after Keahuolu was repaired, the deepwell at Keopu went down. It was what Ravenscraft referred to then as “a zero sum game.” The number of downed wells remained at four and the 25 percent water usage reduction remained in effect.
The situation worsened in coming months, not because of more technical problems with DWS mechanisms, but because water restrictions were being ignored by the community, officials said.
In subsequent interviews, Okamoto and Ravenscraft noted tank levels and pumping history indicated compliance early on, but that compliance relaxed as weeks turned into months. They also said in recent days that some consumers have remained vigilant in their efforts to conserve water, but that such an approach didn’t appear to be a common thread throughout all of North Kona.
Then last week, a little more than a month before Waiaha was set to come back online and again drop the number of non-functioning wells from four down to three, the newly installed motor at the Keahuolu well suffered a thrust bearing failure.
It was a development Okamoto had described only days before as being potentially “catastrophic” were it to occur.
The number of inoperable wells, which was expected to soon be at the more manageable number of three, instead jumped suddenly to five.
Sen. Josh Green was moved to send a letter to Gov. David Ige last Friday asking him to declare a state of emergency to “prevent a potential catastrophe.” Ige was on Hawaii Island that day attending an event with the Kona-Kohala Chamber of Commerce where he spoke to WHT reporters on the issue.
“It was unusual that so many of the wells are going out at the same time, and so certainly we will try and get more information and see what we can do to provide support,” Ige said. “Obviously, so many of the wells going down is a big challenge.”
How we avoid this in the future
Okamoto and Ravenscraft both explained that unfortunate timing has played a significant role in North Kona’s water situation as it stands. But neither has denied DWS culpability for the widespread problems of well functionality.
“We have got to be better prepared and have the appropriate spare pumps and motors on hand,” Okamoto said in an interview with WHT last month.
Repair teams worked in double shifts over the holiday weekend to bring the well at Keahuolu back online only days after its failure. They were able to work so quickly because parts for that well, unlike parts for the others, were already on island and ready for installation.
Well repairs typically take at least 4-6 months, and usually longer. Pumps and motors are unique to each well based on specifications and are built to order. Mainland manufacturers of the equipment don’t stock them for that reason.
The cost of well repairs can range between $300,000-$800,000 depending on the problems that exist and if electrical upgrades are required. Wells have an average life expectancy of roughly seven years, but can malfunction earlier or last several years longer than expected.
Okamoto said parts haven’t been ordered in advance due to cost and because warranties expire after one year, meaning if a well ran longer than expected, warranties might expire on pumps and motors while they sat in storage.
The plan moving forward is to order parts for crucial wells to avoid water problems in the future that mirror those North Kona has faced over the last several months. Okamoto said it is a more expensive strategy but has also now proven to be a necessary safeguard.
DWS operations are funded solely from water bill revenues. The department may “rarely” receive state money for capital improvement projects, but it typically borrows money when necessary for such projects from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund Loan program, which it then pays back out of DWS revenues, Okamoto said.
“We’re able to accommodate several sets (of well parts) per year in our budget,” Okamoto wrote in an email to WHT Wednesday.
DWS must also administer bid processes for each well repair, which adds to the duration downed wells spend offline. In the future, Okamoto said, bids will be accepted and contracts awarded before wells falter to ensure an expedited repair process.
“We currently have a bid out for three sets of spare pumps and motors, one of which is for Honokohau Well,” Okamoto wrote. “Bid opening is July 13, 2017. Backup policy will be determined by priority and available system redundancy, which is unique to each of our 23 water systems.”
The mandatory 25 percent water usage reduction for North Kona remains in effect indefinitely. DWS will also continue to monitor water use.