KAILUA-KONA — The proposal to widen Mamalahoa Highway in South Kohala is on the cusp of clearing an important project hurdle.
Mayor Harry Kim sent a letter to Department of Land and Natural Resources Chairperson Suzanne Case on July 7, imploring her to help expedite the Section 106 process.
That process must be resolved by Aug. 14 in order for the project to maintain $11 million in funding from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), which is crucial to the highway widening.
“We are at a critical state where we need to reach a planning and design conclusion … to encumber federal obligation funds,” Kim wrote. “We are still so far away.”
Kim said Friday that the DLNR responded the same day, and since then the project has progressed quickly in a short time.
The purpose of the Section 106 process is to first gauge if any historically significant sites might be affected by a project, then eliminate or sufficiently mitigate those potential impacts. Such determinations must be made before any federal dollars are released to the project in question.
At a state level, Section 106 reviews fall under the purview of the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD).
SHPD accepted the project’s Archaeological Inventory Survey on July 10, three days after Kim sent the letter. Eight days later, SHPD “concurred with FHWA’s determination of effect.” The necessary paperwork has since gone out to FHWA and the Hawaii Department of Transportation.
In an email to WHT Friday, SHPD Administrator Alan Downer said his agency’s review, as well as SHPD’s role in the process, is now complete.
Kim said Friday both he and Deputy Director of Public Works for Hawaii County Allan Simeon are now confident the federal funding will be secured and the project will proceed as planned. The mayor included his thanks to the DLNR for its responsiveness at a crucial stage of the project.
The $11 million in federal funding represents a substantial majority of the money needed to widen Mamalahoa Highway and losing it would have put the county in a precarious position.
“The decision (on how to proceed) would have had to be made on what little money we have on the county side,” Kim said. “We needed the federal monies to do the whole project.”
