KAILUA-KONA — North Kona has been without four of its 14 water sources for months, but the Hawaii County Department of Water Supply believes it will revise that ratio in the coming days.
“Honokohau Deepwell is currently undergoing repairs, and we are tentatively looking at returning the well to service by the end of October,” Nyssa Kushi, spokesperson for DWS, wrote in an email Wednesday.
The well at Honokohau is considered an anchor well in the system, boasting a capacity of 1 million gallons and geographically situated to pump water both north and south throughout the region. It has also been one of the department’s most troubled sites, failing once in 2015, again in August 2017 and most recently in March.
Deep wells at Waiaha, Hualalai and Palani remain offline. However, bids to clean the Waiaha well, confirm its capacity and assess its current condition by way of a gyroscopic alignment survey are due today.
“The results will determine how to proceed on the subsequent installation of a production pump and motor,” Kushi wrote.
Waiaha has been out of operation since the summer 2017, when deep well equipment was lost after a cable snapped during extraction.
Derrick’s Well Drilling and Pump Services was the contractor on the Waiaha job and procures several DWS contracts through the competitive bidding process. According to Kushi, Derrick’s is likely to be involved in the bidding process for both the survey and the equipment installation to follow.
“The well contractors are typically the bidders for these projects,” she explained. “The companies that perform the actual alignment survey are subcontractors to the well contractors.”
DWS expects survey work to commence at Waiaha by the end of the year. Currently, there are no firm timelines for the start or completion of work on deep wells at Hualalai and Palani.