What a wonderful way to start Thanksgiving with the front page of West Hawaii Today quoting U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz declaring that the federal government is making the biggest infrastructure investment in Hawaii in the past 30 years with at least $2.8 billion for roads, harbors, highways etc. Wow.
He went on to say “this is about looking around our state and seeing dilapidated infrastructure — and finally doing something really significant about it.”
Logically this investment should go toward projects that have been on the books forever and never constructed in some chronological order. Based on this I think one would be hard pressed to find a weaker link in the chain of infrastructure on this island than Waimea’s Waiaka Bridge — the barely two-lane bridge that is the gauntlet that at least half of the cars and trucks traversing the island must cross.
The replacement of this bridge and the fabled Kawaihae-Waimea (Mudlane) Bypass road on which all development on the west side of this island has been based since 1970 has never seen the light of day. Yet our county’s Planning Department turns a blind eye to this fact and continues to approve large and small scale developments that only adds more traffic to this already dangerous problem that will only get worse with every new home constructed.
When this bridge was built in 1932 the population of the Big Island was 73,325. The 2020 census shows it at 200,629 basically 273% larger. The inspection of the bridge in 2011 “labeled the bridge as structurally deficient…. Stating the bridge has a ‘sufficiency rating’ of 26 out of 100.” If the bridge fails all traffic going through Waimea will have to be detoured through the Waikoloa Road many miles away. More importantly all shipping to and from the Kawaihae Harbor will also be impacted and moved to the Waikoloa road adding 30-plus miles and additional costs that will passed on to us, the residents.
In researching this letter I came across an article from the Hawaii Tribune-Herald dated July 14, 2019 entitled Waiaka Stream Bridge project gains traction. The article quoted state Sen. Lorraine Inouye and Department of Transportation spokeswoman, Shelly Kunishige that the “long stalled project to replace the Waiaka Stream Bridge is moving forward. …. “The environmental studies and the design, we hope to have completed by the end of 2021”, as in today. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything in the media indicating that this has been done.
The last townhall meeting I attended on the bridge replacement was in 2006 — which was a follow up to the original meeting on the Waimea/Kawaihae/Mudlane bypass road held 34 years prior in 1972. So before we start looking around the island for appropriate places to spend our share of the federal money, our government should take this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put its money where its mouth has been for the last five decades and build our long overdue Kawaihae/Mudlane bypass road and replace the obsolete Waiaka Bridge.
Ric Rocker is a resident of Waimea.