Hawaii Public Radio: The Conversation
December 21, 2018
By Catherine Cruz
The fishing vessel Pacific Paradise ran aground off the coast of Waikiki in 2017. It was stuck in place for 58 days. CREDIT NOAA
Transcribed with quotes emphasized by the Kaimana Beach Coalition.
Catherine Cruz: Just days before deadline for public input, we’re learning more about the preferred alternative to the future of the Waikiki War Memorial Natatorium. State Health Director Bruce Anderson, who grew up swimming in the pool, talks to us about his concerns about the proposed deck. Shoring the structure up may mean driving scores of pilings 65 feet into the reef, and he has concerns about silt in the pool affecting the marine conservation district next door.
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Bruce Anderson: In the past we’ve had concerns about water quality and safety at the pool. It was proposed as [an] enclosed swimming pool much the way it was when it was first constructed and even then problems with water quality, turbidity, was always high from sediments being stirred up in the pool. I remember swimming there as a kid, and we never saw the bottom. In fact it was just a murky, murky pool, and the slide and the platforms were what attracted most of the kids and others to the area. It truly was a nice venue for getting together and enjoying those activities, but it never was a great swimming venue. Even the swimmers I know who swam in the Olympics said it was hard to swim there and they could never see the bottom. Of course it wouldn’t be sanctioned as a competitive pool these days, given that all those pools are freshwater. Saltwater has a different buoyancy and wouldn’t be appropriate.
In any event, getting back to the most current proposal, it does [address] some of the issues as it relates to water quality. We wouldn’t worry as much about staph infections, it does allow for some open circulation, actually it’s an elevated pool deck, which allows for water to pass underneath the deck and refresh water in the pool. Part of the biggest problem in the past probably would remain and that is the accumulation of sediment. The pool acts as a sediment catchment basin – the turbid water gets into that area, it’s calm and all the solids settle out and you get a layer a sediment over the years. In fact, even over the first year or so the pool was in operation originally it started accumulating and continue[d] throughout the time the pool was there. I see this as an ongoing issue – it will be very hard to clean out the sediment and it naturally will occur, there’s nothing anyone can do about that. It gets stirred up by the surf and comes in and then settles, and that’s the way everything works, except that it can’t go anywhere because it’s settling into a basin that would collect the sediment over time, it would be suspended any time it was agitated, which is what happened in the past.
So that’s the biggest issue. It does not meet our pool rule definition. That was a key issue, we do have specific rules for saltwater swimming pools which would require among other things that you should be able to see a disc at the bottom of the pool, that would be very difficult with the original proposal. And it’s hard to know whether that would have been a problem here. The reason for that is you need to recover someone if they sink before they drown. In fact there were some, at least one death at the old natatorium because they couldn’t find the individual until it was too late. So being able to see the bottom is a key safety issue, but as far was water quality goes it should meet the coastal water quality standards, no reason to think it wouldn’t. That would be just as safe to swim there as it would at Kaimana but the turbidity issue is still gonna be a problem as I see it, I think they’re gonna need to think through that.
And I would also question its utility. It’s a variant of the old pool that [makes] it difficult to swim. I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to be constructed, but they talked about bars around the perimeter of the pool, which would be presumably to keep sharks and other things that you don’t want in the pool out of the pool, and they would allow for water to be circulating. But that seems to be a safety issue in my mind, but that’s for others to best determine.
There are some issues that need to be looked at, but the key issue for many was whether or not it would meet our swimming pool rule definition, and it does not, and therefore would not be subject to the very stringent standards we have for public swimming pools. It’s a very large pool, and even when we had hundreds of kids swimming there, school children and others swam there regularly – it would be hard to keep track of where everyone was at any one time. And the problem with a pool where you can’t see the bottom, is if someone gets in trouble and sinks, you’re not going to see them and be able to recover them in time. So lifeguards would certainly help to minimize the risk, but it would still be there, and again I would question the utility of the pool. I remember I actually learned to swim at Kaimana Beach, and the reason for that was it was too dangerous too learn how to swim in the pool. And finally after we learned how to swim in the ocean we would have our time in the pool. And we [were] watched very carefully and by then we were able to swim confidently and as far as I know no one got in trouble during those last days of your swimming lessons, but it was not a nice venue for swimming as it was – I had one other item that I think might need to be considered, and that is talking to Bruce Carlson (Director of the Waikiki Aquarium from 1985 to 2002 – KBC) and some of the others who ran the aquarium, that’s where they go to catch box jellyfish, they could almost always find them there. They apparently settled to the bottom and they come up during the full moon, and as we all know, I think it’s 6, 7, 8 days, I can’t remember exactly when after the full moon, they’re up on the surface where they may get into contact with people swimming. But box jellyfish might be an issue, I don’t remember them being a problem when the pool was used regularly, but things have changed since then. (there is increasing evidence linking box jellyfish abundance to climate change – KBC)
All sorts of things I think need to be investigated more thoroughly and obviously we need to look at alternatives as well, but this pool is not going to violate any of the pool rules that we have because it simply doesn’t meet the definition of a public swimming pool. When you look at the existing pool now, although it hasn’t been maintained in decades, it’s full of sand and sediment, and I can’t see that not continuing to be an issue, it’s going to be a huge maintenance problem even if it’s a soft bottom with beach sand, you’re going to have sediment on top of the sand, and there’s no way to avoid that. That’s going to happen naturally. And I don’t know how you could possibly remove that material. I can’t think of any mechanical way you could do it that would be effective.
CC: So it’s just gonna spread out in that area?
BA: Yeah, and again the risk from a safety standpoint is that silt gets resuspended, that’s what happened when people were swimming there in the past, you get hundreds of kids in there and others and they agitate the sediment and it would get suspended in the water column and it was a murky green pool, like pea soup some days. But that’s probably what will happen again, maybe not to the same extent, but it certainly is an issue that planners need to think about.
CC: Apparently the proposal calls for putting pilings in along the reef?
BA: Well they have to suspend the pool deck somehow and I presume they’d be pounding down pilings and then suspending the deck on top of those.
CC: Anything from the Health Department perspective on that at all?
BA: Oh, they’d have to implement best management practices during any construction there, probably put in silk curtains to minimize the amount of sediment and construction debris that would be suspended in the area. The pool area, area around the pool is a marine protected area. It has the highest levels of protection. We were very concerned when that fishing vessel went aground last year and it sat there for many months and did have adverse impacts on corals and other things that are in the area. The area’s under stress as it is and any construction activity there would have to implement very stringent measures to prevent any damage to corals and other marine life that are – that’s in the vicinity.
The point is that area around the natatorium is a very important area from a marine protection standpoint, and any construction activity there would be scrutinized to be sure that it wasn’t adversely impacting [the] nearby environment.
CC: Anderson was also the acting administrator for the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Aquatics Division. He made reference to the fishing vessel Pacific Paradise that ran aground at Kaimana Beach last year. This month the Department of Land and Natural Resources recommended fining the boat owner more than 300,000 dollars because of the damage to the reef…
