Somewhere hidden in the oath of office for Honolulu mayor is this line: "I solemnly swear to postpone, prevaricate and generally diddle around with the Waikiki Natatorium until my term of office ends."
Mayors Jeremy Harris, Mufi Hannemann and Peter Carlisle have all taken a swing at the pool, but no one has so far connected.
This week, the city is starting preventive safety work, which consists of chipping away the decaying wall and rim of the pool.
Workers will erect temporary scaffolds and use hand tools to remove the damaged concrete, which will be lowered onto rafts and brought ashore, officials said last week.
The 100-meter salt-water pool is something of a metaphor for Honolulu’s inability to accomplish much of anything.
If you think following all the rules amidst a divided and ready-to-sue citizenry is tough for a dilapidated war memorial, just imagine the future furor over the city’s $5.3 billion rail project.
Back to the pool.
This 84-year-old blight on the Waikiki shoreline has been on the verge of municipal ministrations since 1996, when then-Mayor Jeremy Harris announced an $11 million restoration plan.
The restoration should have started in 1928, which is when city officials discovered their splendid new pool didn’t flush and drain seawater as designed, turning the water inside into a murky, stagnant, disease-breeding slop.
Harris saw the restored memorial, dedicated to Hawaii residents who died fighting in World War I, as a new facility running day and night.
It would be a local swimming pool during the day and some sort of a tourist facility or show at night.
There were protests, lawsuits, City Council hearings, environmental impact statements.
A state judge even ruled that the thing was actually a swimming pool and had to be just as clean as a regulated swimming pool.
The grand ideas all bobbed away as the debate swirled around staph infections, turbidity, charging tourists to swim in the pool and who would run the inevitable gift shop.
Without consensus, the city still renovated the outside of the pool, fluffed up the arcade and added bathrooms and some offices for lifeguards.
Nearly a decade of indecision and lawsuits did not, however, halt the decay to the actual pool deck, which was collapsing.
The decision was to tear it down and rebuild the pretty arch somewhere else. But now Peter Carlisle is mayor and his decision is to (you guessed it) wait.
Yet another environmental impact statement is being done and Carlisle is waiting until the EIS is done before deciding to go along with Hannemann’s plan to tear it down.
Back when he was health director, Bruce Anderson had a reasonable suggestion to keep the arch and bleachers, fill in the pool and turn it into the best beach volleyball court in the nation.
Coincidentally, the University of Hawaii announced in August that it was adding women’s sand volleyball next year. Beach volleyball is a hot new emerging Division I women’s sport.
When it is so easy to make so much sense, you just know we won’t do it.
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
