Of the four plans studied in the draft environmental impact statement for the Waikiki Natatorium, two are under serious consideration: the beach plan (BP) and the newly introduced perimeter deck plan (PDP). Mayor Kirk Caldwell stated that he personally favors the beach plan but, in the name of compromise, will support his Department of Design and Construction’s recommendation of the perimeter deck plan. He also mentioned the possibility of private sector financial support for the PDP.
After reviewing the plans, we believe the PDP is a fatally flawed “Hail Mary” attempt by restorationist interests to save the 2,500-seat swimming pool in the ocean. The plan would replace existing concrete walls on the ocean and ewa sides of the pool with fiberglass reinforced plastic bars. These porous walls would allow free tidal action in and out of the pool. Ninety years of inert degraded sand, seaweed and dead ocean life have become a blackened sulfuric muck (silt) on the football-field-sized pool bottom and could be up to 16 feet deep beneath the old diving towers. The PDP ignores the problem with no plan or money budgeted for its remediation, whereas the BP budgets grating of the bottom and covering it with new sand.
The fiberglass-plastic walls, in conjunction with the silt problem, raise important environmental and health issues. Once built, the free-flowing currents, along with swimmers, would stir up the muck and suspend it and carry it out of the pool onto the surrounding reefs.
As ocean users know, silt lasts a long time and chokes reefs, lessens water clarity, and harms invertebrate sea creatures.
The state Department of Health created saltwater swimming pool rules for the Natatorium. Perhaps the most important among them states that a 6-inch white disc on the pool bottom must be visible from the pool deck to assure that lifeguards can see drowning swimmers on the bottom.
The pool water in the PDP plan will invariably be chronically murky, making it impossible to meet the water clarity standard in the pool rules. Proponents have reclassified the Natatorium as a “swimming basin” and claim that since it is no longer a pool, it does not need to follow DOH pool rules. We disagree.
Another glaring safety issue occurs on big surf days when wave action fills the pool and then rushes out to sea creating a sucking effect on the inner grate wall. Swimmers near the grates could be sucked onto and pinned until the pool empties enough to release them into the murky water. Bars, 4 inches apart, also are a potential head, arm or leg trap for children playing in the pool.
Only commercialization of the 2,500-seat stadium in the ocean will cover these and other expensive maintenance costs. That would disenfranchise local Kaimana Beach and surrounding park users and greatly diminish access to this important recreational resource.
We support the beach plan as the most economical, safe, environmentally pono, easy-to-maintain, natural solution.
In comparing costs for the beach and the deck plans, I was informed recently that the city included the cost of building a new lifeguard building in Kapiolani Park into the cost of the beach plan. This multimillion-dollar project is not mentioned in the EIS and creates the impression that the PDP is the less-expensive plan.
To access the draft EIS and more information, see savekaimanabeach.org. If you agree, please lend support by stating your preference to the mayor by Dec. 24 (Department of Design and Construction, 650 S. King St., Honolulu 96813, or at WWMCNatatorium@aecom.com).
Your voice matters.
An avid swimmer, Rick Bernstein created the Kaimana Beach Coalition in 1990 to help protect the beach from commercialization and environmental degradation.
