HONOLULU (KHON2) — State officials saw a tremendous improvement in the Ala Wai Canal after crews worked overnight on Tuesday, Jan. 28 to remove debris ahead of the approaching storm.
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Some might find it hard to believe that the major improvements were made in less than 24 hours, but it started when crews arrived at 8 p.m. on Tuesday and stayed until 6 a.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 29.
“So pulling this boom in, bringing all this trash forward and making sure that we can pull it out, dump it in our trucks and take it out of here immediately,” said HDOT director Ed Sniffen.
The Hawaii Department of Transportation said 14 truckloads of debris were removed from the canal since Tuesday and about seven more were expected to go before the next round of rain hits.
Sniffen said they would have had a much bigger problem on their hands if nothing was done in the first place.
“If we waited for the storm to come through before we took this debris out, there’s a potential this debris causes backups in the stream causing overflow, overflowing or flooding in different areas. And we don’t want that. So we have the time now to make sure we can take it out,” Sniffen said.
One Ala Wai resident said mitigating the flood risk isn’t just for visitors to Waikiki.
“As bad as it looks in Hawaii because this is Waikiki and everybody wants to see beautiful things and they come here and whatever, but doing this is going to save a big problem, I think starting later today or tomorrow,” said Joe, a resident.
Acting Governor Sylvia Luke signed an emergency proclamation to expedite the cleanup process. State crews will handle the Ala Wai itself while the City works on removing trash and homeless from upstream tributaries.
“When you talk about the volume of debris that we saw in the Ala Wai canal earlier this week, as a result of those heavy rains, it’s really all of our responsibility to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to prevent that from happening again,” said City and County of Honolulu deputy director of Communications Ian Scheuring.
“It’s not just in at Ala Wai, they are working with our City partners to clear many of the situations around the around our, our county — in addition to clearing homeless individuals, warning them not to be under bridges during this time,” Luke said.
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Sniffen said cleanup over the past few days has cost between $200,000 and $300,000 dollars on Oahu alone.
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