Lower Puna residents are frustrated by the wait for road repairs and boat ramp access

It’s been three long years since the 2018 Kilauea eruption in Lower Puna, and Leah Gouker is frustrated.

The 36-year-old social studies teacher at Pahoa High and Intermediate School spent much of her youth at the oceanfront Isaac Hale Park and Pohoiki Boat Ramp. It remained the center of her social life as she produced a family of her own.

But after lava destroyed the road leading to the ramp, her seven-minute drive to the beach is now 45 minutes. The partially damaged park still has no working bathroom, no water and no decent place to swim.

“Honestly, I haven’t been to the beach in seven months,” she said. “Can’t they just bring the machines and dredge the ramp?”

It appears the frustration felt by Gouker and her neighbors will only continue as the state recently announced there are more regulatory hoops to jump through before work can begin.

The Pohoiki Boat Ramp is not the only major infrastructure project yet to have materialized as the community tries to dig itself out from the aftermath of an eruption that pushed roughly 1 billion cubic yards of molten rock across the Lower Puna landscape, destroying 716 structures and forcing the evacuation of 3,000 residents.

Damage to public infrastructure reached an estimated $236.5 million, according to Hawaii County. That includes more than 13 miles of public roads, 14.5 miles of waterlines, 900 utility poles and two geothermal wells. One electrical substation was completely cut off.

The recovery effort got off to a fairly quick start after a road was completed in late 2018 on Highway 137 between Pohoiki and MacKenzie State Recreation Area, using county and Federal Emergency Management Agency funds. The road wasn’t the most convenient for most Lower Puna residents, but it did open up access to Pohoiki.

In 2019 the county restored Lower Puna’s main lifeline, Highway 132, with $5.75 million from the Federal Highway Administration.

Since then, however, much of the progress has come in the behind-the-scenes planning and design stages.

“It’s kind of sad. It’s taken so long,” said Robert Golden, president of Lower Puna Rising, a community group that has been pushing for faster infrastructure development.

“There has been some progress, but I wish the people in government lived where we live so they can experience what it’s like to go to bed at night,” said Golden, a Leilani Estates homeowner whose property escaped the lava.

Douglas Le, the county’s recovery manager, said the county is moving as fast as it can given the regulatory boundaries and financial constraints, and the unique limitations of the volcanic disaster that began May 3, 2018, and ran for 107 days.

Le was named the county’s recovery officer in November 2019 after helping New York City coordinate disaster recovery following Super Storm Sandy.

There are actually a lot of similarities between the two jobs, he said.

“The scale of funding is different, the community context is very different, the capabilities of local government are different, but what remains the same are the real gut and heart of what we’re trying to do,” Le said.

That includes endless negotiations with the state and federal governments regarding costs, regulations and other obstacles and challenges.

One of those challenges, for example, is the extremely hot ground left behind by the molten lava. When crews worked to restore Highway 132, the ground was so hot, the county lost a lot of heavy equipment.

“Even after it was restored, if you were wearing slippers on some parts of the road, they got a little melty if you walked on the shoulder. I never did but I heard stories about it,” Le said.

That hot ground, which still exists below the lava in some places, also comes into play as the county seeks to restore water supply.

“The eruption essentially changed the recharge cycles of the water, mauka to makai, and the quality of the water that we relied upon for these areas are no longer of the quality that we can tap into again,” Le said.

Not only that, he said, but water gaskets rated to a certain temperature suddenly became vulnerable, making the distribution system unreliable.

A cost agreement between the county and FEMA, announced in March 2020, identified about $82 million worth of damage to public roads, not including Highway 132, with the federal government paying 75%.

The next project on the county’s priority list, Le said, is Pohoiki Road, along with Leilani Avenue from Pohoiki Road to Kahukai Street, scheduled to start construction in September.

The county also plans to realign the narrow lower portion of Pohoiki Road that wasn’t covered with lava, in a move to preserve the historic mango trees that grace the route. That project is scheduled to begin in October 2022.

Restoration of another lava-covered road, Highway 137, plus Lighthouse Road, is expected to begin in March.

Each of these projects is expected to take up to two years to complete, according to the county’s timeline.

At Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park, most of the areas that were open before the eruption are again open. The only areas that remain closed due to damage are the Jaggar Museum, Hawaiian Volcano Observatory building and Iliahi Trail.

An estimated $28 million was earmarked for disaster recovery at the park, according to the park.

Meanwhile, the Pohoiki Boat Ramp remains intact, having escaped the destructive forces of the Kilauea eruption. The problem is that the ramp is partially buried by a new black-sand beach.

After studying several options, officials with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources told a Hawaii County Council committee meeting last month that it plans to dredge the bay and restore the ramp.

In order to afford the $3.5 million price tag, however, FEMA funds are necessary, and the feds are requiring the completion of an environmental assessment study, which will take several months to complete.

“It’s very important that we get the FEMA funding for this project,” said Robert Masuda, DLNR’s first deputy.

Puna resident Leila Ke­aloha said she is more than frustrated by how long the process has taken. She said the park and boat ramp are the heart and soul of the community, important culturally and socially, and for those who fish for their own sustenance and to make a living.

Her dad, on a fixed income, used to go pole-fishing there every day from Pahoa. Now he can’t afford the gas it takes to make the long trek.

“Our relationship (to Pohoiki) has been severed,” Kealoha said, referring not only to her dad, but the whole community.