KAILUA-KONA — Some Waikoloa Village residents will have to evacuate their homes for multiple days in September as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hunts for unexploded ordnance.
USACE-Honolulu District announced it will host an informational meeting from 6-7 p.m. Thursday in the Waikoloa Elementary and Middle School cafeteria to discuss the issue. All interested members of the public are welcome to attend.
In a press release earlier this month, the organization said it would comb a portion of the former Waikoloa Maneuver Area for artillery projectiles, rockets and mortars, among other unexploded ordnance.
Beyond neighborhoods in Waikoloa Village, the parcel set for inspection includes Ke Kumu Ekahi, Ke Kumu Elua and Ke Kumu Ekolu. The land represents one portion of one section of the Waikoloa Maneuver Area, which covers more than 123,000 acres on Hawaii Island.
Work, which begins Sept. 4, will happen from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. It is only between those hours that the affected population must depart from impacted areas. USACE expects investigations to be completed by Sept. 7; however, that deadline could be extended to Sept. 14 depending on the number of unexploded ordnance investigators find.
“We’re trying to shrink the evacuation zone on a daily basis,” said Loren Zulick, project manager with USACE. “Only some people will be affected by this all four days, if it lasts four days, and others will have more and more access as the work progresses.”
The U.S. Marine Corps fired explosives at the Waikoloa Maneuver Area during wartime training in the 1940s, but several never detonated. According to the release, investigators discovered multiple unexploded ordnance in adjacent areas during past sweeps.
As of 2017, USACE had detected more than 100 different types of munitions, clearing more than 2,400 pieces of unexploded ordnance from nearly 30,000 acres of the Waikoloa Maneuver Area.
Considering the area’s size and the annual budget for remediation of the land, which was $10 million per year as of 2016, the cost to clear the entire Waikoloa Maneuver Area is estimated at more than $700 million and is expected to span at least the next seven decades.
Those numbers come from a December 2016 forum, during which representatives from the state and USACE, among other organizations, offered presentations.
Investigators will employ metal detectors and excavation equipment in their search. If investigators detect unexploded ordnance, they follow a particular protocol.
“We always detonate them, that’s how we mitigate the ordnance,” Zulick explained. “Sometimes they’re moved and sometimes they’re detonated in place.”
Because investigators aren’t always precisely sure of what ordnance they detected, the evacuation zone is large enough to account for the blast radius of any ordnance in a worst case scenario.
USACE already contacted those who are affected by the evacuation with mailings and door-to-door contact, Zulick said.
Deaths because of unexploded ordnance have been documented in the Waikoloa Maneuver Area, but Walter Nagai of the USACE said during the 2016 forum that he was unaware of any having occurred after 1954. Still, Zulick and the USACE release reiterated the need for public caution concerning the process.
“Please make members of your family and friends aware of the upcoming operation and caution them to avoid approaching the (unexploded ordnance) teams and interrupting their work,” the release reads. “If you discover an item that you think might be (unexploded ordnance), do not touch the item and immediately call the County of Hawaii Police Department at 911 or 935-3311.”
Anyone with questions is encouraged to attend the public meeting or contact any of the following people:
• Loren Zulick, project manager, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 835-4305
• Steven Jones, ordnance and explosives safety specialist, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 835-4016.
• Joshua Byrd, ordnance and explosives safety specialist, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 835-4099.
• Paul Chong: State Department of Health, 586-4256.