The restoration of roads and waterlines in lower Puna is delayed yet again after a federal agency told Hawaii County earlier this week it needs to review comments from the community.
County Planning Director Zendo Kern told Puna residents during a town hall meeting held Tuesday in Pahoa by Mayor Mitch Roth that the Federal Emergency Management Agency likely will take longer to complete its final environmental assessment for a project to rebuild about 9.1 miles of road and 7.8 miles of waterlines destroyed during the 2018 Kilauea eruption.
Kern said Tuesday that the draft EA, which was published in August, received certain public comments that FEMA deemed to be significant enough to require further review.
“We received a number of comments, and most of them were related to opening up Kumukahi,” Kern said, referring to Kumukahi-Lighthouse Road, which would have only about 60 feet rebuilt under the project plan. “It’s divided. Some folks don’t want it open, some folks do want it open.”
How long that review will take, however, is unclear, Kern said.
“We were on the phone with them (Monday) … really trying to drill down on what’s the timeline? What’s the timeline to address the comments, go through the process?” Kern said. “And I’m going to be really real: They couldn’t give me one.”
Because FEMA is contributing 75% or about $90 million of the project’s cost, with the county covering the remaining 25%, the county is beholden to FEMA’s pace.
Puna Councilwoman Ashley Kierkiewicz said the county was prepared to publish a bid package once the final EA is published and the county gets FEMA’s go-ahead, but now that will have to wait.
“It feels like a kick in the face,” Kierkiewicz told the Tribune-Herald on Wednesday.
Kierkiewicz said that based on the county’s previous expectations for when the final EA could be published, construction could begin in the first or second quarters of 2024. But without even a tentative date for when it might be delivered, no start date can be contemplated — and with the four-phase project estimated to take 32 months to complete, any delay will be felt for years to come by residents hoping to return to their properties.
Kierkiewicz acknowledged that environmental assessments are not just documents to be rubber-stamped without evaluation, but said the county has been meeting with residents and hearing their concerns for years now.
“And the longer this takes, the more expensive this becomes,” Kierkiewicz said. “It’s not like we’re going to get more money to keep up with inflation.”
The project already has been held up by FEMA evaluations earlier this year, when the draft EA took longer than anticipated to come out — at one point, construction was estimated to begin by mid-2023.
Kern and Kierkiewicz both said they are trying to arrange meetings with FEMA higher-ups to discuss the matter and get further details, and Kierkiewicz said she is hopeful that more concrete information will be available in time for the next Revitalize Puna event on Oct. 21.
“I have this worry that they’re disconnected,” Kern said Tuesday of FEMA. “That they don’t understand what’s happening here.”
Kierkiewicz also expressed concern that Puna might get put on the back burner yet again in the wake of the Lahaina wildfire disaster.
“All the federal attention is on Maui now, and rightly so,” Kierkiewicz said. “But we’ve been waiting for five years now.”
Kern’s news was met with consternation by attendees at Tuesday’s town hall, and he commiserated, saying that the public deserves transparency by the county even when the county has only “crappy information.”
The specter of Lahaina loomed large over the town hall, with several Puna residents urging the county to address the limited evacuation routes in the district’s subdivisions.
“We just got a vivid example of what happens when there is one way in and one way out,” said Puna resident Jon Olson. “It is time to act on this like your ass was on fire.”
“After Lahaina, people in Fern Forest are frightened,” said Fern Forest resident Hannah Hedrick. “People in Eden Roc are frightened. Eden Roc (has) one route out.”
Hedrick asked county officials to open routes connecting subdivisions to each other immediately to allow residents more ways to escape in the event of an emergency.
Roth said the county has begun conversations with property owners to develop inter-subdivision connections, and Public Works Director Steve Pause said about $1.5 million in state and county funds should be available for a Puna Makai Alternate Route study in the near future.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.