"What do we have to do? Wait until somebody is killed before the county pays attention to the way the land has been manipulated mauka? We all live downstream." Hope Kallai, 3 weeks before Ka Loko Dam burst

MOLOAA, KAUAI, HAWAII: Hope Kallai knew there was something wrong in 1998 when the fresh water from Kauai’s Moloaa Stream turned a murky gray as if it contained residue from cement.

During an interview with Hawaii Reporter on Kauai, Hope, a member of a Kauai watershed group and a fish farmer, says she became concerned when she did not see water levels in the stream rise and fall with rain, or the sand berm at the mouth of the Moloaa stream clear for three years.

She made reports to the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, telling officials she believed owners of the property above her on the mountain were intentionally manipulating the water flow by constructing a diversion from the waterway.

Despite making numerous complaints to the state and county of Kauai and County Council members, Hope and her husband Tim say they were ignored. They didn’t even get a reaction from county officials the day their land was inundated by a 10-foot wave.

The wave, Hope says, was a foreboding of what was to come. It was Feb. 21, three weeks before the Ka Loko Dam broke on March 14, sending more than 300 million gallons of fresh water down Wailapa Stream. The dam is located on a property partially owned by James Pflueger and the Mary B. Lucas Estate.

Hope, Tim and their son Koalani, 8, and their grandson Blaze Pu`ulei, 4, were home when their dog began to bark frantically at the stream and then they heard a loud rumble that turned into a roar. The sound preceded a giant debris-filled wave, 10-feet tall and 300-feet wide, which came rolling through their property, taking with it whatever was in the path, including a bridge.

9-1-1 is the first number she called frantically. Then, after the wave passed, she raced to a neighbor’s home to borrow a camera to document the muddy mess that now flooded her yard; she also went to the Kauai county engineering office to report the incident.

She called the state Department of Health Clean Water Branch, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, the mayor’s office, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Sierra Club’s Blue Water campaign. She went to the Kauai County Office of Engineering to investigate the floodplain of their property.

When Hope had little reaction from Kauai County Office of Engineering officials, her husband says she started crying, because she feared what would come after the initial wave.

"What do we have to do? Wait until somebody is killed before the county pays attention to the way the land has been manipulated mauka? We all live downstream," Hope pleaded the county engineers.

A representative of the mayor’s office told Hope not to worry about her property -- "If Ka Loko blows, it will take out Kilauea side."

Three weeks later on March 14, when the Ka Loko Dam breached above her home, Hope and the mayor’s representative learned they were both correct. The dam breach, as Hope had feared, sent at least 300 million gallons of water down the Wailapa Stream Corridor killing 8 people, and as the county official predicted, the water went into Kilauea side destroying whatever was in its path.

The "watery wall of death" took the life of Aurora Fehring, her husband Alan Dingwall, and their son Rowan; Wayne "Banyan" Rotstein, caretaker for the Fehring property; Tim Noonan, a carpenter staying with the Fehrings; Christina "Sunny" MacNees, 8 months pregnant and marrying the following weekend her fiancée, Daniel Arroyo.

Leading up to the dam break and what many described as a "tsunami of water from the mountain," Hope and Tim, frustrated with the lack of response from government, asked for intervention on their behalf from the Sierra Club’s Hawaii Chapter.

The Sierra Club agreed to investigate the wave that came through their property and the organization began to correspond with the county and state.

The Sierra Club told Hope and Tim that conservation organizer Melody Heidel notified the state Departments of Health and Land and Natural Resources about the wave on Feb. 22. Heidel wrote: "We received a message yesterday from a Kauai resident that the Kaloko Reservoir had breached. The resident is concerned that their home is in trouble."

The Department of Land and Natural Resources never responded to the Sierra Club’s request for an investigation, even though the agency is in charge of inspecting every 5 years and overseeing the dams. Peter Young, director of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, has not commented on why or turned over any records of the exchange with the Sierra Club, despite repeated requests from Hawaii Reporter.

The state Department of Health did respond to the Sierra Club the next day, saying "the reservoir dam has not been breached" and that "the dam is intact." The DOH representative, who is not a dam inspector, added that despite the heavy rain on the island, the water level was well below the top of the dam. A DOH branch chief subsequently told The Honolulu Advertiser that the DOH checked with the people on the Pflueger property, who told them the water levels were being monitored.

But the Kallai story did not end with the wave that rolled through their property on Feb. 21, or the dam breach on March 14.

On March 19, just 5 days after the dam broke, a second muddy wave came rolling through Hope and Tim’s property.

Concerned the water would wipe out property and the bridge again, they notified the county of Kauai Civil Defense and recommended to the agency that the Old Government Bridge be re-designed to accommodate increased flows in the Moloaa Stream.

However, a day later, the bridge was reconstructed in the same place, despite the fact that this is the second time in less than a decade that it was washed out by the force of the stream.

Kauai County officials are now telling the community that Ka Loko is "95 percent safe and stable."

Hope, Tim and many others in the community say they are not reassured. To date, no agency has checked out the damage to Hope and Tim’s property.

Hawaii Reporter sought a response from the county of Kauai for this story, but the county has so far kept silent.

The Department of Health is now refusing to comment or provide any public records related to Ka Loko Dam breach to the media, saying DOH officials were told to refer any records to the state Attorney General’s office.

The state Department of Land and Natural Resources director Peter Young told Hawaii Reporter that he cannot find any records of the correspondence with the Sierra Club or any records from the Ka Loko Dam predating 2001. Specifically Hawaii Reporter requested records of any complaints about the dam height being altered, the spillway being covered up, the water flow being tampered with, and any related documentation. Young wrote to Hawaii Reporter on March 28: "We gave you what we had in the file. We continue to look for additional information. If we find more, we will let you know."

James Pflueger, who owns the property from which the wave of water could have come, claims he never altered the waterway, the dam’s spillway or the dam height.

"If you find anyone who knows I diverted streams, let me know and I'll come running," Pflueger told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. Pflueger has so far refused to return calls to Hawaii Reporter.

Critics of Pflueger say he has in fact manipulated waterways on Kauai and been cited for it.

Pflueger was fined $12,500 by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Commission on Water Resource Management on June 28, 2001, for altering the stream channel and diverting the stream without proper permitting for his properties at Kahili and Pila'a.

The state also brought criminal charges against Pflueger and convicted him on 10 felony counts and fined him $500,000 for illegal grading and grubbing on his Kauai property that led to the pollution of the ocean in Pilaa. Pflueger paid a $7.5 million fine to the EPA in March 2006.

The state attorney general also continues to investigate whether Pflueger altered the dam height or covered the Ka Loko Dam spillway, maintaining that so far government investigators cannot find a spillway. Kauai residents, who were subpoenaed, told the state attorney general that the dam height was altered in 1998.

Reach Malia Zimmerman, editor and president of Hawaii Reporter, via email at mailto:Malia@hawaiireporter.com

Pflueger Files...