The Kaua‘i County Council will decide Wednesday whether to approve up to $100,000 for additional attorneys to defend Kaua‘i in lawsuits related to the Ka Loko Reservoir Dam breach. The March 14 dam failure, which sent 400 million gallons of
The Kaua‘i County Council will decide Wednesday whether to approve up to $100,000 for additional attorneys to defend Kaua‘i in lawsuits related to the Ka Loko Reservoir Dam breach.
The March 14 dam failure, which sent 400 million gallons of water down the Wailapa streambed, claimed the lives of seven people and took millions of dollars worth of property along with it.
Among the 40 plaintiffs suing over the Ka Loko Reservoir Dam breach are entertainer and Honolulu-native Bette Midler, who is suing for property damage, and Bruce Fehring, who not only lost property, but his daughter, grandson and son-in-law in the tragedy.
While Fehring is the lead plaintiff in the wrongful death lawsuit, Midler has taken the lead against Ka Loko Reservoir Dam owner and car dealership mogul James Pflueger in the property damage case.
The state of Hawai‘i and Kaua‘i County are also named as defendants in the case.
The County Attorney’s Office request for more money comes at the heels of an independent report released earlier this month that states that Kaua‘i officials failed to enforce illegal grading violations near Pflueger’s site 10 years ago.
The report, authored by Special Deputy Attorney General Robert Godbey, states that had county officials enforced the unlawful grading violation, the spillway might have never been filled in, and the dam’s structural integrity might have not been compromised.
According to a county memo dated Nov. 26, 1997, former county employee John Buist followed up on an anonymous tip to investigate a complaint about Pflueger’s grading, but was told by former Mayor Maryanne Kusaka that doing so was a “waste of manhours.”
Buist was a subordinate to former county engineer Cesar Portugal, whose daughter was working for Pflueger at the time.
In a separate county memo, Kusaka wrote that Pflueger had phoned the mayor’s office wanting to know who complained about grading on his property, but was told it was an anonymous source, causing Kusaka to question whether looking into such tips were efficient or effective.
After the county’s inaction in 1997, the county did not follow up on the grading violations for five years.
When county and state dam inspectors did go to the site, they “never noticed anything was amiss with the dam,” Godbey’s report states, noting, “While not all inspectors can be trained as dam safety inspectors, all inspectors could receive at least some basic training in this area.”
Though the County Attorney’s Office is asking the County Council for money for outside counsel at a public meeting, Deputy County Attorney Rosa Flores said it is the county’s policy not to disclose how many tax dollars are spent on legal costs or outside counsel.
“The legal costs of cases must remain confidential in order for the County Attorney’s Office to avoid providing a manifestly unfair advantage to any person who is a present or potential litigant against the county,” Flores said in a prepared statement.
The County Council will meet at 1:45 p.m. Wednesday in its chambers.
