LIHU‘E — State officials have submitted an emergency request to further trim invasive albizia trees, some of which have been crashing down onto Kuhio Highway in Kalihiwai.
Tammy Mori, state Department of Transportation spokesperson, said in an e-mail Thursday that DOT has already requested “to procure a contractor to begin cutting back the trees.”
“Next week, on Monday, there will be contractors at the site to obtain more information on what we want trimmed back, and we will then evaluate the most responsive bidder for this emergency contract,” she said. “The work will begin hopefully before the end of August or at the latest early September.”
The timing could not be better, residents say.
Besides a huge branch that fell and blocked both lanes of the highway last week, which citizens broke apart and cleared away when professional crews did not promptly respond, a lane of the highway was closed Thursday when another branch threatened to come crashing down, said Kalihiwai residents.
Mori said state DOT Highways Division staff on Kaua‘i and in Honolulu as of Thursday had not yet received a letter that was to be written by Gary Pacheco, treasurer of the Kilauea Neighborhood Association, requesting state officials immediately cut back even more of the trees along the highway than they did in June.
Pacheco said in a telephone interview last week that he would write that letter early this week.
Adam Frye and Malia Estrella, who live on Kuhio Highway in Kalihiwai and have had their share of hits and near-misses with albizia branches on their property, the highway and their vehicles, are proponents of removing all of the brittle, invasive trees, understanding that people in The Kaua‘i Outdoor Circle and others want to save some of the trees for their aesthetic, tree-tunnel effect.
“Our goal is to have them all removed,” Frye and Estrella said in an e-mail Thursday. “Beautiful (as they are) and all, the community’s safety is much more important,” they wrote.
• Paul C. Curtis, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@kauaipubco.com.
