HAENA — About 100 people attended a meeting Wednesday night at Camp Naue on the Haena State Park plan.
Alan Carpenter with the state Department of Land and Natural Resources outlined funding to go toward improving the park.
“We decided to dedicate funding that we had in our discretionary budget that was not intended to be used in this park, and we made a rapid decision,” he said.
“We took (funding) from other projects and we managed to encumber nearly $3 million within 10 days to set aside for this project.”
Carpenter credited the circumstances following the April floods as the main reason for the quick response for approval to make improvements to the park.
“Our vision is that we will build the improvements that are in the master plan rather than repairing things that just broke, and it doesn’t make sense to repair something that was washed away,” Carpenter said.
He said the septic system needs to be repaired and that the entire waterline, which was severely damaged during the flooding, is old and needs to be replaced.
Some expressed concern about drivers traveling too fast at the park and asked about speed limit enforcement. Some community members said signs should be posted to help reduce driving speeds.
Haena resident Elsa Flores Almaraz brought up the 100 parking stalls to be constructed.
“I want to know, are those stalls for residents in our community? Are they for all residents on island? Do permits need to be obtained to park in those stalls?” she asked.
A couple from Haena, Deborah Smith, who goes by “Lulu,” and Stanley Mahuiki, expressed the need to come up with a better way to manage the increased traffic overflow resulting from the cap in the plan which limits 900 people at the end of the road each day.
“It limits the amount of people going into the park, but it does not limit the amount of cars coming onto our roads,” Smith said.
She added that as a result, people will be parking on the road and in other places on the side of the road that will only make congestion worse.
Smith said there needs to be better communication with visitors, that they need to be better informed about the road closure and the fact that currently only residents can go to Haena and Wainiha.
She thinks this could help prevent a lot of frustration for both residents and visitors, as it causes a lot of confusion and inconvenience on the roadways.
