LIHUE — The road to Haena is scheduled to reopen in less than a week, and many locals are dreading the ensuing onslaught of tourists and cars they know will come with it.
“What is the hurry?” long-time Wainiha resident Cyndy Johnson wrote in a recent letter to The Garden Island.
But Johnson’s letter was motivated by more than her simple desire to delay the nuisance of a daily stream of traffic plowing through the middle of her community, which has found itself in a state of peaceful isolation for the past year following the floods of April 2018 that wiped out major portions of Kuhio Highway on the North Shore.
She feels Hawaii Department of Transportation officials are unnecessarily rushing to reopen the road and misleading residents about the reasons behind their stated May 1 deadline.
“The community has been told that the highway must re-open to the public by May 1st to avoid losing federal emergency highway funds for the repairs,” Johnson’s letter says.
According to Johnson, this was an explanation given to her and other residents during recent public meetings by HDOT Kauai District Engineer Larry Dill. Her letter goes on to explain that she later learned federal funding for the project carries no such deadline and calls Dill out for lying to the community.
In an interview Wednesday, Dill said Johnson’s claims were obviously based on a misunderstanding.
Joel Guy, president of the Hanalei-Haena Community Association, previously explained to The Garden Island that, based on information he was provided by HDOT officials, the federal government’s majority role in funding reconstruction of the highway means that full public access must be permitted once the road officially reopens.
The Federal Highway Administration provided most of the $77 million needed to repair Kuhio Highway past the North Shore checkpoints.
“I never said FHA guys required construction to be done by May 1,” Dill said. He added the federal funds only require construction to be finished “as promptly as possible” and the deadline was self-imposed, set by HDOT officials after repairs were delayed twice before.
“We set some deadlines that we haven’t met in the past,” Dill said in reference to problems that caused work to run far past the goals originally set in the wake of the flood.
Heavy rains throughout 2018 slowed construction, erosion from waves on the ocean side of the highway destabilized areas near the road that had to be shored up, and unanticipated damages caused further delays.
As for the current status of construction, Dill said crews are “on schedule.” He talked to TGI over the phone while driving past construction on the North Shore, and said “things are looking good.”
But upgrades to the three bridges beyond the checkpoint — at the Waikoko, Waipa and Waioli streams — are not projected to be complete until mid-June, another common point of contention among North Shore residents who, like Johnson, feel the road is being reopened prematurely.
“You cannot claim that work on the road is ‘substantially’ complete until the three W bridges are complete as the bridges are part of the road,” Johnson writes in her letter to TGI. “By HDOT’s own admission there have been ‘unforeseen delays’ on the bridges and possibly more to come.”
Dill said work on those bridges is nearing completion as well, with the Waioli Bridge “already pretty much done,” and the remaining two requiring perhaps another week of night closures, followed by one weekend closure for each bridge between now and the mid-June deadline.
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Caleb Loehrer, staff writer, can be reached at 245-0441 or cloehrer@thegardenisland.com.
