Cleanup continues after the heavy weekend rains carried debris to the Ala Wai Boat Harbor.
Green waste and trash filled the entrance of the harbor from the Ala Wai Canal, and state Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation said in a news release that crews have been working to clean it up.
However, there’s still a significant amount of debris in the water surrounding boats at the harbor, including those around the Waikiki Yacht Club.
For hours on Tuesday, volunteers Jacob Stone and Jeovanney Gutierrez, along with a yacht club employee, were fishing trash from the water or putting it into a floating trap that was already filled with tree branches and other waste.
“We’ve kind of been trying different stuff, but we're taking as much as we can and putting in the DLNR (floating trap) over here. And then the small stuff just floats downriver that way,” Stone said.
The priority is removing big pieces of debris, like large branches, that can damage boats trying to move through the harbor.
But the volunteers said it could take a few days to finish because they don’t have the proper tools to do the work.
“We've been trying to clean up plastic in the beginning and then obviously try to get to the bigger stuff and try to put it in there. It's hard with the kind of tools that we have — this rake, and a couple poles that we got that we found,” Gutierrez said.
They are trying to get more people to help and say they welcome any assistance from the public.
There is also some frustration from the yacht club over whose responsibility it is to clean up the debris that floats from the canal to the harbor, especially after storms and heavy rains.
Some point to DOBOR, although administrator Meghan Statts said the division shouldn’t be responsible for debris that comes from upstream.
Statts said it spends $18,000 every day a contractor is hired to remove debris from its floating debris trap. It comes out of the Boating Special Fund, the primary source of funding for harbor operations and improvements. It’s paid for by fees and charges to boaters.
She said installing more debris traps along the Ala Wai Canal could help stop some of it from reaching the boat harbor, but she wouldn’t want DOBOR to have to fund debris removal from all of them.
That’s why she’s more supportive of preventing debris from entering the canal altogether.
“To us, the answer is pretty clear: Address the debris where it actually comes in,” Statts said. “Rather than having the boaters, with our Boating Special Fund, having to cover all of these costs to remove all of this stuff.”
