Kula resident Brad Sultzer and his wife Donna are dealing with close to $100,000 in storm damage. The Kona Low storm turned a stream into a raging river that ripped through their Polipoli Road property, along with neighboring homes and the road itself.
“We're not talking about just a little bit of water coming off,” Brad Sultzer said. “It's a waterfall that's like two feet deep, and it's taking boulders that are as big as, you know, half of a washing machine down the mountain like there's nothing there.”
On his golf cart, Sultzer motioned to a massive hole alongside Polipoli Road above their house.
“The gulch overran, and when it hit this berm of grass, it eroded it, and it took it down about 15 feet,” he said.
It destroyed Sultzer's orchards, beehives and goat barn structures. He called the loss heartbreaking.
“During the storm, we had about a 10 foot ditch at the place where our goat houses were, and I couldn't find any goats at all, and they were in the goat houses up to their chest in mud and water running through.”
While he was able to save the goats, the river gorge that overtook his property left an area the size of two football fields at the bottom with debris three feet deep.
The cleanup job has been massive.
“I have had a construction team of excavators and skid steers here for three weeks working eight or 10 hour days to take all of the material and refill what this was like a river bed that went down,” he said.
That’s in addition to volunteers with local nonprofit Malama Kula jumping in to help.
“There was people that were willing to give up their time and work hard, and then only to find out that there was a couple of people that their properties had been damaged as well,” said Sultzer. “And although their properties had been damaged, they had the time to come and help us.”
It’s not only been a lot of time, but also a lot of expense.
“I think this will be minimum of $75,000 to $100,000 loss by the time we're done,” he said.
Community donors through Malama Kula have helped with a bit of that, but mostly, Sultzer has paid it out of pocket. He said his homeowners insurance didn’t cover any of the damage.
A big part of the problem, according to Sultzer, lies with a too-small culvert just up the road.
“This is where the water runs down off of the mountain,” he described, pointing to a now dry streambed. Sultzer said that when the water gets to a certain spot, “it's supposed to make a left and go through that little culvert. And it doesn't. The culvert plugs immediately.”
The situation also impacted others in the neighborhood. One home had its driveway washed away. The bottom floor of another house was underwater. Cars were buried under mud and cinder from the mountainside.
Something similar happened in 2008, when Sultzer said the National Guard helped with debris removal on the property before he owned it.
Two years ago, heavy rain again brought significant runoff, he said. He reached out to Maui County for help.
“I probably made a minimum of 20 to 30 calls begging them to mediate this problem so that we wouldn't have a more serious problem,” he said.
He was told there was no budget for the project.
Now, he’s determined to ensure action is taken.
“Because, you know, it's one thing to tell the story of the damage, but it's another thing to tell the story of what has to happen,” Sultzer said.
At a recent county-led community meeting after the storm in Upcountry Maui, Sultzer said the county showed a photo of their damaged area.
“My wife and I were at the meeting, and the first comment that the mayor made was, 'We need to find out what we need to do to prevent these things from happening.' And it was awful hard to contain our frustration, because we've been explaining what needs to happen,” he said.
Sultzer pointed out road crossings in nearby areas have either bridges or larger culverts.
“The immediate fix of just berming it to the point where it keeps it going through the culvert is a huge improvement,” he said. “But then the longer term fix has got to be to, you know, make that culvert larger so it can accept the water that comes down through.”
When HPR reached out to Maui County for comment, a spokesperson said Polipoli is not a county road and the culvert doesn’t fall on county property.
Residents have confirmed they’ve seen county staff working on road repairs in the area.
The future of the culvert remains unclear, and in the meantime, residents are worried about what will happen when it rains again.
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