Gov. Josh Green has announced major resilience projects in the wake of the recent storms and an earthquake that have hit Hawaiʻi this year, which could mean dipping into the state’s rainy day fund.
In a news conference Wednesday, Green announced about $319 million in planned resilience and mitigation projects to protect the state from the impacts of future storms.
He estimated some $686 million in damage and recovery costs from the Kona low storms in March, the Kona earthquake in May, Hurricane Lala in August and Hurricane Lowell earlier this month — meaning the cost of recovery and resilience needs will top $1 billion.
Green said the most significant of the projects is a plan to fortify the Honolulu Harbor and build a second, backup harbor.
“ We need to harden the Honolulu Harbor. If we ever lost the harbor to a … hurricane, we'd be in deep trouble. We would not really be able to bring enough food in adequately for our people, and it would (require) airlifts of food, which would be extraordinarily difficult to do and expensive,” Green said.
He added, “ We need to have two sites in the state as we go forward for the next several decades, so that we're always ready to bring in materials, heavy machinery, foodstuffs, so if Honolulu Harbor is ever severely damaged, we have an alternative.”
The state will spend $175 million on upgrades to Honolulu Harbor and $20 million to study where a secondary harbor should be located. He’s currently leaning toward expanding a harbor on Hawaiʻi Island — either Kawaihae or Hilo. He cited Hilo’s population density and the island’s large military presence as two reasons to consider the island for the harbor.
He said the nearby military operations “will make it easier for me to get some federal funding, because I think it's going to be an expensive project over many years.”
Green also announced that the state will spend about $20 million for six resilience hubs, which are meant to support residents in vulnerable areas during disasters.
He also said upgrades would include $80 million to modernize the state’s emergency operations center, located on Oʻahu at Diamond Head crater. Another $15 million will be spent on natural disaster mitigation efforts, while $9 million will go to generators to keep airports running during outages.
The state was looking at five sources of revenue to cover the $1 billion in costs, including federal disaster relief, state insurance, additional legislative appropriations, the rainy day fund, and Green Fee revenue.
The governor said he’ll also ask the state Legislature to release $300 million from the state’s $1.65 billion rainy day fund.
“We will take hundreds of millions of dollars from the rainy day fund, whatever we don't have in support from the federal government and the dollars that we've already gotten,” Green said.
Meanwhile, Green Fee revenue, which comes from visitors to Hawaiʻi, will raise about $100 million per year.
Local officials on Wednesday also showed the latest forecast for Tropical Storm Nolo, which was expected to bring up to 30 inches of rain to parts of Hawaiʻi Island this weekend.
“That by itself could cause catastrophic flooding, but when you put that on top of grounds that we've been raining off and on for the last couple months … that rain could cause even more damage as we're still recovering from those,” said NOAA Meteorologist John Bravender.
He said Wednesday is the “last dry day” for the public to prepare for the storm.
“We're talking hazards based on this track that passes south of the islands. There is a chance of it moving north. We saw that with Lowell that even as the track approaches, it can shift as it moves closer in time to onset,” Bravender said. “So everybody across the state needs to pay attention to this and be ready in case this forecast does change.”
