Anyone who's visited the Ala Wai Canal knows that the artificial waterway is notorious for its pollution — especially after a flood.
Now, efforts are being made mauka and makai to keep the canal clean during a busy hurricane season, which often sends mud and debris barreling downstream.
It's an issue that has reignited frustration among residents near the canal.
“It would be nice if our elected officials would … clean some garbage out of the Ala Wai on a regular basis,” said Gordon, a mariner along the Ala Wai Boat Harbor. “It never has gotten better. Ever.”
The cleanup is not just to keep the canal from becoming an eyesore — it's critical to reducing the risk of catastrophic flooding to homes and businesses.
To hear more about efforts to prevent flooding and protect buildings along the canal, HPR spoke with State Sen. Sharon Moriwaki, who has long represented the district.
Interview Highlights
On how the Ala Wai gets polluted
SEN. SHARON MORIWAKI: Everything is connected to everything, you know … So when your boaters say, you know, "It's really tough. How come they're not doing anything?" We are, but there's a really complex problem of bringing the three upstream people to start being more cognizant of what they do so they're not dumping into the stream, because what we see coming downstream is all of the crud. We see the couches, we see the shopping carts, we see everything, and that's what we've been working on for the last two years. … The canal is not a trash can. The canal belongs to all of us and is a waterway, because what goes into not only the small boat harbor, but into the ocean actually is polluted, leaches our coral, and that coral protects us as well.
On who cleans the canal
MORIWAKI: It's different agencies. So, the boating division gets it at the tail end … but it collects only one-third of the debris that comes under the bridge into the harbor. So in the Kona low, for the two Kona lows, they spent $100,000 just to clean the mess. In (Hurricane) Lala, they spent $80,000 just to clean up the mess. So we're working with Department of Transportation, and Director (Ed) Sniffen has put a boom up on the front end right here outside of the library, and collected a lot of the debris before going into the canal, before going into the boom. So I hope that in Lowell you'll see a major improvement than what we've seen in the past. But again, all of these are different ways of how do we solve this problem, and whether it's catchment basins, or it's booms, or it's looking at people enforcing, we have bills to enforce people dumping, because we haven't been able to address that because of different jurisdictions.
On the collective effort to keep the canal clean
MORIWAKI: What I would like to underscore is every bit counts. And getting the kids involved and having them see it's important to care for our streams, that's really important. … I would like them to know to be mindful of everything you do, because everything is related to other people, to the ʻāina. So mālama ʻāina, mālama each other, because that really is where we're going to start working on these streams from not only the government, but from the private sector. Don't cut and drop, cut and remove, you know, those kinds of things. Very simple, but please just care for our streams and our waterways and canal and our oceans.
This story aired on The Conversation on Sept. 14, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
