emiller@westhawaiitoday.com
BY ERIN MILLER | WEST HAWAII TODAY
More than four years ago, the Department of Water Supply broke ground for the long-sought Hawaiian Ocean View Estates well.
It was the beginning of what was expected to be a two-year process that involved digging the well, creating a reservoir, laying down water lines and building a fill station.
The project last year hit another snag, a Water Supply spokeswoman confirmed Monday, pushing back the operation date to May of this year. The main issue appears to be a dispute between the department and the pump manufacturer. The root of the dispute is the pump’s inability to operate within the voltage range provided by Hawaii Electric Light Co.’s power supply.
A DWS document explained the pump requires three-phase power and that HELCO designed and installed extension lines to the well site.
“As soon as the site obtained power, a representative for the pump manufacturer noticed a discrepancy in the voltages between each leg of the three-phase power,” the document said. “Although it meets the tariffs that HELCO follows, the discrepancy is too large for our equipment and as such will automatically shut down or burn the motor of the pump.”
Spokeswoman Kanani Aton referred more in-depth inquiries, such as whether the county or subcontractor Wallace T. Oki selected the wrong kind of pump for the project, whether the manufacturer provided incorrect specifications for the pump or whether the problem was with HELCO’s extension lines, to Oki and HELCO.
HELCO Energy Services Department Manager Curtis Beck said HELCO provided information about the department’s tariffs, or how much power would be available, and the variation in voltage as it passed through homes on single-phase lines to reach the well site, where power was recombined for a three-phase system. Manufacturers typically take those specifications and design equipment to operate within those limits, he said.
“They should have been aware of what our system can provide,” he added.
HELCO officials’ understanding of the situation, he said, is DWS and the pump manufacturer are having some kind of dispute over warranty issues. While DWS and the manufacturer work out that dispute, HELCO is doing what it can to fine-tune its system to reduce the voltage variation, Beck said.
Oki did not respond to a message left at his office late Monday.
HELCO was able to adjust power long enough for DWS to run the well in late January and early this month to collect water samples. Those samples were sent for testing, Aton said, and will be returned to the Department of Health and several other agencies for review.
The testing and review process will typically take two to three months to complete, she added.
Former Gov. Linda Lingle first released $6 million to design and build the well in 2006. The Department of Water Supply started on the project in December 2007. A number of issues — unexpected voids that needed to be filled, community protests of the design and now this electrical problem — have delayed Ocean View residents’ ability to fill their water containers at a site closer than 40 miles from home.
Rep. Robert Herkes, D-Puna, Ka’u, South Kona, North Kona, in 2010 called for a legislative inquiry into how the department was handling the state funds.
Don Nitsche was chairman of the Ocean View Community Development Corp.’s water committee for many years. He said he may be the only person upset about this latest delay, mostly because he has worked to get the fill station for his community for so many years.
“I told them about a year and a half ago they were going to have problems with three-phase power,” Nitsche said. “They had plenty of warning.”
Current water committee chairman Mike Dubois said he wanted to focus on the positive aspects of the situation, namely that the community is within a few months of getting water.
“What we have is what we’ve got and we’ve got to make it work,” Dubois said. “It’s not really a big issue at this point. It’s coming along.”
emiller@westhawaiitoday.com