KAILUA-KONA — Breaches at two historical trails halted work along Queen Kaahumanu Highway and construction isn’t likely to continue until the state Department of Transportation finishes redesigns and incorporates policies to prevent future incidents.
The department provided more detail to West Hawaii Today Friday on reasons behind the delay after telling the paper previously that archaeological sites had been impacted, causing the standstill.
The project, which broke ground in September 2015, will widen the highway from a two-lane highway to four lanes on the stretch of road between Kealakehe Parkway and Keahole Airport Road. New lights, signals and lighting are expected to accompany the widening.
This is the second phase of the project. The first phase, which widened the highway from Henry Street to Kealakehe Parkway, finished in 2007.
When work began on phase 2 — estimated at $90 million at the time the project broke ground — the Department of Transportation gave an estimated completion date of September 2017.
Now, Transportation officials are saying the project will take about 14 months longer, pushing the anticipated completion date to November 2018.
Transportation spokesman Tim Sakahara cited “some impacts to archaeological sites” at the beginning of November and that the department is “looking at ways to expedite that completion.”
Those impacts, the department said Friday, were to two historical trails in the area.
The trails in question are the Mamalahoa Trail and the “Trail to the Sea,” both of which are listed on the State Inventory of Historic Places.
The Mamalahoa Trail is a kerbstone horse trail from the 19th century, according to an environmental impact statement for construction in the area from the 1990s.
The Trail to the Sea is a mauka-makai trail that runs from the Kaloko Fishpond to Kohanaiki Homestead, according to Shelly Kunishige from the Department of Transportation’s public affairs office.
In late July, the statement said, the department found a “possible site breach,” which was later confirmed. Kunishige said there were four general areas affected by the breaches.
Those breaches included about 70 feet of the Mamalahoa Trail near the entrance to Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park and another 22 feet of the trail at Kealakehe Road.
In both instances, the trails were breached by construction equipment, Kunishige said.
Furthermore, two features of the mauka-makai Trail to the Sea were breached during grading by roughly 16 feet near Hina Lani Street and 20 feet at another unspecified area. All told, about 140 feet were affected.
After the department investigated the site breaches, they noted that the “area of potential effect” didn’t include the project’s connections to side roads.
The area of potential effect refers to an area in which the “character or use” of historical properties might be altered by construction projects, according to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
It’s unknown why the original area of potential effect didn’t take side roads into consideration. The department did not respond to questions about that detail. Nor did it respond to a question about what the changes could do to the project’s overall cost.
The department said its Highways Division Planning Office is “coordinating the revised (area of potential effect).”
Another holdup is a requirement under a redesign mandated by federal regulations intended to protect historic properties.
The redesign prompted the need for retaining walls that weren’t originally a part of the widening project, according to the statement.
The design for the retaining walls is currently in the works by the design-build team.
The statement concluded by saying that the Department of Transportation’s Highways Division “will host weekly coordination calls to get the Queen Kaahumanu Highway Widening Phase 2 project back on track.”
Once all of that is taken care of — the retaining wall design, area of potential effect corrections and a review and implementation of strategies to prevent future breaches — work will resume.
