A single piece of military hardware has been recovered from an 11,000-acre area in Waimea over the last 17 years, according to a report from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The 185,000-acre Waikoloa Maneuver Area was used for live-fire exercises during World War II, leading to the area being littered with unexploded ordnance and other abandoned equipment.
Since 2022, the Corps has been conducting a search for unexploded ordnance throughout the WMA, with the search moving to areas in and around Waimea last year. But the search in a large swath of southeast Waimea is coming to an end after engineers determined that particular area was never used for live-fire exercises.
According to an Army Corps of Engineers report published Monday, Sector 15 of the WMA — an 11,200-acre area encompassing grazing land and several dozen residential parcels south of Highway 19 and east of Mamalahoa Highway — has been determined to be clear of ordnance, with only one military-related item found in the sector since 2006.
The report cites several analyses of Sector 15 from 2006 to the present, all of which reinforce the report’s conclusion that the area is a low-hazard area.
Between 2016 and 2018, a search of Sector 15 dug up 12,143 anomalies where scans had indicated the possible presence of buried metal objects. All but one of those anomalies were found to be innocuous, either iron-rich rock or sediment, or ordinary metal objects such as horseshoes or nails.
The last anomaly was a partial warhead from a 2.36-inch rocket.
However, the warhead appears to be a fringe case, as the item was found buried without any other rocket fragments nearby, which would have indicated that the rocket had been fired.
“It appears the rocket warhead piece was accidentally or intentionally buried and not the result of military munitions uses,” an Army Corps spokesperson said in a statement.
Other than that warhead, no other ordnance has been found in Sector 15. The report concludes that military munitions operations were not carried out in the sector and recommends that no further action be taken to search Sector 15.
As for the rest of the former WMA, the search continues. The entire area is divided into 22 Munitions Response Sites, each of which are currently in varying phases of the cleanup process. At a meeting in May, Corps engineers stated that fieldwork in a 3,500-acre area encompassing much of Waimea is expected to conclude by the end of the year.
So far, 11 pieces of unexploded ordnance have been discovered and removed from Waimea town, and another six from the surrounding area.
USACE will host a public meeting about the report and its search of the greater WMA at 2 p.m. Aug. 12 at Waimea Elementary School. A public comment period about the report is ongoing until Aug. 25.
The report can be viewed at tinyurl.com/2aykzy4y. Comments can be submitted via email to WMAUXOInfo@usace.army.mil.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
