Oahu's Seven "At Risk" Main Sewer Lines: Image Courtesy of Sierra Club Hawaii, 1000 Friends of Hawaii and Our Children's EarthGet out your party hats and thigh-high wading boots because it's time to "celebrate" the one year anniversary of Honolulu's worst raw sewage spill.

Over a six day period in March of last year, more than 48 million gallons of raw sewage were diverted directly in Ala Wai canal while the capital of the Aloha state received a record 40 days straight of rain.

Although the beaches are now open and the smell of sewage is long gone, nothing has changed from a policy and enforcement standpoint. That's why Hawaii's Thousand Friends, the Sierra Club, and Our Children's Earth are taking legal action against the city to make sure that spills like last year's record stinker never happen again. According to an article in the Honolulu Star Bulletin, the groups announced their lawsuit at the site of last year's spill.

"At a judge's request, the Sierra Club, Hawaii's Thousand Friends and the mainland-based Our Children's Earth have been in settlement talks between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the city regarding improvements to its sewage system."

According to the newspaper article, the Hawaii Department of Health has improved its surveillance and warning systems to protect people from coming into contact with sewage-laden waters - yet there is still much to be done to improve the capacity of the city's wastewater infrastructure to handle higher loads.

I contacted Jeff Mikulina, director of Sierra Club (Hawaii Chapter), to get his take on the situation. "One year ago we learned a tough lesson: neglecting our sewers can have disastrous results. Unfortunately, our plumbing problems didn't end with the Beach Walk sewer," Jeff said. "The Beach Walk blowout was a predictable surprise." The coalition's legal filing charges that the city has known about Oahu's failing sewage infrastructure for a while:

"In 2004, the City's [Honolulu] engineering firm, Fukunaga and Associates, evaluated the City's force main sewage lines island wide, and reported that seven of the City's major force main lines were "very critical." They: (1) were very old; (2) made out of materials likely to corrode; (3) had not been adequately protected against corrosion; and (4) were located close to public waterways where a break could release large volumes of raw sewage into streams or the ocean. The Beach Walk line that ruptured is only one of the seven critical lines.

The City had been warned years earlier about a possible Beach Walk failure. In 2004, the Fukunaga Report specifically warned the City that other ruptures now might be imminent.

The citizen groups believe that sewer breaks and potential public health disasters threaten to repeat again as long as the City does not fix the other six critical force main lines."

Hawaii gets a lot of rain. So remember, if you happen to be on vacation in Waikiki and it rains. When the sun comes back out the next day, don't be so quick to grab your surfboard and hit the beach - check for warning signs first.