 Yeah, let's talk about the alloy, the alloy canal. I'm J5O's Community Matters. It's a given Wednesday at 3pm. And the handsome young man is Sanford Marata. Hi, Sanford. Hello, Jay. Handsome. Okay. Thanks for your watch. I accept that. Sanford goes back a long way with ThinkVec. And he goes back a long way with real estate and planning. And today we're going to talk about the alloy canal. But let me just tell you that the alloy canal is the result of a mistake. And what happened is when they planned it, okay, it was supposed to go in two directions. It was supposed to go down through alloy near the boat harbor. It was supposed to go down in Kapa Hulu all the way to the ocean. It was supposed to surround Waikiki. But they ran out of money. And Hawaiian dredging, you know, didn't want to do the other part. I guess they don't have enough money. Somebody didn't have enough money. Probably the city county. So as a result, you only have one outlet of the alloy canal, not two. And this has been a problem ever since for 100 years. Yeah. So we have a flood risk over there. A lot of water comes down from the mountains into the alloy. Everybody's seen that. And it sort of needs to be dredged once in a while. We know that it has what they call, it's a Hawaiian word schmutz. It has a lot of schmutz in the alloy canal. And sometimes it has, as you know, from the days of Mufi Hanuman, sometimes it's actually sewage in the alloy canal. So the problem is, in climate change, we can expect bad weather, you know, predictably. And we can expect floods here in Honolulu off the mountains. We had some fast water yesterday, as a matter of fact, with all kinds of flood warnings. And we need to evaluate that. We need to study that. We need to know what the flood risk is, what our evaluation scientifically and geologically and environmentally is, and somebody got to do that. So Sanford is going to tell us today about who's doing what in terms of evaluating the risk of floods and flood damage out of, into and out of the alloy canal, one of my favorite most beautiful places in Honolulu. So, Sanford, can you talk about this study that's being done? And, you know, what it is, what it is intended to find and recommend? Yes, I can, Jay. This is very, very timely, as we can see from the results of the heavy rainstorm we experienced over the last two days. And in the photo we just saw of the alloy, you'd see that it was inundated with heavy rainwater. So about June of this year, the city and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed an agreement, a $3 million re-evaluation study. But the previous study that had been done by the Corps of Engineers, that is to re-evaluate the Corps' original plan, which had been authorized by Congress. And in fact, it's almost 10 years that the plan had begun. And consequently, because of the high cost, it was put aside, it was for several reasons put aside, high cost plus intense community opposition. So in June, the city and the Corps of Engineers signed an agreement that would re-study the original plan and come up with a plan in about two or maybe three years. And that's where we are now, the city is collecting information through a community engagement process as to what our community prefers in terms of our flood control mitigation plan for the alloy watershed. What are the options? I mean, what are the physical engineering options? And you know what I mean, an engineer or a bunch of engineers would be very useful in this discussion because they could identify the structures that would be helpful. And give the pros and cons of each option. So what is under consideration? Well, the first plan, which was opposed by the communities, Makiki Manoa and Pololo, included the retention of the floodwaters in those valleys by retention basins, which would have been hardened surfaces. Imagine hardened canals, concrete canals and reservoirs to hold those waters in those areas, basically, in the valleys. That doesn't seem to be a natural solution. So what I'm suggesting is we follow the natural solution of not so much retaining, but moving the water through more landscape engineering waterways and bringing it down to the Illinois golf course and retaining it there through reservoirs and ponds, treating it and then releasing it into the canal before it goes into the ocean. Controlling it then. It doesn't automatically go into the canal. It's a controlled flow into the canal. Is that what you're saying? Well, that's what I'm suggesting right now. It does flow into the canal. And as we experienced 15 years ago in 2006, we had an overflow of the canal, which affected Waikiki. Many of the hotels were affected who were in lower areas. So I'm suggesting why don't we go back to the idea of a wetland, which is what that area used to be before the canal was built. Revert back to a wetland. Not exactly the way it used to be, but in a way that makes sense for how we can hold, treat, and control the flow of water back into the ocean. In addition to that, what we have to be mindful of, we could have through climate change, not only increasing tides and flood and water elevations, but through a tsunami, we could have water flow back up the canal and overflow the lands around the canal. That could happen. So we should find a way in which we could control the water going into the ocean and from the ocean back into the canal. This reminds me of two things I want to take a stroll down memory lane with you. One is Chip Fletcher. And Chip Fletcher actually is, this is Charles Fletcher, Ph.D. at Sowest. He's sort of the state expert on inundation on climate change and sea level rise. And he's made a number of maps, if you will, of the Oahu, the shoreline, and of course of Waikiki, the shoreline. And those maps show inundation, inexorable inundation from climate change. And we would lose a fair amount of land by virtue of that process, including land which borders on the Anhuai canal, the level of which would increase. That's one thing. And that actually speaks to, you know, the point you made about water coming in from the ocean. The other is Alfred Yee, a recently deceased, long time engineer with the School of Engineering at UH and with Sowest at UH, who was kind of a genius in making structures that would prevent water flow. And he and his colleague Hans Krock came up with a solution for the Nanatorium maybe five years ago that was published in great detail in the Honolulu Advertiser, where they had these preformed, concrete blocks that were engineered to a certain shape as to allow the water to come into the Nanatorium and then go out in a certain way so that the Nanatorium flushed itself and all the, may I say again, schmutz that is coming in there now. It's still there. But it just points out, I think, that you need this kind of concrete block engineering to have a device, a valve, if you will, to control the water flow as it comes in, as it goes out, and if there are ponds in the golf course property there to hold it in the ponds and to release it in a, you know, a logical way, a controlled way. Does this play any part in the plan you're talking about, any of this? I haven't heard that that is part of the plan, but I would believe that the US Corps of Engineers must have studied Alfred Yee's proposal and it's in the process of looking at very many other ideas and solutions. But let me step back a little bit and say, we need to look at this in a more holistic fashion and look at proper forest management. What happens to the water when it comes, when it comes from the sky, basically rainwater, especially rainstorm? We need to look at the use of the water and how we can hold that water in our forests at the 3000 foot level on a more natural way so we don't necessarily have to push all the water back down into the lower elevation, but with good and proper forest management, we can help rebuild or supplement our aquifers by keeping our water from escaping. And so I think that's where it starts. To start from where it comes from, how we treat it and how we move it by hardened surfaces, which is what we've done for probably the last 50 years, we move the water in a way that is quickly lost in terms of it's being part of the aquifer and being brought down to what is today the Alawai Canal. Consequently, we almost ignore that water and as we know, as we've seen with the Red Hill crisis that we just experienced, we need to be way, way more careful in how we use our water so that we just don't dump it, which is what the Alawai Canal plan tends to indicate. No, that's not very interesting. That's another point of timeliness, if you will. The Red Hill contamination issue, huge issue affecting a lot of people, affecting public health. As a matter of fact, we're having a show later on this week, I think it's tomorrow, about that very, that very controversy where some of the people who are concerned about it are going to come on and talk about their reaction to what's happening with the Navy at Red Hill. The other thing that comes to mind is that the Corps, it's so interesting, the Corps of Federal Agency, the Corps has jurisdiction over the navigable waters of the United States. I was really surprised to find that that jurisdiction applies even up the streams, even in relatively small streams up the hill that feed the Alawai, that they're treated as navigable waterways of the United States, therefore subject to the Corps of Engineers. What I am concerned about though is the engineering that would have to go on to control the water at the, would you say, the 3,000 foot level, it's pretty high up, and that requires not one place, but virtually I would say dozens or hundreds of places where barriers, control mechanisms would have to be deployed in order to control the flow of water. That wouldn't be easy or cheap. What's probably not well known is Congress's passed a movement or an edict to the Corps of Engineers to consider natural ways of handling water in opposed to the more recent hardened infrastructure. That's sort of the easy solution, just build concrete structures to hold and move water. Well, Congress has actually said, you need to consider U.S. Army Corps of Engineers other ways that are more natural. And in fact, that is what's happening, although there are some complications and difficulties to do that because the Corps has to look at what would be possibly the least expensive solution. Now, I don't know if anyone can say which is least expensive or what is most cost effective, but I'll just give you one simple example. In Japan, there are many towns now that are removing their hardened concrete channels and reverting it back to how it used to be with natural landscaping, and that's generated all kinds of subsidiary benefits. And I think that's what we need to look at. And that's why I'm proposing we look at the wetlands because with the wetlands, we can build urban forests. As an example, we can build community gardens. We can build a place in which people will come so that they can enjoy a more natural environment in our urban environment. Where in what city in the United States can you point out that has a 150 acre golf course in the middle of its city? It doesn't exist that I know of. So we need to rethink that. It's 90 years that we've had the golf course. I think it's come to a point where we can serve a better purpose. And that's the way we need to be thinking about our public lands. What can we do to repurpose our lands, to more effectively attend to our needs today? Absolutely, I totally agree with you. A couple of thoughts about what you were saying. I'm familiar with the part of New Water Stream. And New Water Stream, of course, rises and falls with the weather. And traditionally, maybe for hundreds of years, the way that people at the headwaters of New Water Stream have handled this is with rocks and branches. And so there was one guy who knew exactly what rocks and what branches, you talk about natural, what rocks and what branches you put where in order to manage the water coming into the headlands of the New Water Stream. I was always amazed that he knew exactly where to put the rocks and where to move them from side to side and laterally and horizontally in order to achieve the appropriate flow. Same with trees. And I suppose that's the natural way to do it. More natural than concrete, more natural than steel, for sure, but it does require an expertise. Fellow, I'm thinking I've had expertise. And if you want to do it the natural way, you have to have people familiar with the natural way. The other reaction I have is that, yes, I totally agree that the golf course is art. It's no longer an appropriate use. It probably hasn't been an appropriate use for 50 years. And it's only a handful of people that have the benefit there. And that's a kind of political issue. At the end of the day, we really have to put it to better use. But there have been, and I'm sure you're aware, Zanford, as many uses as there are people recommending uses, there are dozens and dozens of possible uses of this land. And we really need to come up with a system to avoid everybody advocating for a different use, because that will be tumultuous at least. And we'll never get to the end of it. With transparency has a limit. Somewhere along the line, somebody has to make a hard decision and decide what to do with all of this land. There are hundreds of acres in there. It's a major, a major facility. And finally, then my next reaction is water. You know, we have a lot of people in the city and they use more water all the time. We also subject to weather and maybe in the course of climate change, we're subject to drought, like in the West, like in the Colorado river basin, for example, where the drought comes, it changes your life. And we could, we right now, we have the aquifer, we have supplies of water, which, you know, which, which have been in use for a long time. We don't even use the reservoirs up in, for example, we don't use them. They're abandoned. So we could find ourselves in a situation in the next 10 years, maybe 15, where we simply don't have enough water to satisfy the needs of the population. This is troubling. I don't think the border water supply has a real plan to achieve greater supplies of water or to pump greater supplies of water because it takes electricity to pump the water to the ultimate consumer. And so there are issues about that. We have no plan for desalination. We have no plan for to dig into the mountains with more water, although geologists tell us there is more water up there. Even way above sea level, we have water in those mountains. The problem is that one of these days, you know, the bar, the bar and the chart are going to come together and there will be more people and less water and we will have crisis in water. So when you talk about water and preserving water in a natural way that comes down from the mountains, you're talking about an extremely important subject, one that has to be handled soon. And my concern is that are we handling it? Will we have a unanimity of purpose and use for this land in time to achieve the water benefits that you're describing? Yes, let me pick up on that idea of there's going to be as many ideas as people who express those ideas. So let's say, what can we do to address our most pressing needs? So let's pick up on water, as you described. Yes, we need fresh water as was really demonstrated by the Red Hill disaster we need fresh water. Number one, number two, climate changes upon us, and that's going to bring natural disasters. And in this case, as was evidenced by this weekend's rainstorms, it's going to bring flooding and many places experience of flooding. But number three, another very important need we need to serve in our community is affordable housing. So my suggestion is we take the 150 acres of the LOI golf course. We devote about two-thirds or maybe a hundred acres to what I call a natural resource park, which would house the whiplands and the urban forest. And we take the other one third about 50 acres, and we use that for an affordable housing community, which I call LOI village. And we can house maybe three or five thousand people there. And so if we look at these public lands from a multi-purpose need basis, and we can find ways in which we address the critical needs of our society, as we talked about climate change water in Honolulu, in particular, affordable housing, we can then find solutions like this, not only for a LOI golf course, but other public lands. We need to look at it on a more cohesive, holistic basis and say, okay, what can we do that meets the needs today in opposition to what it was used for yesterday, which is no longer valid? Well, you know, I used to think that Kakaako was the template for the development of Honolulu, sort of a statement of the new city, a statement of how we could develop it better than we had been in the past. I no longer feel that way. I don't know how you feel about it, but I don't feel that Kakaako is a success. It's too high rise, and it's too expensive, and the people that should have been benefited by what was to happen in Kakaako haven't been. Now we have, but you know what, you know, it has a useful life of hundreds of years, because those buildings are going to be up there for a long time. So now we have, we now have Alawai. It's another template. It's a template for how we are going to develop the city. It's very important that we not make any mistakes. It's very important that we not get skewed either by public opinion, noisy public opinion, if you will, or by politics or business interests. It has to be rational. It has to be the best principles of city planning you could ever imagine. And certainly it has to handle the water, and it has to handle the affordable housing. What I get is a big, and the recreation, don't forget the recreation. Alawai Canal is a big center for recreation. It has been and it should be going forward. I even wonder whether we would ever get the money to dig up Kapahulu and achieve the original dredging plan to have both sides of Waikiki open to the ocean. But anyway, who's going to pay for that? Because you think that we could get enough money from the federal government to actually pay for the development of the water, the housing, the lands in general. It's a major, major project. How would it be organized and developed? Well, I believe that. I believe we need to look at this one variable. And secondly, in a way that we are not hesitant to pursue because we're worried about the cost. We have to find a solution. I'll just give you one sort of maybe awkward example. We're spending possibly 12 billion dollars on our rail. It's now at 11 and a half, was 12 and a half billion weeks ago. Okay, but if you were to say, if we had spent, if we spent just one tenth of that, let's say one billion dollars, just one tenth of that on this plan to create Alawai Green, which is a natural resource park, I'm suggesting, and Alawai Village, which is affordable housing community, I'm suggesting. If we just spend one tenth of that, let's say one billion dollars to create this much needed facility for water, flood mitigation, and affordable housing, are we not better off? I'm just saying, let's look at this as a comparison of what other things cost. So I wouldn't be afraid or hesitant to pursue this plan because we think it's going to be not affordable. We need to pursue it to find out what can be done and find the solution. It's basically problem solving. We have big problems. We need to have a big solution. That's the kind of thinking I suggest we need to employ as citizens of this community. Well, I guess the reality is big plans, even just straight housing plans, take a long time. I remember Castle and Cook had a talk before the Venture Capital Association years ago and Harry Saunders said, you know, our original plan at Millie Lottie took 40 years to get permanent. And, you know, nobody was all that surprised because there are issues in this town about getting permanent. And, you know, there's a lot of permits in what you describe. So you have, A, you have, you know, people advocating for lots of different plans and the risk that it's not going to settle down, you know, in the midst of argument over which plan should prevail. B, you have the money, whatever it comes from. And C, you have the permitting. And the construction is easy, you know. I know we both know the construction is easy. Once you get the unions and the contractor is going, it's not a problem. It's just getting the permits to permit the construction. That's a problem. So in the best of times and in the worst of times. And that's a good phrase around now. And Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol, or a tale of two cities it was, right? The best of times and the worst of times. Query, how long would it take? Should it take? What's the best possible estimate? What's the worst possible estimate? Well, I haven't really thought about that, Jerry. I really haven't tried to put a kind of a timeline out there because there's so many, so many details that need to be addressed. And we haven't done any kind of detail planning, which requires architects, engineers, lawyers, government officials, and so forth. So I can't really answer that question. But if we don't do something today, we're going to have this same question or conversation 10 years from today wondering how long is this going to take? We just have to have bold leadership, political will, and create an army of people who will support this idea because it makes sense. It really, we really need this to create our community together. Otherwise, our young people are leaving because they cannot afford to live here. We need housing. We need 30,000 to 40,000 units today. You know, a week ago, a friend of mine introduced me. It's a botanical garden on, you know, just between Kailua and Kanyoi on Cam Highway there. And I went there and walked with him. And I must say it was beautiful beyond description. It was the Elysian fields. It had beautiful grass and trees and botanical objects of one kind or another. And it had lakes. It had vistas. You could lie down on the grass. It was so beautiful. It was just, I was choking on the beauty of it. And I said to myself, this is what we have to build. We have to have this. We have, and what reminds me of it is your discussion of the kids of the next generation. We have to give them hoomaluhias. They can go and spend the weekend. They can, you know, enjoy the environment. Everybody talks about the environment. That's an example of beauty and the beholding. And so this place that you're talking about is very important to hold that generation here. It's a statement, you know, of why they should remain, of what they can hold up as worthy of keeping them here. And so that's, I guess we haven't talked about that yet this hour, but that is a very important point that it is a place for the public, a park, huge park for the public where the public comes in, not just to play golf, but to enjoy it as hoomaluhias, same kind of thing. And gee, I joined with you in your vision of it, Sanford. I hope there are plenty of people that will come around and join in that vision and push the thing home. So we're about out of time, but I wanted to ask you, what words and message would you leave with whoever watches this video about what this means to us and what they should be thinking and doing about it? Well, the one word that comes to mind, of course, is aloha. Don't give up. This is our house. This is our community. This is the place where we want our children to stay and thrive. And we need to create places like that, which will allow that to happen. I hope we see it in our lifetimes. David, I hope we see it come through. And I hope that you and I can get together about it and talk about it and how it's going and what needs to be done to push it home. I hope we can do that soon. We will. Thank you. Thank you, Sanford. Sanford Marata, a real estate professional, a planner, a guy who embraces the land. Thank you very much for coming onto St. Tech. You're welcome. Aloha.