 Aloha. Happy Friday. I'm Kaui Lukias here on Hawaii is my mainland every Friday 3 p.m. on Think Tech, Hawaii This week I have another engineering project. This one is really big We had the little water wheel last week, but this week we have I think the biggest one ever except for the rail And that is the three mile Tunnel between Kaneohe to Kailua for wastewater and with me today is the project manager Don Painter and Lori Kahikina who is with the city and County of Honolulu and she is head of The she is the director of the environmental services. So welcome. Thank you. Thank you And Don has managed to come to Hawaii and run some pretty big projects A lot. You just mentioned that you've been here 50 times not counting when you've been living here. That's a lot Don. Only working here So give us a little background about how this this technology is Being used here. It's the first time that this tunnel boring machine has been used here and What this is going to do for us? The tunnel boring machine is actually a fairly small rock machine It's a 13-foot diameter machine and it basically bores a round tunnel It is the largest board tunnel on the island of Oahu. We've actually in the state of Hawaii At this at this time. I'm sure there'll be more coming at some point in time It's a rock machine. It's called a main beam rock machine. It's manufactured by the Robbins Company of Solano, Ohio And the machine in in and of itself is kind of a unique piece of mechanical Equipment it weighs about 300 tons totally assembled. It's about 300 feet long Has about 2,500 horsepower that drives the cutter head support and all the backup behind that The machine is actually did perform very well here We had some some rock that wasn't like we expected but this machine could handle it and we Went on through with it with the help of the NV in the seat sitting County of Honolulu directors all it's been it's been a nice project So this is a sizable project. I Stated the number wrong on the on the pre-show. It's a hundred and 70 173 Million-dollar project and Don hats off Evidently you're on budget. I just want to say thank you It's taking a lot of work a lot of team effort to do that and Anything you want to share about what that process was. I mean, how did you manage to do it? This is fabulous The only thing I'm gonna add to that is a lot of hard work and there again. It's been a team effort It's not just been the contractor. It's been the owner. It's been the engineers the designers we've had our problems as all Projects do but collectively the team has managed to sort through the major part of those problems and keep everybody I guess a little bit friendly Have the problems been more management or technical or Technical more than and some geotechnical problems and and They have they've not been insurmountable And it just takes a little bit of work to sort through them So you're you're digging a tunnel through basically through the Onyava Hills from Kaneohe to Kailua from Kailua to Kaneohe The tunnel went uphill the tunnel went uphill Very small the name is those very specifically Kaneohe to Kailua. Okay, but yeah, okay You actually dug the tunnel. Okay. Yes, so you started at the bottom and and have Finished the digging part the tunnel is complete That must have felt really good. It did It's a credit. It's a credit to everybody involved with the tunnel. It's a lot of hard work So Lori you're looking at it from the the city's point of view and what is what has been your process in this? Like Don mentioned it's been a team effort We are going to be the owners of this tunnel once he's he's completed it and I just can't reiterate what he said It's been a team effort the contractor has been really good They have there have been a lot of hiccups along the way But we've tried to work together the team to keep the project moving along And that it there always are going to be we all know that it it's the it's the the ability to You know power through that Come out with a good result that is is the really important thing and we just need more shining examples like this one of the things that We well we haven't talked about yet that what is this for I'm not sure which one of you is the better to answer that but How is the tunnel going to be used? I can answer that so it is a EPA mandated project That's in our consent decree. We do have to finish it by a certain time It will transport the flows all the way from Kaneohe to our Kailua treatment plant and originally we were going to build a force main We have an existing force main, which is a pressurized pipe So we push the the wastewater under pressure from Kaneohe to Kailua I Think everyone remembers the beach walk when that force main broke 40 million gallons of water spills into wike key Kaneohe Bay is right there So we were actually going to do for our consent decree a force made through Kaneohe Bay But we knew that was environmentally Culturally very sensitive area so we renegotiated EPA to build this gravity tunnel So under gravity instead of pressurized pipe that flow will come from Kaneohe to Kailua gives us extra capacity So we don't have to build holding tanks on the Kaneohe side because somehow the rainwater gets into our system and it shouldn't But what it does like this last heavy rains, you know our flows double quadruple to what it's usually at So we need to store that flow until the treatment plant can handle taking it Okay, so the when it when it rains, it's the water that comes seeps into the sewage System and that's what's pressurized and so when you looked it Are we going to put this underneath the the bay? Was that going to be using one of these? Machines also or it would have used one of the machines But you know the foresight that the owners had on this of taking under the bay Anytime you take any type of wastewater underneath the main body of water You there's some problems that might seem insurmountable at the time and can be insurmountable like Lori mentioned it All you need is one break and yeah, it's very difficult to get back to it. The alignment of this is probably the best Absolute way they can do it and even then on a on a gravity feed system I like mayor Caldwell's mountain mentioned it numerous times that the reduction in power They don't have to run the pumps to pump this it all flows Naturally it flows naturally down towards Kailua, but in our conversation Yesterday didn't you say that there's you have to pump it back up for treatment Then it comes to a pump station But he's don't have the pumps along the alignment that are working all the time to keep the lines pressurized You only have really basically one set of pumps to take all of this water to the treatment process and how what is the How far is the treatment process from there from where the tunnel is? I mean, what is that? It's right in the middle of it. That's right at the plant. It's right at the plant Oh, so that's not much coming at all. Oh, it's basically it's basically a 67 foot vertical pump 67 foot vertical pump Maybe now it's a good time to to look at some of the pictures of this because the the scale is is pretty pretty awesome So that was this is the the the route The actual alignment. Yes three miles Okay, and it I'm trying to um Picture where that where the kailua Is that the top right of the screen is the kailua regional wastewater treatment plant? Okay, where the effluent will come from kanioi. There you go. He treat why I call he elementary. I call he shopping center That's what you're calling the kailua side. That's the kailua treatment And the kanioi pre-treatment facility is by the bay view golf course Right, right, right. All right. We'll pull a hollow school in one corner and bay view golf course on the other The old one is where that fish pond. I have white fish pond. Yes. Yes Pull mangroves out of that place They're good neighbors So this is um under some some Like hills it's mountains. It's a lot of pressure. So how does this The flow of the the elevation change from kanioi to kailua is very marginal The elevation in the grade is about a 35 foot vertical drop from the kanioi site to the kailua site Which is an engineered hydraulic function that you know, the water can't go too fast In this net so basically when the the tunnel store about eight million gallons So that lori's plant operators can Meter that into the plant so that they can go and stay within their guidelines on the plant take this water when we can treat it if it's under a Under duress and backed up Then basically he says stop. I'll treat what I can then I'll take this this Rest of this out of out of the pump station when I can and meter through So to say that she would treat all eight million gallons and one day it wouldn't happen It would be over a span of numerous days number of days How many days would that take I'm not sure what that And that's a function how much flow comes in that's a function of the flows that they have and the capacity of the plant Okay, so I had said that um Carl kim was chatting with me A few weeks ago on the show and he had mentioned this project Which is one reason I looked you up and then it really came To the front because I walked down to kailua beach after tropical storm darby I can't even go swimming But you said that um, this will help but maybe not that kind of wastewater. So we want to um Have some clarity on that. Um, right. So there's two different systems There's the storm water system and the sewer systems two completely separate sets of pipes So the sewer system is supposedly totally enclosed. So anything from your toilets your sinks your washing machines That all goes into the sewer system comes to our plant and we treat it and then it goes out into the ocean The storm drains that's all of the streams feeding to it the Off the roads the gutters all of that goes into a separate set of pipes It's not treated and it goes straight into the ocean But somehow there's either there's cross connections or people are popping our manholes letting the rainwater get in Or their rain gutters are connected directly to our sewers Somehow that storm water is getting into our system To the point of like our sand island treatment plant. Normally we pump 67 million gallons per day this last storm over the weekend We went over 220 So we're quadrupling what our normal flow is because all this extra rain water is getting in So when you refer to kylo beach being um, it's all brown. That's That's really all the runoff from the The streams the rivers all feeding into the straight into the ocean. It's not treated So our system we're building a tunnel would not help in this case because it's completely separate Um, just wondering does the EPA have any problem with that? Yeah, I think that's um nationwide They're going they're probably going to start focusing more. It was easy to target the treatment plants because everything feeds into one point and Um enters one point. So it's easy to focus on us. Okay, get you guys under control and now This is a major problem that probably going to be their next Focus because it right now it doesn't feed nicely into a treatment plant It goes all the way up to tributary up into the islands and there is multiple owners The federal owns land the state private owners all feed into these streams Which eventually leads to the ocean. So how do you regulate that as a regulator? So Well, that's a good question. Let's take a break and think about it and come back and maybe answer it Aloha, how you doing? Welcome to you by to talk. I'm here gordo the techs are on think tech, hawaii I'm here with my good old buddy andrew the security guy. Hey everybody. How you doing? Aloha Good to have good to have andrew here in the house Please join us every friday from one to 130 and follow us up on youtube and remember as we say at the end of every show How you doing? Hi, i'm ethan allen host of likeable science here on think tech hawaii dot com I hope you'll join me every friday at 2 p.m. To discover what's likeable about science Aloha, i'm kirsten bombgart turner host of sustainable hawaii. Thanks for watching think tech this summer We have a lot of terrific shows of great importance And I hope you'll watch my show too every tuesday at noon as we address sustainability issues for hawaii They're really pertinent as the world conservation congress approaches in september And the world youth congress that's focusing on sustainability next year as well Have a great summer and tune in at noon every tuesday Welcome back to hawaii is my mainland i'm kawaii lucas and was we here today Is lori kahikina from the city and county? I always get this wrong director of environmental services And don peter who has just finished pouring gosh. I wonder how many of of pounds of concreter creating a three mile tunnel under the onyava hills to Safeguard our wastewater Well the concrete hasn't been but right now the backfill in a tunnel will be just in the pipe the 10 foot dammer Oh boss pipe there's 26,000 yards that'll go in there 26,000 yards. So you took a lot of material out we did and um I heard that there was something there was something really useful. I'm sorry. We didn't talk about this before But I did run into somebody who has said wow, this was a great um working together We took the stuff and and then we filled in what was that? We we actually uh did some fills on the island We also took some of the really good rock out of the tunnel and it went to a major concrete supplier here on the island And then recycled it beautiful really nice really nice I love to see that kind of synergy and speaking of which You had um, there were some pictures of some very cute kids from i kahi elementary That the robotics team they got to um, they got to be part of this. Well, how did that happen? Well, they're actually good neighbors of ours or maybe we're not so good neighbors of theirs odors and so Whenever we have a major project. We tried to keep the school abreast of what's going on and when our contractor came in They have that big tunnel boring machine I think you have pictures of it and the robotics team was allowed to come up with the name for the machine So I'm not exactly sure how I don't know if the multiple students turned in different names But they came to us and said we settled on pohacolani Oh, that's beautiful So they were there for the blessing, right? They came they were for the blessing and they also talked at length with the mayor Yes, yes, and their parents got their cones The only caveat with with naming the machine Uh, and this this comes from the industry the tunneling industry. It has to be a female name Okay, well, we won't tell him that will we uh, Lori that hoian names are gender neutral But the students the students came in with all of this and we we were bound by our our promise to the students So this is seems to be working really remarkably well on so many levels uh in in the community that I couldn't help You know, especially with um, carl kim's suggestion of Well, you know, we have that rail thing and the last time we looked at tunneling was um a long time ago before the Uh technology is what it what it is today And I know this isn't what your job is about and I know that you're not giving any kind of approval But I just want to explore the idea of using this technology and some other projects Around and rail is just such a big one. We have to talk about it. I mean if it's if it's silly It's silly But um, what about it? Is it possible to to to bring one of these machines and and and bore through um, uh downtown Honolulu without disrupting everything The question you always answered with Answer that question is can a tunnel be built? Of course it can But how much is it going to cost? And there's a a lot of a lot of people say well they built a tunnel here That was good for them, but there's years of planning and design and geotechnical investigations or anything to make it the best possible way So looking at A transit tunnel I've built transit tunnels. I built highway tunnels. Yes, it can be built But are you is is the public and the taxpayer and the the residents Do they want to absorb that cost? A lot of times the reason light rail goes underground or transit goes underground because it's a maintenance consideration It's very easy maintenance under there. It's not exposed to the elements the weather But there again, it's it's a higher cost per mile Higher cost per mile generally, yes The the nice thing about the tunnel is less invasive to the community the area It's like a like a sewer tunnel And there's people in Kailua still we've been building for two and a half years now There's people in Kailua that still don't even know a tunnel's going on there Which is what we like Don just hit it right there on the head. So this tunnel just the tunnel portion 175 million dollars And we are planning on building one in the alamuana section to take the Waikiki flows through downtown That's going to cost about 650 million dollars So Waikiki from like the the alamuana side of why yes To alamuana the gobon building you're talking about 650 million dollars So that's going to be very far. It's not very far. That's like maybe a mile not even yeah, it's not very far 600 about 650 million dollars. I mean we're adding capacity in that area Maybe a little bit further maybe from beachwalk. I should say from beachwalk. It's in Waikiki But it's not much. It's not as far as miles go So you're talking 650 million. So that's exactly what don said. I know in the past it was talked about on the ground rail, but It's it's easier to construct something above grounds. It's a little bit cheaper, but I think we would all love it underground, right? You know, we don't have this Well, and yeah, right right looking at it doing the math. Okay. That's interesting 650 million to go If it's from beachwalk, that's that's a mile and a half Maybe two maybe two maybe two. Okay, so compared to five billion for an hour and a half Okay, and that's not including stations and everything but it You talked about how there was a A life cycle cost analysis done and that that's how This machine was chosen as as a way of doing that And I'm just I'm just wondering about is is that Being done on these um other projects too. Is it being included? Is it a choice? Unfortunately, we don't have a metric for How awful and disruptive it is we don't have a dollar value And I think that now that everybody's had um, uh the experience of of the rail being above ground and and then Kailua folks not even knowing Ears They have a completed project. I mean there's something about them There's there's one of the things that has to be and then you ask early on about the different configurations of machines There are machines. It'll it'll tunnel through mud water background There's different configurations of machines and part of the part of the selection for the machine for the project is a very intense geotechnical investigation and it has and it's Geotechnical investigations are good or they're bad So if if there's a bad one And you select the machine Or the owner has a prescriptive type of machine they want for you You take the machine and it doesn't work Then there's a lot of people that suffer for that So the money upfront is spent on underground. Um, I'm a I'm only because I'm in the business I'm a proponent of underground power lines Sewers everything should be underground less invasive to the environment But there's a cost associated with all of that For example right now Alaskan way in seattle or building the big viaduct underneath the viaduct if you've been to seattle And it's going to be rail and truck traffic It's a 58 foot diameter machine and they are basically Mining in glacial till and rubbish and mud and clay And this machine is doing well. It's about 18,000 feet. I think total But this machine is doing it So you design Or and select the machine for the ground conditions But the start of that is is What does lori want for her plant? So we've got to say, okay, we need this kind of capacity. We need this And I want a 10 foot diameter tunnel. I want a 30 foot diameter tunnel So the geotechnical investigation takes care of that Well, this rock's really good here, but this rock here is really bad So what type of machine are we going to design for this? Machines are generally If you just put a hard number on it, you're about a million and a half dollars per foot of diameter machine is what they cost That's just to buy it. That's not that's not to use the machine and and and drive it What is it run on just? Electrical and hydraulics electrical or hydraulic Uh, there's this particular machine and and I think americaldwell told told him one day He was standing by the hydraulic tank the machine actually cycles 840 gallons of hydraulic oil A minute just to run the machine If you break one of those holes, it's not very nice So lori, uh, I assume then um, you're busy doing studies for this The hydrology studies that um, don was mentioning um in wikiki now We just started we just put the money in our f y fiscal year 17 funds for the planning So it hasn't even gone out to a consultant yet. That is not a consent decree project, but we just felt You know, there's all of that construction all the buildings going up in that area There are some places we have capacity problems We better really think about um building a tunnel there and how this project came about actually It's kind of funny. I just told the mayor about it You know private meaning that you know, we're thinking of doing another big tunnel over the wikiki side You know from beach walk to alamone get rid of those pump stations get rid of those force means Within a week, we were giving a speech at a engineering You know Function and he gets on the stage. He goes, yeah, the city's gonna do this large tunnels like Oh We could thank the mayor for it. It really does make sense though, but I think it makes so much sense Can you just have another chat with him please? No, so he appeared Agree to put the money in our fiscal 17. The council has already approved it So we will be procuring a consultant to do the planning part of that project Well, I I'm just really wanting to open up the discussion a little I know You know, there's been decades of back-and-forth studies done, but when when there's a substantial success using a technology that hasn't been used before It just seems that it would be worth it to to revisit it Oh, are you meaning maybe real underground? Yeah. Oh, oh, we should leave now Maybe from middle school Well, you know, that's what that's what was car was carl was saying. He said, you know, I I know they do it in other places And he he loves portland. You you you worked on the portland one I was a project manager on the white rail tunnel in portland. Yes You know, I just can't help wanting it to happen. But at least Um, uh, the studies that you're doing now for the for the wastewater will get More information. Yes about the possibilities. Maybe further down the line. That's a great idea. That is a great idea There's um, um, another, um, uh Other possible uses that you're you're looking at for this, um the tunneling. Um, are you I think down the road and I think for imagine before cso is a big thing you walking on kailua beach seeing Not not a nice place. So at some point in time you can All the big a lot of the big cities on the mainland I've worked on Milwaukee, chicago, atlanta They're all cso programs now big tunnels big treatment plants and cso again is combined Okay, which would actually do something about The the storm water runoff it would but it's a different design altogether Well, we are we're in our our last minute here on hawaii is my mainland already. I know. Can you believe it? Thank you both so much for coming and talking to me and thank you for doing such an excellent job Thanks for having us. Thank you