Hawaii Cesspool

[AaronM]

The beautiful westside beaches are at risk of becoming a toilet bowl?

Well there's your answer for curbing tourist waste - less tourists...

['elepaio]

Downtown Hilo Cesspool:

Ponahawai / Kinoole / Wailuku / makai. Getting more "clogged" with dark matter every week. It stinks and Kapuna afraid to walk after dusk.

[HiloJulie]

Downtown Hilo Cesspool:

Ponahawai / Kinoole / Wailuku / makai.  Getting more "clogged" with dark matter every week. It stinks and Kapuna afraid to walk after dusk.

Leave it to the bigoted racist to offer not one point of constructive comment whatsoever about cesspools other than to interject and degrade people over a self-made up "problem" based upon an assumption of their race!

And by the way, isn't the proper spelling "Kūpuna?"

[TomK]

The beautiful westside beaches are at risk of becoming a toilet bowl?

Well there's your answer for curbing tourist waste - less tourists...

Only one person has brought up the suggestion that tourists should be banned and even he, I think, realized it's not a feasible idea. Hawaii is dependent on tourists and without them, the state will fail. The point about cesspools is not only do they pollute groundwater, but they also pollute coastal waters, especially where ocean currents are unable to take the pollutants a long way offshore.

No one has claimed the west side beaches are at risk.

[SBH]

The beautiful westside beaches are at risk of becoming a toilet bowl?

Hilo Bay is already a toilet bowl. The almost one hundred year old breakwater prevents enough fresh sea water to enter Hilo Bay and flush out the pollutants. They need to open it up and put holes in the almost two mile long breakwater like Magic Island at Ala Moana Beach Park and Ko’Olina lagoons.

Hilo Bay is a cesspool.

[MyManao]

They need to open it up and put holes in the almost two mile long breakwater like Magic Island at Ala Moana Beach Park and Ko’Olina lagoons.

The humbug is the bay stores, as in holds onto rather than releases, arsenic. And doing what you suggest would disturb it.

From.. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/it...e8be337b60

Distribution of Arsenic in the Sediments and Biota of Hilo Bay, Hawaii. 

Which begins..

Sediment samples collected from the Waiakea Mill Pond, Wailoa River, and Hilo Bay were analyzed for arsenic. Arsenic was detectable in 10of II sediment samples, and ranged in concentration from 2 to 715 ppm.

The way I've heard it told the EPA would list Hilo Bay as a superfund site, but that to clean it up would create more problems than leaving it be.

More recently there's been studies that have focused on cesspool affluents.. but the underlying concern has always been arsenic.

[kalianna]

Wow, I hadnʻt heard that before. Others might have the same question I had: how did the arsenic get there? From the same article:

"Sediments of the Wailoa River estuary have much higher concentrations of arsenic than those of Hilo Bay, indicating that most arsenic is located near the original source of pollution, a factory that once operated on the shores of the Waiakea Mill Pond."

[MyManao]

how did the arsenic get there?

Arsenic was used as a poison, and added to canec, which most houses in Hawaii used as a ceiling material

From.. https://imagesofoldhawaii.com/canec/

Between 1879 and 1948, Waiākea Mill Company conducted mill operations at Waiākea Pond. Bagasse – a by-product of sugarcane – became a secondary industry, first as a fuel for the mills’ boilers, then as the main ingredient for a wallboard product. 

Which further on states..

It was treated with inorganic arsenic compounds to discourage mildew and insects. In addition, the wallboard was treated against termites with calcium arsenate and arsenic, and finally hydrosulfate was added to ‘set the size,’ inhibit the absorption of water and harden the board.

[kalianna]

And more thanks to you, My Manao, for answering my unanswered question of what were they doing with arsenic?

[kalakoa]

Arsenic contamination is why the Keaau Travelodge never got built.