Implicating Hawaii's Furry and Feathery Friends in the Sewage Disaster?

Hawaii Reporter ^ | 04/07/2006 | Malia Zimmerman

[GrandmaPatriot]

State health officials need a reality check, a good dose of common sense, public relations training and a lesson in, … well, … feces, especially now that the entire island has become one big toilet that Mother Nature just cannot seem to flush.

That of course is thanks to a combination of seven weeks of flash flooding and more than 50 million gallons of raw sewage spewing out of manhole covers, force mains and sewage pipes all around the island. And let’s not forget the 10 years with former Mayor Jeremy Harris in charge of flushing the $100 million sewer fund so carefully gathered from sewer users who paid high fees. Harris’ general rule, when it came to repairing Oahu’s aging and dilapidated sewers, was not to spend the sewer fund on projects that start with "S" or end in "ewers."

Fast forward 10 years, plus one under a new mayor, and now Health Department bureaucrats are on the news nightly talking about everything from raw sewage and flesh-eating bacteria to sand full of staphylococcus aureus bacteria (aka staph) and beach closures.

KHON Television news reporter Ron Mitzutani asked one health official why bacteria levels remained so high in Waikiki, especially in one spot fronting the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, where levels have actually gone up since the state Department of Health declared it safe to swim on Tuesday.

Now keep in mind that the beaches in Waikiki and Magic Island were closed for nearly a week after the city dumped 48 million gallons of raw sewage into the Ala Wai Canal over a 4-day period, when one of the area’s major sewer mains broke. So his answer could have been real simple -- "48 million gallons is a lot of SH** to clear out in a week. Give it some time."

But instead, Watson Okubo of the State Health Department gave a most unpredictable answer -- he implicated Oahu’s furry and feathery friends.

"You get a high count when your surrounding areas are low. What does it tell you? That means it didn't come from the Ala Wai, it must have come from the shore on the beach. We know that birds can contribute to it, rats can contribute, cats, dogs -- besides human beings -- so we felt we feel that some animal or bird came by, did his thing, and that's what our monitoring showed."

Sure, there are a lot of pigeons in Waikiki. But it is a pretty safe bet that even if all of the pigeons in the state and even in the pacific islands got together and pooped all at once in that very spot, they could not compete with 48 million gallons of human raw sewage.

And on top of that, he blames cats and dogs, when cats don’t even like the beach and dogs aren’t allowed there.

An optimist would say Okubo is probably just a misguided health official who temporarily forgot about the largest sewage spill in 20 years -- a spill the EPA is calling catastrophic -- and instead blamed the easiest furry target.

But Okubo isn’t the first Health Department official to point the finger at nature’s non-human creatures for high bacteria counts in Hawaii’s oceans.

In March, at Kualoa Beach Park, turtles were blamed for high bacteria counts in the ocean because apparently state health officials believed these endangered and protected species are pooping too much.

"Over the years, we have had periodic concerns with what looked to be feces coming onto shore at Kualoa," Jim Howe told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. He says Health Department officials "looked into that, and we were assured it was turtle feces."

Never mind that the human restrooms are leaking raw sewage into the ocean and that it still has not been repaired for several weeks, forcing the closure of that landmark beach, long before the rest of the island was hit with a deluge of stinky waste.

If this were a Disney movie, the ducks, rabbits, dogs, cats, pigeons, rats and turtles, would unite and tell the public what the public probably already knows: "That’s Bullfeathers and chicken SH**." Ok, there would be no swearing in the Disney movie.

But unfortunately the record sewage spills are a reality, so it seems the humans will have to demand a better explanation. That is, or face the wrath of the Easter Bunny who’d likely be greatly offended by Health officials blaming the animal kingdom for a human deed.

[GrandmaPatriot]

I just read where a man who had fallen in the Ala Wai Boat Harbor last week when the water had been contaminated by raw sewage just died. They were removing his limbs one at a time since he was admitted a week ago. First his leg, then his arm then they were talking about removing his other arm but I guess he passed away before they could do that. He was a healthy 30 something man before he fell in the water and it was said he had flesh eating bacteria.

It is just so sad.