While Hawai’i truly is the paradise that people think it is, parts of the islands also experience many of the same challenges faced by industrial areas on the mainland. One of these challenges is cleaning up contamination from inadequate environmental practices of the past.

For the last decade, Hawai’i environmental officials have worked diligently to deal with significant contamination issues in the busiest port area on the islands, the Iwilei District. This area is approximately six square miles on the most populous island of O’ahu and includes the busy Honolulu Harbor as well as hundreds of private businesses. As a group of islands, Hawai’i is greatly dependent on cargo shipped in from outside of the islands. For well over a century, the majority of all goods shipped into Hawai’i have arrived into the Honolulu Harbor. This port also serves as the main distribution point to the neighboring islands. The Honolulu Harbor area has also served as one of the main areas for fuel transfer and handling. As a result, the area has experienced its share of oil, diesel, and other predominantly fuel releases.

The Honolulu Harbor/Iwilei District Project management approach provides an excellent model for addressing area-wide contamination involving multiple potentially responsible parties (PRPs) and numerous landowners. This project is located in the City and County of Honolulu and includes 315 acres of public and private lands within the Honolulu Harbor area. The 315 acres are further divided into project operable units to aid in the remediation of the area. Contamination in this area consists primarily of petroleum hydrocarbons. The site also contains impacts to soil and groundwater caused by past releases of fuels from historic storage tanks and underground pipelines that are no longer in use. Although far from completion, this project has succeeded in addressing the remediation of this contamination through the use of collaboration between all involved parties.

Complex Environmental Problems and an Interesting Approach
The success of this project can be attributed to the formation of a collective group of PRPs called the Iwilei District Participating Parties (IDPP). Interestingly, the largest landowner in the project area, the Hawai’i Department of Transportation, is a member of this diverse group. IDPP has an organized structure with delineated lines of communication between the members, the main regulatory body, the Hawai’i State Department of Health (HDOH), and the public at large. This organization allows for a well-defined strategic approach to the overall management of the project.

In 2006, HDOH formalized its relationship with IDPP in an Enforceable Agreement (EA) with the ultimate goal of protecting human health and the environment. Prior to the EA, IDPP performed response activities under a more voluntary agreement with the HDOH. The EA set forth a Scope of Work for the project and a Schedule of Deliverables. Any work done related to the project is done in accordance with this schedule. This allows for timeliness and an organized approach to accomplishing defined project milestones.

Collaboration and Technical Expertise Make for Effective Cleanups
To evaluate the hundreds of potentially contaminated and privately-owned parcels, the HDOH has undertaken an extensive and methodical process of site discovery. This process involves pouring over historical-use information and available environmental data to identify the parcels that are most likely at risk of contamination. These properties then become the subject of a more intense investigation. In some cases, this investigation has led to the discovery of inactive pipelines containing residual fuel. These rediscovered pipelines represent an additional threat of potential fuel releases and have been subsequently drained.

The subsequent characterization and remediation efforts at release locations in the Iwilei/Honolulu Harbor area have encountered complex issues. The very nature of the aged petroleum contamination at hand, the variability of the lithology, the geology of the project area, and the tidal impacts to the region have prompted the need for the HDOH and IDPP to call upon experts from around the country to help sort through these issues. These experts help to analyze the situation by using the best scientific practices available.

The characterization and remediation of the area has been accomplished using both proven methods such as forensic fuel component analysis and innovative three-dimensional modeling, which measures the extent of oil in the subsurface. Being used to evaluate residual saturation and the resulting degree of oil recoverability. The ultimate goal for these efforts has been to remove that which is removable to the extent practicable while managing what is not recoverable with the implementation of long-term institutional controls.

Working to environmentally cleanup the heart of Honolulu’s busiest harbor, the IDPP is fulfilling its commitment to the state on time and on schedule. Working on many fronts at once, the IDPP is characterizing the contamination, taking effective interim cleanup actions and identifying appropriate remedial actions for the HDOH to consider. All these activities are being conducted under the watchful eye of HDOH supervision. This situation represents a unique demonstration of how collaboration between regulatory agencies and PRPs can result in a well-defined project management action plan for even the most complex cleanup sites. The joint execution of this plan has resulted in a more accurate characterization, effective environmental cleanup and a clear path forward to project completion. It is difficult to determine whether or not this progress in addressing this problem would have been made if the HDOH or PRP’s had adopted a strictly “hard ball” approach. Instead, the situation represents a unique demonstration of how collaboration between regulatory agencies and PRPs can result in a well-defined project management plan. The effective execution of this plan has thus far resulted in accurate characterization and environmental cleanup.

So, clearly the issue of brownfields is not unique to the mainland and brownfields do indeed exist in paradise!

Davis Berstein is the former State of Hawai’i Brownfields coordinator.
Anna Fernandez is IDPP program manager with Hawai’i State Department of Health.
Bruce Tsutsui is a project manager with the Hawai’i State Department of Health.