Watershed Action: the Machines and Muscles

City Department of Facilities Management uses a crane and dump trucks to clear debris from the Woodlawn Drive Bridge. Silt screens were set up to keep sediment from flowing downstream. Road maintenance personnel report that a significant amount of the debris came from the yard clippings and branches from homes upstream.

Community volunteers, including Rep. Calvin Say, lower left, use musclepower to remove sediment and rocks caught by the debris trap in Palolo's Waiomao Stream channel. The area is inaccessible to heavy equipment. The Palolo cleanup, assisted by the Departments of Parks & Recreation and Environmental Services, exceeded four container loads of trash, metals, and green waste

City Department of Environmental Services
Stormwater Branch brought their brass out to assist in the Earth Day 2006 Makiki Stream cleanup. Here they use their Iwo Jima technique to remove a log brought down by the March rains, which also deposited an additional 1.5 foot layer of sediment on the streambed

Professional tree trimmers use a crane to
remove a diseased opiuma tree from the Kaimuki High School streambank. Before stripping, this tree was 30 feet high and 40 feet wide, with the base approximately 5
feet in diameter. AWWA arranged to have a monkeypod tree to replace it to retain the vegetated ambience of the streambank.

An all-muscle workout on a 40-degree slope along the bank of Waiomao Stream in Palolo. In the center is Raymond Higashi, AWWA's in-house horticulturist, directing the planting of laua'e, a shade tolerant and tough-rooted species capable of holding soil under a heavy canopy of trees. When Ray is there, the plants do well. When he's not, we have agricultural anxiety.

A Washington Middle School student prepares the soil for planting next to the Jack-in-the-Box/Tesoro driveway at King and Kalakaua. This vegetated buffer was created from a strip of construction rubble that was augmented with several truckloads of dirt and hundreds of dollars of compost. The naupaka plants were rooted from shoots cut from the Manoa Rec Center streambank and mulched with a truckload donated by the University of Hawaii. The vegetated buffer was designed to eventually draw the polluted runoff from the high use parking lot, keeping it from going directly into Makiki Stream.

The kupuna and the kids get together to populate the planter in front of Jack-in-the-Box at King and Kalakaua. Eventually, this buffer will catch roof water instead of having it flow into Makiki Stream. The major environmental enemy of this patch: human feet.

Piles of invasive vines pulled from the streambank landscaping by AWWA volunteers. AWWA will be restoring the washed out streambank path by the Manoa Rec Center this summer.

At every community fair, Apoha the O opu shows up with AWWA. May Uyehara, Arlene Hiu, Apoha, and Hen Min Hiu on the motor scooter were a big hit with the kids at Discover Moiliili Day.

Piilani Kaopuiki delivers a contribution to the trash collection at the Old Towne Moiliili cleanup.

Upcoming Events

Ahupuaa Foundations for Watershed Stewardship

Series of On-Site Tours and Lectures begins Saturday, October 14, 2006

The first stop on the tour is Central Oahu and the North Shore.

© 2006 Ala Wai Watershed Association