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What started out as a man-made sewer problem has tragically turned into an environmental and public health disaster. After the city dumped more than 48 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Ala Wai Canal, one man died, and at least one woman, Lisa Kennedy, was hospitalized after scraping herself on coral. The long-term health effects of the spill are still unknown. People want the answers to two basic questions: Could this nightmare have been avoided? And what can be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

Unfortunately, like the decaying sewer system itself, critics say there’s a lot of crap flowing out of Honolulu Hale these days in response to these questions. Initially, city and county officials blamed the rain for the rupture of the 42-inch sewer main on March 24. This seemed like a legitimate excuse because it was the heaviest rainfall on record, a deluge of biblical proportions lasting more than 40 days and 40 nights. There seemed to be no other solution, but recent revelations have shown otherwise.

This was not an accidental spill but rather a purposeful discharge of 48 million gallons of raw sewage into the Ala Wai Canal. That’s the equivalent of 90 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

In reality, the figure could have been much higher. The disaster also could have been avoided, or at least mitigated, if city officials had done their jobs better.

Just last July, Eric Takamura, director of the city’s Environmental Services Department, wrote a memo forecasting with haunting accuracy what would happen if the sewer main ruptured. The recently resurrected memo predicted a massive discharge of sewage into the Ala Wai Canal that would have ‘major health impacts in a very short timeframe.’

Mayor Mufi Hannemann said that diverting the sewage spill into the Ala Wai was the only option and was in accordance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s contingency plans. But, the EPA has disputed this claim and is investigating what went wrong. In fact, they have been issuing huge fines for more than 10 years and even filed a lawsuit against the city, forcing them to replace the decaying sewer lines. In 2004, three environmental groups–the Sierra Club Hawai’i Chapter, Hawaii’s Thousand Friends and Our Children’s Earth–joined the EPA’s lawsuit.

Instead of working to repair the sewer system, the city has hired an expensive Los Angeles law firm to fight the case. The city’s failure to address the issue dates back to the administration of Mayor Jeremy Harris, who was more focused on beautifying the streets of Waikiki than dealing with its underlying sewage problems. Harris repeatedly raided sewer funds to help balance his bloated budgets, and while on City Council, Hannemann voted to support these raids.

Lawyers have already filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of Oliver Johnson, who died from a bacterial infection after being exposed to polluted waters in the Ala Wai boat harbor after the spill. It’s still not clear whether or not Johnson fell or was pushed into the water; nor is it certain whether his pre-existing drinking problem and or other factors sealed his fate. Adding litigation to injury, Lisa Kennedy’s lawyers are also suing the city, saying she was infected and had to be hospitalized after surfing in Waikiki’s contaminated waters.

While lawyers and bureaucrats argue over the question of personal responsibility and who’s to blame for the sewage discharge, environmental groups are trying to find ways to keep it from happening again. Here is a list of possible solutions.

1 Replace Old Sewer Lines and Put in Bypass Lines..Now

There have been countless sewage spills over the years, and the EPA has issued millions of dollars in fines and filed lawsuits against the city to force them to change the decaying system. This legal wrangling has been going on for at least a decade. Enough is enough. Instead of fighting these lawsuits and putting off repairs, the mayor and his administration need to fast-track plans to replace decaying pipes and put in redundant lines. This needs to happen before more damage is done to the environment, the people’s health and Hawai’i’s reputation. Reports on CNN and in the New York Times about sewer spills certainly don’t help tourism.

‘It’s a wake-up call for everyone,’ says Bruce Anderson, the former director of the state Department of Health and current president of the Oceanic Institute. ‘We can’t afford not to deal with these issues aggressively. There’s too much at riskÖThe consequences in Waikiki are obviously high. I can’t think of a worse-case scenario than to have a major spill in the middle of a large resort area.’ Anderson says these problems go back 10 years when he was director. ‘Unfortunately, we’ve gotten way behind the curve in repairing these systems.’

2 Set up an Incident Command System/Unified Command

Currently, the city and county is in charge of dealing with sewage spills, but they don’t have the health experts or resources to coordinate an appropriate response. ‘When you have an oil spill, it’s everybody’s problem,’ says Rusty Nall. ‘But when you have a sewage spill, it’s the city and county’s problem.’ Nall is vice president of American Marine Services Group, the company that dredged the Ala Wai Canal and helps clean up oil spills. He and Anderson think the city should set up an Incident Command System/Unified Command, which aligns state and federal agencies to create an integrated response team.

‘The [Incident] Command System was developed to address oil and hazardous material spills,’ Anderson says. ‘There already is a system in place to deal with these other problems, and rather than recreate the wheel, it would be advantageous to use the systems that are already in place and simply expand the scope of responsibility to include large sewage spills.’

According to Anderson, the different types of spills can have similar environmental and health hazards. Although Honolulu does not currently have an ICS/UC, any system would have to include the state and federal governments and other players.< \c:

3 Improve Water Monitoring and Use Lifeguards to Inform the Public

Joel Ching, hawaii411.com

As part of an integrated response team, city and county officials should work with federal and state health agencies to do more accurate water testing and educate people about potential hazards. Water samples taken after the spill showed that bacteria levels were dangerously high, but they failed to measure the mud and sand where the effluent later settled. Although Watson Okubo of the Department of Health posted results on both the Surfrider Foundation and Surf News Network websites, many paddlers, tourists and surfers like Lisa Kennedy were still unaware of the dangers. Lifeguards need to be better informed about water quality so they can better inform the public.

‘Lifeguards are a great source of information for anyone going to the beach,’ Anderson says. ‘I would recommend that a system be set up where lifeguards could call into an information line at the state health department and get up-to-date information on water quality test results. Or they could be briefed regularly on the situationÖThere’s no reason why they couldn’t be a source of reliable information on an ongoing basis.’

4 Use Bioremediation to Treat the Sewage and Wastewater Runoff

There is concern among many scientists and health officials that sediments at the bottom of the Ala Wai and on the ocean floor may contain disease-causing organisms. The fear is that they could be re-suspended after heavy rains or strong swells, presenting a recurring health threat. To deal with the problem of contaminated water, mud and sand, some scientists have suggested a process called bioremediation to allow natural microorganisms to treat the sewage effluent.

Hiromichi Nago, president of EM Hawaii, recommends using a mixed culture of what he calls ‘effective microorganisms’ to feed on waste products and sewage. Nago says these ‘friendly guys,’–beneficial microorganisms like yeast and lactic acid bacteria–can help destroy the ‘not-so-friendly guys’–the pathogens suspended in the water and lying on the bottom. This technology has been effectively demonstrated in Osaka Bay and the Dotonbori River in Japan, and it is already being used at the Honolulu Zoo to treat animal wastes. According to Nago, it could be used for regular maintenance of the Ala Wai and for disaster relief in the case of a large spill.

5 Create an Artificial Wetland Using Indigenous Plants to Clean the Water

Shayne Stambler

When the Ala Wai Canal was built in the 1920s, it was originally supposed to be a circular system that flowed from the boat harbor all the way to Kapi’olani Park and back to the ocean. But funds dried up during the Great Depression, and the canal was stopped at the Kapahulu Avenue end. The Ala Wai project created a relatively stagnant body of water and destroyed Waikiki’s original wetlands, which naturally filtered sewage and wastewater runoff. Now, it’s time to reintroduce native plants like the ‘akulikuli to help clean the canal and the streams leading into it.

This particular form of ecological engineering was invented years ago by a local company called Marine Agritech, and a pilot project was implemented in the Ala Wai Canal by Natural Systems, Inc.

Chad Durkin, a specialist with Natural Systems, says that the ‘akulikuli beds currently in the canal serve to restore the natural wetlands that were destroyed with the development of Waikiki. ‘What we’re trying to do is restore the aquatic ecology,’ he says. ‘This is nature’s way of cleaning up the water, and we’re using native plants to do that. This is a low-cost solution that is based on solar income, which is a fancy way of saying, it’s run by the sun.’

The state has plans to install high-pressure pumps at the Kapahulu end of the canal to flush out the Ala Wai, but Durkin says that is ‘just moving the problem from one place to another,’ out of the canal and into the ocean. Along with treating the wastewater, an expanded system of ‘akulikuli beds could help create a more natural and healthier estuary environment. ‘There are a lot of technologies,’ he says, ‘but constructed wetlands are probably the cheapest of them.’

As the warm, sunny weather returns, it’s tempting to let the sewage spill slowly sink into a distant memory, where it will fester like the tons of effluent at the bottom of the Ala Wai. After all, we live in the United States of Amnesia, where we would rather daydream about future opportunities than focus on fixing past problems.

There have been worse sewage spills across the country, but no state has more to lose than Hawai’i because of our dependence on the ocean for tourism and recreation dollars. We can either continue to lag behind other states in updating our sewer systems and protecting our waters, or we can use this crisis to move ahead and make Hawai’i an environmental leader.

Although the suggestions listed above are not panaceas, they are practical steps to mitigate the damage of previous spills and diminish the effects of future ones. Whatever city officials decide to do, delaying repairs is not the answer. The massive sewage spill was a tragic event, but it would be an even greater tragedy if we allowed it to happen again.

Stuart Coleman is a member of the Surfrider Foundation and the author of Eddie Would Go.