There has been interest in details I have been writing up here from folks in the community, so here are some more. I hope it is of interest.
Most of today water department trucks were gathered at the entrance to Kakela Makai around a hole in the road working on something.
Gauging the water level in the tank
Today I learned from a citizen in the Kakela Makai area how you can tell the level of water in the supply tanks, i.e. how close the community is to running out of water.
Along Puu Road on the
makai side of the Kukuiolono golf course there is a big green water tank. The GPS location is approximately (21.912192,-159.523775) or see
Google map.
Along the right side of the tank is a white vertical bar that has an indicator that goes up and down: see the yellow arrow in photo at left. This is attached to a pulley at the top, over, and down into the tank connected to a float to measure the water level. The further up this indicator goes the lower down the float is and vice versa. This shot (June 2, 3pm) shows the indicator about 1/4 from the top (dashed yellow line) which means the water lever is roughly 1/4 from empty (dashed blue line below). As the indicator moves lower it means there is more water in the tank (and if you look closely at the Google Street view at the link above, the indicator is down a few feet from ground level) showing normal very full supply.
Kalaheo's wells and water tanks
The two wells that have both failed causing this water shortage are
mauka side uphill from the highway, approximately at (
21.938187,-159.525099) according to the map provided at the water department meeting on Saturday. There is a water tank near the wells and another tank (100,000 gallon) further uphill on Puuwai Road.
On the other side of the highway to the south in addition to the Puu Road tank shown above, there is a (250,000 gallon) tank up near the northeast edge of the Kukuiolono golf course, roughly at
(21.9180151,-159.5261859).
What about all the other water?
At the water department meeting one good question was about potentially using Alexander Reservoir (
21.9570011,-159.5243735) which is just uphill from the highest
mauka tank and presumably contains lots of water. Chief Engineer Saiki responded that the water treatment facility for the reservoir was damaged in Iniki (major hurricane) and have been abandoned. Restoring the treatment facility probably doesn't make sense as an interim measure since it would take considerable time and expense, probably repairing the wells is cheaper and faster. Additionally, since this isn't a department of water reservoir (it seems to be private) it isn't even part of the system as I understand it. This explanation makes sense to me.
Another question was about the nearby Kauai Coffee fields having water while the adjoining neighborhoods in Kalaheo don't. The coffee fields are supplied by private agricultural water system not part of the department of water and since it is non-potable water it isn't clear how they could even usefully share even if they wanted to. That said, so see all that water running in ditches when you have none in the tap is hard to ignore.
In addition to the regular menu they have daily specials as well as a selection of baked goods. Today I had the Furikake crusted ahi, wasabi butter sauce ($10.75) - it was well prepared, generous portion, and quite tasty. I you like spicy food I recommend adding (to taste) some Sriracha sauce (available there) to the mac salad to give it a little kick.