MECO meeting regarding proposed detention basin at Maalaea

5/1/18 #kihei
KCA wishes to express our appreciation to MECO for inviting us to this presentation, described as an informational meeting on a Maui Electric project at our power generation station in Ma‘alaea. The project involves the installation of a retention basin at the site and the project manager was to be sharing an overview of the project and be available for questions.

Since we consider this region of South Maui extremely environmentally fragile, close to shoreline, frequented by honu and the National bird sanctuary, and continuously increasingly subject to flooding of North Kihei Road, we felt it was of great importance to our community.

Some of our concerns were the location, size and depth of the basin, containment, design, and if it would affect the surrounding area. So first we learned it was not our expectation of a basin, but was a two to three foot high earthen berm around the present facility to contain any stormwater run off. Thus no digging out, but rather trucking in top soil to build the berm. In theory it wold not affect surrounding area.

Of the six (as we recall) entities present, Maui Tomorrow, MNMRC, Maui Ocean Center, Sierra Club, Kula Makai Moku, KCA was the only one with two representatives, but all were outnumbered by the MECO/HECO team of nine.

Project Manager Katee over from Oahu for HECO offered a slide presentation, which we include here, to explain the project. We inquired why the facility, opened in 1971, was now concerned with stormwater run off. The explanation as we understood it, was MECO had long believed it was illegal to do so, but recently leaned it was not. We found this curious.

The project is set to go before the County Planning Commission on May 22.