Tocqueville Surfs
23rd May 2009
Last December’s floods washed out park roads, bridges, and facilities at Kauai’s Polihale State Park. Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) studied the damage and released a statement two months later, declaring, “We know that people are anxious to get to the beach. However, the preliminary cost estimate of repairs is $4 million.” The DLNR’s response to this natural disaster was to look for more state or federal funds. Its main objective was to grab a fee-generated windfall for the department, ironically entitled the “Recreational Renaissance” fund. DLNR’s chair, Laura Thielen, proclaimed: “We are asking for the public’s patience and cooperation to help protect the park’s resources during this closure, and for their support of the ‘Recreational Renaissance’ so we can better serve them and better care for these important places.” An original timeline for the work was set for late summer, but according to local resident and surfer Bruce Pleas, “It would not have been open this summer, and it probably wouldn’t be open next summer.”
From food donated by area restaurants to heavy machinery offered by local construction companies, a project originally forecast to cost millions and take months (if not years) to complete has been finished in a matter of weeks with donated funds, manpower, and equipment. As Troy Martin from Martin Steel, which provided machinery and five tons of steel at no charge, put it: “We shouldn’t have to do this, but when it gets to a state level, it just gets so bureaucratic, something that took us eight days would have taken them years. So we got together—the community—and we got it done.” Cleaning up the park was a major undertaking involving bridge-building, reconstructing bathroom facilities, and use of heavy equipment to clear miles of flood-damaged roadways.
Let that be a lesson to us all.