Maui County’s Department of Public Works has issued a finding of no significant impact for a $31.46 million repair project at Kalepa Point along Hāna Highway, clearing the way for fixes to a stretch of roadway where waves have been chewing away at aging protective rock for years. The finding means officials have determined a full environmental impact statement is not required for the work.
The final environmental assessment was published Sunday in the state Office of Planning and Sustainable Development’s environmental notice, according to Maui Now. State law requires environmental review when a project involves state or county lands or funds, land within a conservation district, or a shoreline area, all of which apply at Kalepa Point. Members of the public may challenge the finding within 30 days of its publication in environmental court.
The roadway damage traces back to Hurricane Iselle, which peaked as a Category 4 hurricane before weakening and making landfall on Hawaiʻi Island as a tropical storm on Aug. 8, 2014. The storm damaged the road protection at Kalepa Point in August 2014, and the assessment found that waves likely undermined the revetment, with witnesses reporting waves washing over the road protection and onto the roadway itself. The report traces the probable cause of the revetment’s failure to a lack of a properly designed toe structure, and notes that simply rebuilding it to its original 1987 design would not meet current U.S. Army Corps of Engineers standards.
A Highway at Risk of Dead-Ending
Hāna Highway was first built around 1947 as part of the Hāna Belt Road system, and the assessment describes its condition at Kalepa Point today as extreme disrepair in some areas, with the road edge beginning to erode. Left unrepaired, the assessment warns the highway will likely continue to degrade and would probably dead-end at the Kalepa and Alelele bridges, leaving Hāna Highway from the north as the only remaining access to Hāna town. A no-action alternative, the assessment found, would severely limit access to the Hāna district and emergency services.
The repair itself targets about 500 feet of concrete rubble masonry wall and undersized rock protection. Sea Engineering Inc., a Honolulu-based firm serving as the county’s consultant, designed a revetment using a two-stone-thick layer of 4- to 6-ton armor stone, with the boulders averaging 4.85 tons, or roughly 9,700 pounds each, and a retaining wall positioned between the revetment and the road.
Why a Tunnel and a Bigger Wall Were Rejected
The assessment evaluated three alternatives to the proposed design. One called for a larger revetment using 7- to 12-ton stones that would extend 74 feet seaward of the existing guardrail, compared with 55 feet for the proposed design, but planners found it could exceed the capacity of the nearby bridge. Another alternative examined a 600-foot, two-lane tunnel through the Kalepa Point headland that would permanently close the existing road around the point; a feasibility study put construction costs at $10 million to $38.5 million, with an accuracy range of minus 50% to plus 100%, and the assessment noted the tunnel could affect the King’s Trail, a historic paved trail encircling Maui.
Getting materials to the remote site poses its own logistical hurdle. The Kalepa Bridge carries a posted weight limit of 9 tons, which the assessment says allows only one of the project’s armor-stone boulders to cross at a time. The $31.46 million cost estimate includes a $3.2 million allowance for possible bridge modifications that could enable safer delivery of materials, equipment and workers, who would need to travel to the site every day during construction.
Scope and Timeline of the Repair Work
Beyond the revetment itself, the project calls for repaving about a quarter mile of Hāna Highway between the Kalepa and Alelele bridges and replacing seaward guardrails with concrete guardrails. The work is expected to take about 20 months, a duration the assessment attributes to the site’s remoteness and limited access.
This isn’t the only construction affecting that stretch of highway. A separate Kālepa Rockfall Netting Replacement project, as previously reported by Maui Now, closes Hāna Highway between mile markers 38 and 39 on weekdays from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., with the road reopening to the public outside those hours and emergency vehicles allowed through at all times. That project, anticipated to last five months, involves replacing damaged rockfall barriers, installing new protective mesh and anchors, and reinforcing portions of the slope.
Questions about the Kalepa Point repair assessment may be directed to Kylie Taketa of the Department of Public Works at 808-270-7745 or [email protected].
