Carroll provides additional information about the contaminated soil around Radford High School and newly discovered contaminated soil at Makalapa Elementary School. Not only were parents of students at Makalapa surprised by the findings, they were even more concerned they were never told their children were playing on contaminated soil containing
high levels of PCBs and other contaminates, and littered with pieces of broken glass and metal from an old Navy dumpsite/landfill. GasCo was recently digging at the Makalapa site and inadvertently discovered contaminated soil similar to that found at Radford was also at Makalapa. According to the DOH, the Department of Education (DOE) was notified, but no one said anything to the Hawaii State Department of Health (DOH). Later, after the
DOH found out, they still did not notify the parents.
A notice was issued to the DOE and contractors not to do any more work "at or near" the Radford athletic field until an Environmental Hazard Management Plan (EHMP) is done. Though the document ws generated because of the inadvertent discovery of contaminated soil on the Makalapa campus and payground area, it did not identify the Makalapa site. Even
though there were children involved, the DOE and the Navy were only interested in protecting their own interests.
The bigger issue, the Navy recently did an inspection and said there were only a few pieces of glass on the playground. Why?
Link here to more about the story.
FIELD OF GLASS - Makalapa Elementary School
Link to our 8/27/15 story on HawaiiNewsNow
Listen to our show of 8/9/15 for more information.
The second hour Carroll talks about the many sewage spills occurring in Hawaii. Why aren't our big sewage fee increases fixing the problem? Mayor Caldwell is making speeches about public urination by the homeless, but his lax administration is allowing even bigger releases of sewage onto our streets, our beaches and our ocean.
Carroll has information the administration did not follow standard operating procedures and they did not respond to problems until four hours after the initial spill. At the initial press conference, later on the first day, we were told the problem was due to someone removing manhole covers. But, they were trying to cover
up the real problem. Not only that, Carroll, who knew better, was told he could not ask questions at the press conference because he was not "main stream media". Wow! Instead of putting up signs and notifying the public, the administrators sat around all day trying to figure out how to cover up the incident so it would not get out they had major problems at Ala Moana Beach Park and Waikiki, the heart of our economy.
Clearly, Lori Kahikina, the director of the Department of Environmental Services, should be fired for the multiple problems and missteps in handling the situation. But will she, or is she made of Teflon like the man in charge of our elections? Not only was he not fired, he even received a huge increase in salary. That
is how it works.
