A three-year effort to improve connectivity between upper Puna’s numerous subdivisions enters a new phase this week.
Members of an ad hoc committee formed to address the connectivity problem will vote tomorrow on a draft report to be used by the Hawaii County Council and agencies such as the Department of Public Works for future planning.
“This is more like a guideline of what to expect in the upcoming years,” said committee member and County Council representative Greggor Ilagan.
Formed last summer, the ad hoc group comprises the four Puna council members as well as members of Puna’s Community Development Plan committees.
Its work focuses on the subdivisions between Highways 11 and 130. Adequate road access in the district has long been a source of frustration and worry for residents.
There are more than a dozen subdivisions in upper Puna, each with its own community association and network of roads. But the subdivisions were all built in a vacuum from their respective neighbors.
“In the creation of the subdivisions, none of them were required to connect to each other,” said Patti Pinto, chairwoman of Puna’s CDP action committee. “There’s just one after another after another after another, so if you want to go (between them) you go up to the highway (Highway 11) and then down again.”
The setup presents considerable safety concerns for regular occurrences — emergency response vehicles trying to move between locations, for instance — and more extreme scenarios such as natural disasters.
Pinto lives in Fern Acres, which — along with Eden Roc Estates — is one of the subdivisions with just one entrance road.
“We only have one road in and out,” Pinto said. “We’re really anxious to get this work done. We have a huge community which could not ever possibly evacuate.” More than 2,000 people live in Fern Acres.
When Puna’s CDP was first adopted in 2008, the document noted some of the challenges for improving road access, chief among them the fact many roads are privately owned and not well-maintained.
Concerted efforts to address connectivity began in early 2013, when the CDP Connectivity and Emergency Response Subcommittee began working with Hawaii County Civil Defense to set up the first of two Puna regional emergency preparedness fairs. The fair was a way to get community input as to how residents were using current road conditions to move throughout the district.
Data from the fairs were used to create a priority list for how the county could use methods such as lot purchasing to improve current infrastructure.
The draft report notes that memoranda of understanding also would need to be established between the subdivisions’ community associations “to ensure that the road connections remain open and viable regardless of the potential changing desires of (board) membership.”
The suggestions in the draft report would not create one large road between the subdivisions. Instead, they stitch together existing but underimproved routes.
“We’re talking about feet, not miles,” said CERS chairwoman Marlene Hapai, who lives in Hawaiian Acres. “We connect them and then they (people) have that route. It’s not a beeline, it’s staggered through the subdivision.”
In Fern Acres, for example, South Lauko Road, a one-lane road “severely eroded where it crosses a stream bed,” according to the draft report, would be improved and connected to Puhala Street, which runs roughly parallel to Highway 11.
The PREP fair information also allowed the committee to create a priority list of connection routes, giving planners more flexibility.
“The beautiful thing about this prioritizing is we find alternates,” Hapai said. “If there is major public dissatisfaction (with a connection route), we’ll put it at the bottom of the list.”
Though the report makes recommendations for route creation, it does not address funding sources. That would be handled by the county once the report is approved.
Last October, the committee made site visits to several of the recommended routes.
“It was really educational,” Pinto said. “They (the roads) can be lovely, and they can be barely navigable.”
Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
