As a man hiked last month through lush terrain in Waipio, a town on Hawaii’s Oahu island, a pungent stench suddenly wafted past him. It smelled like alcohol, and it was coming from a nearby stream that was about 120 feet below a freeway.
Concerned about the possible environmental implications, he contacted Carroll Cox, a local activist and advocate who runs the nonprofit EnviroWatch.
“He described the smell as being horrific,” Cox said in an interview with The Washington Post.
He and a few colleagues visited the scene soon after and noticed that a storm drain that poked out from underneath the freeway expelled the water down a cliff and into the stream. On the other side of the busy street was a warehouse for one of the state’s largest distributors of alcohol and liquor, he said.
Cox reported the findings to government officials, who identified the source as Paradise Beverages, according to emails reviewed by The Post.
Advertisement
The company is cooperating, Anthony Rowe, the distributor’s director of operations, told Hawaii News Now, which first reported the contamination last week.
“It may be coming from us so that’s why we’re working with the proper authorities,” Rowe said.
Hawaii News Now tested the stream water’s alcohol level. It was 1.2 percent.
Cox said he was not surprised by the striking stench near the beverage company in Waipio, which is about 15 miles northwest of Honolulu. He said that kind of thing is “commonplace” in Hawaii — in the past, he’s found streams contaminated with paint and cement.
“[There’s a] lack of respect for the land and the water, even though we preach it. We don’t practice what we preach,” he said.
Share this articleShareHawaii is fragile ecologically, Cox said, adding that there are few remaining wetlands. Rising sea levels are causing saltwater to contaminate the island’s freshwater sources, according to the education and advocacy nonprofit Climate Reality Project. The dwindling supply will eventually impact accessibility to food and water across the state. And higher storm surges and rising sea levels are also accelerating erosion on the coasts, causing beaches to slowly disappear.
Advertisement
Cox noted in his complaint to the clean water branch of Hawaii’s Department of Health that the contamination was a violation of the Clean Water Act. The discharging of materials was damaging the water source and was “deleterious to the fish,” he said.
The hiker in Waipio first reached out to Cox on Oct. 27. Over a week later, Cox and a few colleagues drove northbound on the freeway near Paradise Beverages. They could smell the reek as they looked for the storm drain. They soon found ropes attached to a guard railing, which they used to rappel down.
“We found a completely dysfunctional storm water drain … that dumps down the face of the canyon,” he said, adding that it was a six-foot round metal cylinder that extended underneath the freeway.
Cox filed his complaint on Nov. 8, and the health department notified him the next day that the Hawaii Department of Transportation was inspecting the drain pipe because it is the state agency’s property. Later that day, Cox learned that officials determined the dumping was coming from Paradise Beverages, which “was directed to stop the discharge,” the email reviewed by The Post said.
Advertisement
In a statement, a Transportation Department spokesperson said officials will continue to “work with [the Department of Health] and the city and county of Honolulu if further action is required," adding that the department was “not aware of the situation” before it received Cox’s report.
Paradise Beverages and the Hawaii Department of Health did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment early Thursday.
Cox said he is pleased with how quickly the departments responded to his complaint. But he added that he is still cautious knowing that politics tend to “creep into the matter of environmental issues.”
But, at the end of the day, “for me, this is just yet another day in paradise,” Cox said, “another horrendous, horrible day in paradise.”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLuiwMiopWhqYGd%2BcH2QaGhxZ6eWtrG1zmafmq%2BRnrZuv9OrnJqlXZa5pLvHqKNmm5%2BjwaK5yKeYraGfo3w%3D