Rebuild of homes destroyed in Kula fire runs into costly wastewater upgrades

KULA — In January, when the last of the debris was carted away from the 26 properties that burned to the ground in the Aug. 8, 2023, fire in Kula, veteran contractor Mark Ross knew he and his Upcountry neighbors needed to move quickly to rebuild. 

Because once the cleanup finished in Lahaina town, where another wildfire on the same day destroyed more than 2,200 structures, the demand for lumber and labor on the island surely would surge.

“We had a golden window,” said Ross, who lost his home on Kualono Place. “We could build unencumbered in a sense and not have to wait in line … because we knew Lahaina was a priority.”

But Ross and others in Kula feel that golden window is closing amid the long wait to get approvals and pay for the costly wastewater upgrades needed to rebuild their homes.

Now, with Lahaina’s residential fire debris cleanup complete and just a handful of homes under construction in Kula, residents worry progress in Upcountry is stalling. 

“Kula was the first one to be cleared by the Army Corps (of Engineers),” Kyle Ellison, head of the nonprofit Mālama Kula, said during a meeting in Pukalani on Tuesday. “Now Kula is falling behind in the rebuild process, largely due to the bottleneck in the wastewater. So there’s an urgency to this that I just want to make sure comes out of this meeting tonight.” 

The state Department of Health is considering changes that would allow Upcountry properties to use the cesspools they had before the fire, an exemption extended earlier this year to Lahaina. Residents hope this will help them rebuild more quickly.

But Kula, as is the rest of the state, is running up against a law passed by the state Legislature in 2017 that mandates all cesspools be eliminated in Hawai’i by 2050. Cesspools are underground holes that discharge untreated sewage directly into the ground and are used in places that can’t connect to a municipal sewer system. The septic systems that Kula residents would need to convert to include a tank that separates solid waste and drains the liquid into a shallow field that treats the wastewater as it seeps through the soil. 

At the time the law passed, there were about 88,000 cesspools in the state, and officials were concerned that the roughly 53 million gallons of untreated sewage released into the ground each day by all of the cesspools combined would contaminate groundwater, streams and the ocean. 

More than 12,000 of those cesspools were on Maui, including about 7,400 Upcountry, one of the priority areas for conversion because of the levels of nitrate contamination in the groundwater that the Health Department determined was from sewage disposal systems.

For property owners, it’s a problem they’ll have to pay for sooner or later.

SCALING BACK PLANS TO AFFORD THE UPGRADES

After the fire burned down the Kula home of octogenarian Tom Liu and the cottage his daughter was living in on the same property, friends and family told him to take the insurance money and buy himself a nice place to move into right away. 

But Liu thought about the neighbors who banded together after the fire, the businesses who delivered food to the donation hub at Kula Lodge where he was staying, and the volunteers who called him “Uncle Tom” and fetched him new clothes when all he had after the fire was his slippers, shorts and T-shirt.

So he decided to rebuild on the property he bought for $889,000 in 2004. Insurance payments for the structural damage covered just under 60 percent of the rebuilding costs, so he’s dipped into his personal property payout to cover the shortfall. He also used about $45,000 of the insurance money provided for code changes to install his septic system, but Liu said it would have cost even more had he hit rocks or roots.

Liu applied for building permits for both the house and the cottage in November and applied for the septic system around February. He said he didn’t get approval until June, mainly because the county told him they were waiting on the state Health Department. 

Liu, 83, never thought he’d live long enough to have to convert his two cesspools. But now new builds like his require the upgrades, and eager to move the process along, Liu paid for the installation of a septic system and removed the bottom floor and one bedroom from the plans for his main house. 

“We’re taking it away from other things to build the house,” Liu said. “I’m not building what I want to build, because I don’t have enough budget to do that.”

Lahaina isn’t hampered by the same issue as Kula because the Health Department released guidance in March that allowed rebuilt homes in Wahikuli to continue using existing cesspools as long as they were structurally sound and met other conditions such as hooking up to the county sewer line once it’s installed. 

The Wahikuli subdivision is listed as Priority Level 1, the top ranking for cesspools most likely to cause harm to people and the environment, according to the Hawai’i Cesspool Prioritization Tool. Upcountry is ranked Priority Level 3.

Now the Health Department is considering extending similar guidance, with some changes, to allow Upcountry residents who are rebuilding their homes to continue using their cesspools. Jonathan Nagato, acting chief of the Wastewater Branch, said “one of the major reasons” the department is considering this is because everyone else in the state has until 2050 to convert.

“We’re basically trying to get everybody back to where they were before that,” Nagato said via phone during the meeting on Tuesday. “And it would be simple if everybody built the same house that they had. But, unfortunately, I think when people are going to get their claim money or invest their own money into rebuilds, they’re probably going to want to build better, bigger, large homes. So that does kind of change the situation.”

But Kula residents say they don’t have the money to build bigger homes, especially with insurance payouts less than the cost of rebuilding and code changes that include wider setbacks from the edge of their properties. Liu’s 1-acre property was big enough to fit the massive septic tank and leach field, but he pointed out that his neighbors higher up on Kulalani Drive have smaller lots right next to the gulch.

Just up the road, Ross’ property also has limited space to work with — the roughly triangular-shaped parcel is bordered by Haleakalā Highway and a gulch, with a single entry point along Kualono Drive. 

Ross bought the home in 2002 for $320,000 and has been renting it out long term. He and his wife live in Makawao with their five kids and her parents, and they had hoped to make the Kula property their retirement home when the kids graduated from college. Now they’re not sure when that will happen.

Ross said he submitted the plans for his septic system in April and has since gone back and forth with the Health Department over the location. He said the department suggested putting the leach field under his driveway, which he said is built on blue rock and thus won’t drain, and then under his garage, which is on the opposite side of the property from the cesspool and from the spot where he says a septic tank will fit. Plus, he says, he doesn’t want to build a home on top of a leach field.

“This should be something that makes sense, that’s cost-efficient and correct,” Ross said. “We obviously want to do the right thing, but at the same time, why would I spend $150,000 on something that’s not going to work?”

Ross just wants to use his cesspool and wishes that Health Department staff on O’ahu would visit their properties so they could understand the dilemma Kula residents face. 

“It doesn’t just affect me, because if I can solve my problem, all my neighbors are going to benefit from it,” Ross said. “So that’s basically been my driving force.”

Maui’s state engineer retired last year and that the department has struggled to fill the position, Nagato said. Staff come over from O’ahu to deal with complaints and supply instructions for installing systems, but “we rely on the design engineers to present to us what is happening at their site.”

Nagato said two months is a “normal” wait for a permit but that the department can prioritize fire-affected properties that are getting stuck in the statewide queue if they’re notified by Maui County. However, there’s no standardized way to flag those. County official Wendy Taomoto told residents at the meeting to have their engineers label their emails as “urgent” when submitting plans.

Nagato also cautioned that if the department allows Kula residents to continue to use their cesspools, it’s unclear how that will affect homeowners who included the installation of a septic system in their insurance claims.

With residents like Liu frustrated over spending thousands of dollars to be in compliance and other residents urging the department to let them use their cesspools, Nagato said, “somebody has to make a decision, and it will not please everybody.”

GETTING PEOPLE BACK IN THEIR HOMES IS KEY 

In Lahaina, the rebuilding effort is ramping up quickly. As of Friday, 191 building permits for 157 properties had been submitted, with 78 permits issued for 68 properties, according to county data. One of those has already completed construction.

Meanwhile in Kula, only seven building permits for six properties have been submitted, with three permits issued for two properties. None have been completed so far. 

“Every day that goes on, the square foot cost of building goes up,” said Ross, who’s been a contractor for 30 years and owns Ross Home Repair Services. “We’re losing contractors. They’re moving to Lahaina because they’re now ahead of us in certain areas.”

A University of Hawai‘i economist pointed out earlier this month that the need for thousands more construction workers in Lahaina will likely outpace the local workforce.

Contractor Stephen Smith knows he could find plenty of construction jobs in Lahaina if he wanted. But Smith, the owner of 808 Consulting and Construction, said his crew only does one job at a time — right now it’s Liu’s house — so they can get it done more quickly instead of jumping between jobs. He says the number of permits approved outweighs the number of contractors on island, and lately it’s been hard to get materials like concrete and beams.

“Me and the boys, we all grew up here,” Smith said. “So construction work always feels good. But it even feels better when you’re rebuilding what somebody lost. It’s just sad because the costs have gone up on materials.”

Last year, he pointed out, they did six homes in Wailuku that cost about $269 per square foot. Liu’s home will likely come out to about $415 per square foot. 

Mike Renner, a director with the firm 4LEAF that the county has contracted to help process building permits, said the number of permit approvals doesn’t necessarily mean Lahaina is moving faster than Kula, pointing out that “it’s a difference in order of magnitude.” 

When asked if he thought allowing Kula residents to keep using their cesspools would help speed the process along, Renner said, “I’m careful to issue opinions, but I think it would make good sense. Anything we can do to expedite the building process and get people quickly and safely back in their homes is my goal.”

Taomoto, a civil engineer and the manager of the county Department of Management’s Engineering Program, also pointed out that the factors that could hold back approvals include the time it takes for homeowners’ engineers to submit the plans and revise them after the state provides comments.

Taomoto said health officials have to be firm on the rules because of what can go wrong when a septic system isn’t installed right. She also noted that residents will need to convert their cesspools eventually and shouldn’t wait until the deadline.

“The rules are there to protect you from a backup sewage,” Taomoto said. “It’s going to back up if it doesn’t have the proper slope, if the soil condition doesn’t allow proper drainage. All those things have to work out so that this leach field functions properly.”

In Kula, Liu is just glad the issue is taken care of, and he hopes his soon-to-be-finished cottage will be an inspiration for his neighbors. 

“At first, I just wanted to be left alone,” he said as he watched a worker paint the cottage on Friday. “But it is a feel-good story for the rest of the people. And I realized that. They needed something to say, ‘oh, Tom got started.’ At least we got started with the recovery phase.”