Environment
Why Some Hawaiians Are Fighting a Massive Flood-Control Project
A flood could devastate the tourist zone of Waikīkī in Honolulu, but a federal plan to fortify the Ala Wai Canal has met with strong local resistance.
Of the nearly 5 million tourists who descend on Waikīkī and its beach in Honolulu every year, few are likely aware that the beachfront destination used to be a sprawling wetland. Here, on the island of Oahu, Hawaiians cultivated taro and built fishponds to raise ‘ama ‘ama (striped mullet). Later, farmers grew rice in wide, irrigated paddies. It was a fertile delta.
In the first part of the 20th century, Hawai‘i’s territorial governor and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers filled the fishponds and dredged the two-mile-long Ala Wai Canal, draining the wetlands and setting the stage for a century of hotel and condominium development.