KRCA Board of Directors
Homeowners Meeting
November 29 , 2017 from 6:30 – 9:30 pm
Kilauea Neighborhood Center

KRCA has contracted with Hawaiiana Management Company who has a Kalihiwai Ridge website access code of:
hmcmgt.com/39484

Agendas and meeting minutes will be posted on this new site along with all our documents that can now be reviewed by the public.




My Impressions

I walk down to the edge of the lagoon about twice a week to take in the changed landscape and nearly non-existent wildlife. We used to have an average of 60-80 Coots on the lake at any given time and now we are lucky to spot 2-4 of them. The Nene return at various times in diminished numbers, a few Moorhen still breed in some of the inlets, but the fish are gone and years since we saw the fresh water prawns near shoreline. In other words there is still water flowing out daily to sea via Outlet #2 to the Kalihiwai River, so that what we have now could not accurately be called a lake anymore. That is why I see it more as a lagoon.

It has been at a safety drain water level of 9’6”-9’9” for three years now, since Oct 2014 when it was then at 12’5”. The winters of 2011-13 were the last times we actually had a full recreational lake in the 14'-15’ range to enjoy and share with our neighbors and the endangered water birds and aquatic wildlife. The tentative compromise agreement with the water use Easement Holders and current KRCA Board is to remediate the KR to hold water at a level of 11’6”, less than two feet higher than what we have now. There are various dam safety reasons for that based on the elevation of our dam and the nearby lake lot 13 that is next to the existing spillway, but a reshaping of the lakebed and new location of the primary spillway could allow for a return to the feel of a full 14’6” lake that I hope is a plan we will pursue. Denise Manuel from DLNR in April of 2014 during that year’s dam inspection stood at the spillway and pondered why we didn’t just consider dredging the lakebed. It is an idea that has been revisited in Sep of 2017, which I am in full support of.

The lake has always been notoriously shallow at the beach area now exposed around lake lots 11, 12 and 13. If we could somehow expand that area to be deeper and broader we could return to having the feel and use of a full recreational lake that filling to ll’6” won’t give us. For the money KRCA now has, and which we will eventually be spending for the remediation of the KR, I am hopeful a final design plan could be formulated for EH and KRCA member approval to include this reshaping of the lakebed idea. This plan could provide us with a shared asset that could bring generations of recreational enjoyment to our members, an expanded water storage capacity for the use of our EH partners, and a restored and revitalized healthy wetland habitat for the endangered water birds and aquatic wildlife who live and breed at their lake which has been here for 100 years come 2020. Let’s see this project through, not as a compromise, but as an exceptional plan providing wetland restoration in partnership with dam preservation and safety.

Until we meet again.

Aloha,
Maggie Lea