KUALOA — Eight years have passed since the city resolved to replace a sewage system at Kualoa Regional Park, but still a solution appears nowhere in sight.

None of the restrooms' wastewater systems are working and waste must be pumped out several times a week. The state fined the city in 2007 and for months at a time has posted signs warning people to stay out of the ocean nearby because of high bacteria counts that health officials believe are related to the wastewater system.

On Memorial Day, a resident complained in an e-mail to The Advertiser about brown liquid flowing from a toilet into the drain system at Kualoa. A state inspection three days later revealed no problems.

Last year, with a $300,000 fine hanging over the city for unacceptable bacteria levels in the ocean at Kualoa from December 2005 to May 2006, the city said it was working to complete a plan and anticipated having a project ready to bid out at the end of the year.

The city is working with the state Department of Health to settle that fine but the project never materialized nor could the city say when it would be done.

"At this point we really can't commit to any schedule because the whole thing is up in the air," said Eugene Lee, director of the city Department of Design and Construction, which is responsible for developing and building the project.

That makes residents who asked for an above-ground system for the park in 1995 wonder when the city is going to give them what they want.

"Would this happen, take this long, if it were in Hawai'i Kai?" asked Wayne Panoke, a longtime advocate of the park. "Constantly our community is being taxed and penalized for other communities to be beautified."

SEWAGE BEING PUMPED

On any given weekday, Kualoa Regional Park is a serene oasis far from the hectic pace of urban Honolulu, but on weekends — especially ones with a holiday — crowds of residents flock to this Windward shore to enjoy its gentle waters and spacious grounds.

But residents can only use a fraction of the popular camping sites there because of the restrooms' wastewater treatment problems that have plagued the park for years, and contributed to the closure of one of its four restrooms. The city now pays to pump sewage from systems that haven't worked properly for decades.

At Campground B, 16 of the 30 camping sites are open for public use, said city spokesman Bill Brennan in an e-mail. In April, 71 loads of waste were pumped from a holding tank at a cost of $6,674, Brennan said, adding that each load was about 4,000 gallons.

Kualoa, considered by some as a sacred Hawaiian place, is filled with cultural sites including a heiau, fishpond, ancient villages and burials.

The burials had caused the kupuna and the community to seek the above-ground system, where digging would be limited and bones of the buried would remain undisturbed. Panoke said the city was concerned about aesthetics but the kupuna only cared about the iwi.

Satisfying the kupuna and the parks department has been the challenge, said Lee, the city construction director.

The concern of the kupuna "is the iwi in the park versus the realistic operational needs of the park's people," Lee said. "The last proposal was looking at a centralized comfort station in that park and that was to minimize excavation, but from a park's operational perspective they (parks department officials) were averse to that, so right now we're trying to develop alternatives for discussions."

MIDDLE GROUND SOUGHT

Maintenance is the issue for this plan because a mound would be required and mowing a mound is a problem, Lee said, adding that the plan was not visually appealing.

"But that's just one discussion; we'll have to see what else our consultant can come up with," he said.

Lee said he's sure there's a middle ground that everyone can agree on.

The state Department of Health is negotiating with the city over the fine, said DOH spokeswoman Janice Okubo. The problem with the case is the state has not been able to definitively connect the high bacterial counts in the water to the restrooms, Okubo said.

"We are getting close to settlement, so hopefully we'll be able to work this out with the city," she said.

Since 2000, several plans to replace the restrooms have been proposed and rejected, but the desire of the community has remained the same.

"I think the opinion of the kupuna, like me, is we're not there to beautify the place," Panoke said. "We're there to be sure it's functioning properly and no more of our iwi are disturbed or dug."