The fatal Kaloko dam breach on Kaua'i has led to another round of difficult questions for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, which over the past year has had to fend off several claims of poor and ineffective management.

In an extraordinary admission, Peter Young, the department's director, had to acknowledge that the state has no record of ever inspecting the Kaloko dam and that a single engineer has been responsible for inspecting more than 130 dams statewide. The department also has yet to explain exactly how it handled a warning from the Sierra Club about flooding near the dam three weeks before the March 14 breach that killed seven people and caused property and environmental damage.

State lawmakers refrained from direct criticism of the department in the days immediately after the dam failure. With the state attorney general's office investigating the cause of the Kaloko breach, lawmakers have been mostly reserved in their comments about what the department could have done to prevent the tragedy, but it is obvious that some lawmakers are getting impatient.

State Civil Defense and the Army Corps of Engineers have taken such a visible role since the dam failure that state Sen. Norman Sakamoto, D-15th (Waimalu, Moanalua, Salt Lake), asked Young at a hearing whether his department was "still in the dam business."

DEPARTMENT CRITICIZED

State Senate Vice President Donna Mercado Kim, D-14th (Halawa, Moanalua, Kamehameha Heights), has been even more dismissive of the department's performance, suggesting that "maybe if the state had done its job perhaps we wouldn't be here."

The Advertiser reported in October that 22 dams were in urgent need of repair and quoted Edwin Matsuda, the department engineer in charge of dam safety, as saying the state was fortunate not to have had a major dam failure. Kaloko was not on the list of high-risk dams, but state and national experts described the need for protection given the example of the deadly levee failures in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

But Young did not mention dam safety as a priority in January when he asked the state Legislature for a $15 million budget increase, instead highlighting more money for security at state parks and harbors, environmental education and deterring the spread of invasive species. After Kaloko failed, the Lingle administration made an emergency request for more staff in the dam safety program and $5 million to survey dams statewide.

The department is supposed to inspect dams every five years and has released letters that show it tried to contact retired auto dealer Jimmy Pflueger, who owns property around Kaloko, but was unsuccessful. State law requires private property owners to maintain their dams and also attempts to shield the state from liability for any action, or inaction, by state agencies.

"We need to focus on our core functions, our core responsibilities," said state Sen. Russell Kokubun, D-2nd (S. Hilo, Puna, Ka'u), chairman of the Senate Water, Land and Agriculture Committee. "And I think this is one area where we are left with some concerns."

Several lawmakers said the Legislature has not provided the department with the resources to meet its diverse and often conflicting mission. House and Senate leaders were also aware of the risk from dams after Hurricane Katrina but have concentrated their new disaster preparations mostly on the lack of adequate emergency shelter space.

MISSION VITAL TO STATE

The department's mission is vital in a state that is economically dependent on natural beauty. Young leads nine divisions and more than 420 employees assigned to protect the state's land and coastal waters, while also managing state parks and regulating fishing, hunting and boating.

Young has said, and many lawmakers agree, that there were management problems at the department well before the Lingle administration took over more than three years ago. In an interview earlier this month, he said he believes the Legislature now has a better understanding of the department's challenges.

Young said his budget request, which will soon go before House and Senate conferees, would raise total spending at the department to $92 million, a 50 percent increase since 2002. About one-third of the department's budget is from the state's general fund with the rest coming from special funds and the federal government.

"We're trying to show them that we need more money to get our jobs done," Young said. "We do what we can with the resources that we have. It's evident that we need additional funding."

But Young, a former deputy managing director on the Big Island and real-estate appraiser and consultant, has been hit with an unusually bad streak of trouble.

ADMINISTRATORS QUIT

In February 2005, Yvonne Izu, a deputy director, quit in protest instead of providing testimony in favor of a Republican bill to shift more water management functions from the state to the counties. Izu had already planned to leave the department within a few months, but her quick resignation made news because it came after the department had lost several other top administrators.

In March 2005, environmental and cultural groups threatened to call for Young's resignation unless he made significant changes to the department. Lawmakers thought about ordering a full financial and management audit but chose a more narrow review of the department's Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement.

In January, the state auditor concluded that the division has not provided effective enforcement and warned that natural and cultural resources would continue to decline unless the department gets more aggressive.

In January and February, Pacific Business News and The Advertiser reported that the department's Bureau of Conveyances was more than a year behind in recording documents in its land court registration branch.

Many of Young's critics said they have seen a change in attitude within the department over the past several months and believe Young has tried to respond to their complaints. Young was applauded last September for his work on new rules to limit commercial and recreational fishing along the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. Environmentalists and the department reached an agreement in December on expanding public shoreline access by limiting vegetation as a property line boundary, which has given some private landowners the ability to control larger sections of beach.

Others welcomed the department's addition of Robert Masuda as a deputy director in May 2005. Masuda, a former Honolulu parks director and YMCA executive, has been described as a confident and solid manager who may be able to unclog some of the department's dysfunctional bureaucracy.

"The perennial theme is that they're under-funded and understaffed. They lack the resources to do their job, which is a huge, awesome responsibility. They are spread so thin," said Jeff Mikulina, executive director of the Sierra Club's Hawai'i chapter. "From a year ago, there has been a sea change.

"But it would take a really phenomenal leader to get the buy-in and make some of those folks excited about their work."

State Rep. Brian Schatz, D-25th (Makiki, Tantalus), said he gives Young credit for listening to the criticism, although he believes Young has been defensive at times. He said lawmakers want to give the department a chance to work.

"But the DLNR has problems," Schatz said. "I know they are working very hard to improve their operations, but when things settle down I think it's appropriate for the Legislature to look into what went wrong at Kaloko and to prevent it from ever happening again."

Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com.