(BIVN) – Work to remove 42,000 cubic yards of volcanic material at the Pohoiki boat ramp – said to be the largest dredging job ever for the State of Hawaiʻi – is progressing fast.

“I’m absolutely blown away,” said Finn McCall, an engineer with the Hawaiʻi DLNR DLNR Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation (DOBOR). “They’re probably about halfway done with the excavation. The original schedule was February of next year. They have a full 9 months to do the job. But they are anticipating to be completed by November.” 

Pohoiki was once a prize surfing spot in lower Puna, and the boat ramp was vital to the local fisherman who subsist on the ocean’s resources. But the 2018 eruption of Kīlauea on the lower East Rift Zone dramatically transformed the bay into a sprawling beach, and landlocked the boat ramp behind a wall of black sand, rocks and boulders. 

In the years that followed, the community worked on a strategy to restore the boat ramp. An effort that required careful planning, and considerable funding. The total cost for the dredging project is $9.28 million. 

image from Hawaiʻi DLNR video

“We had sought, initially, funds from FEMA,” said DLNR Chair Dawn Chang. “I think we realized that we ended up needing to just use state funds for this.” 

Lawmakers managed to secure $5.4 million in state funding, along with nearly $3 million that is coming from a special fund under DOBOR. 

The community gathered in June to bless the project.

“We wouldn’t be here without the community, it was through their advocacy,” said Chang, who attended the blessing ceremony. “When you think about it, this is one of those critical locations.”

Photo of Pohoiki blessing ceremony courtesy Hawaiʻi DLNR

Chang noted that although the 2018 lava flow didn’t directly inundate the pier at the boat ramp, it did prevent access. “The only other (boat ramp location) is in Hilo or Kona,” Chang said. “So this is a real critical location for the fishermen of this community.” 

Goodfellow Bros., LLC – the contractor for the job – is using heavy equipment to scoop large buckets of the volcanic material, moving it from the area of the boat ramp to the shoreline. Once the inner basin is cleared, a crane will be brought to the site to create a wide entrance. 

“The approach was to do a very wide channel,” said McCall. “That way, you have a big wide open channel instead of a narrower channel with protective structures on either side.” 

Most harbors in Hawaiʻi need to be dredged every seven or eight years. Time will tell if this will also be the case for Pohoiki.

“That’s to be seen,” McCall said. “This is an unprecedented thing. It’s not like sand and silt that you get for normal dredging projects. It’s got a lot of heavy material. So we don’t really know, exactly, how to predict how quickly the channel might start to fill in, or how soon we’re going to have to dredge.” 

“We’re going to just have to closely monitor it after we complete,” McCall added. “We’ll kind of get a better idea after that.”