State pushes back on rumors of a dam breach on Hawaii Island after recent storms

HAWAII ISLAND (HawaiiNewsNow) – State officials are pushing back on social media rumors that claim a dam breached on Hawaii Island during Hurricane Lala, which brought severe rain and flooding.

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The Keaiwa Reservoir near Pahala, built in 1920, is the only regulated dam under the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Dam Safety Program in the area and is owned by the Olson Trust.

Edwin Matsuda, Section Head for the Flood Risk Management Section for the Department of Land and Natural Resources, said the structure sustained some damage due to active quakes in the area, prompting the state to order it kept empty.

He said the owner inspected the reservoir after the rain events and it’s “still intact,” and empty even after the storm.

“It’s actually being maintained empty prior to the storm, and is currently empty after the storm,” he said.

Matsuda said the DLNR officials “haven’t seen any evidence” of risks from the dam.

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“We haven’t seen any evidence of it,” he said. “We did see some of the feeds that were coming out on social media, and we tried to investigate as much as we could with, you know, piecing together from the maps on that image doesn’t appear to be to scale or even accurate in helping us to identify where they were looking at.”

The state suspects heavy rain and debris caused the flooding instead.

“On the pictures that we saw, it looks like there might have been either a lot of rainfall that just came down and accumulated and flash flooded through, or there’s a grove of trees,” he said.

Matsuda added that DLNR has been working with the Olson Trust, which is looking to retrofit the dam, and the department is awaiting its final plans.

Officials are gathering more information to determine if three smaller, unregulated dams upstream sustained any damage.

“We tasked a consultant with identifying unregulated structures, and we flagged borderline cases for additional investigation,” Matsuda said. “For these specific ones, we don’t have any immediate concerns.”

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