Department of Environmental Services

Overview

The National Pollutant Discharege Elimination System (NPDES) Permit for the Kailua Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant requires the city to perform shoreline water quality monitoring for enterococcus at specific stations along the shoreline of Kailua Bay, as depicted in the map below.  This monitoring is done in order to assess the quality of the receiving water, as required by the NPDES permit and set forth in Hawai‘i Administrative Rules Chapter 11-54.  The NPDES permit requires the city to perform water quality monitoring at the shoreline at least five (5) times per month, and the data is reported to Hawai‘i Department of Health (DOH) every month in the city’s Discharge Monitoring Report.  The city has made this data available for public awareness below. 

State law specifies the use of enterococci to identify the possible presence of pathogenic microorganisms that may cause illness in humans.  Enterococcus, however, does not necessarily indicate the presence of fecal bacteria, as it is naturally occuring in Hawai‘i’s environment and particularly prevalent in soil, aquatic and terrestrial vegetation, beach sand and sediment, and feral animals. Enterococcus is typically elevated at the shoreline during heavy rainfall events that cause runoff into the ocean, and DOH may issue brown water advisories as a result of such events.  For more information on what water quality means, please refer to DOH’s Clean Water Branch website at https://health.hawaii.gov/cwb/.  To view current Water Quality Advisories issued by DOH-CWB, please refer to https://eha-cloud.doh.hawaii.gov/cwb/#!/landing.