My friend Duane Kanuha forwarded me this email from Bill Shontell, the project manager for Surety Corp. It’s about the Kohala Ditch water flowing. This is a huge project that’s been a tremendous amount of work and a long time coming.

I wrote about the project a couple months ago when I took a helicopter tour of the area.

Here’s the note from Bill:

FYI, we released the waters of Honokane Nui through new Flume #1 this afternoon about 2:30. The intake is working fine and the flume is currently conveying water across Honokane West Branch, through the ridge of Kupehau, and into Pololu Valley.

On Monday the 24th, we will throttle down the valve at the intake, remove two temporary access ramps in Pololu and Niulii and on Tuesday the 25th, at 3 pm, we will release water into the balance of the system.

Just in time for Thanksgiving.

Here I am in September, getting ready to go see the origin of the Kohala ditch at Honokane Nui.

The crew that works in the valley. That’s Rick Gordon in the middle and Bill Shontell on the right. Our helicopter pilot is at left.

This entire cliff face fell in with the 2006 earthquake that destroyed the ditch. 

View of the repair work going on at the dam at Honokane Nui. That day, a loose stone fell off the cliff and glanced off one of the workers. 

Lifting up and out of the valley. We were way down there at the stream level. What a trip.

The mouth of Pololu Valley.

[Leslie’s note: I went looking for something I could link to, something that would tell the story of what happened to the historic and important Kohala Ditch during the October 2006, 6.7 earthquake, and I found, um, this magazine article. Which I wrote, and Macario photographed, and which I had sort of forgotten about. Which tells you something about the state of my mind.]