Hawaii to receive over $5.2M in federal grants to make Kamehameha Highway ‘more resilient’

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Hawaii will receive over $5.2 million in federal grants to make transportation infrastructure more resilient to climate change, the Biden-Harris Administration announced on Thursday.

The federal funding was approved for two Hawaii Department of Transportation projects focused on making Kamehameha Highway more resilient to coastal erosion and protected against rockfalls.

This comes after frequent calls for action to address the worsening erosion on the key coastal highway.

The state DOT will receive $2.4 million to install a coastal barrier to prevent erosion from destabilizing the northbound lane of Kamehameha Highway.

Officials say the project will ensure that the most threatened location of the highway road, that links the Koolauloa district and Honolulu metro area for 13,000 daily users, is protected from waves, erosion, and increasing impacts of climate change.

In addition, the DOT will receive over $2.8 million to replace 1,000 feet of an existing rockfall impact fence to provide protection from rockfalls on a heavily travelled corridor of Kamehameha Highway.

The new fence will be 10-times stronger than the current fence and will reduce damage to the highway and disruption to road users, including emergency vehicles in rural Oahu.

“Thousands of people on Oahu rely on Kamehameha Highway every day to get to where they need to go, whether that’s school or work. But rockfalls and erosion can cause disruptive traffic delays and can be dangerous. This new funding will help strengthen Kamehameha Highway so that we can prevent these kinds of events and keep people safe,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, Chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation.

These grants are two of 80 projects nationwide that are part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. They’re all designed to help bolster transportation systems during extreme weather events.

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