HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Police on Hawaii island are investigating a possible drowning in Kealakekua Bay.

Authorities said in the morning of Sunday Nov. 10, a 29-year-old woman was found floating face down in the bay. Police said she was wearing a mask, snorkel, fins, and a wetsuit.

Bystanders were able to pull her from the water, place her on a paddle board, and immediately began CPR. A nearby boat soon picked up the woman and brought her to land.

CPR was continued until medics arrived.

Fire personnel arrived on scene and took her to the Kona Community Hospital where she was later pronounced dead.

At last check, the woman has not yet been identified. An autopsy has been scheduled.

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Hawaiian Paradise Park residents are urged to submit feedback about a proposed new district park that will be built in the subdivision.

Construction of HPP’s first public park could begin in two years, and a draft environmental assessment published last week is the latest step in the project’s development.

The park would be built on a 20-acre Hawaii County-owned parcel on Kaloli Drive between 25th and 26th avenues and is estimated to cost upwards of $80 million.

The draft EA proposes several potential facilities to be included in the park, including a baseball diamond, soccer field, two tennis courts, three pickleball courts, a community pool, dog park, skate park, two covered playground areas, about 218 parking stalls and more.

The county Department of Parks and Recreation held a community meeting about the park in October, where Puna Councilwoman Ashley Kierkiewicz said she hopes the project will be completed in a single phase of work, rather than be split into multiple phases to spread out the cost.

However, the draft EA states it is likely that the high cost of the project will necessitate a multiple-phase approach, although no details about how those phases will be split have been determined.

Parks and Rec Director Maurice Messina said any determination about whether the project will be broken into phases will be made based on the county’s ability to secure funding and how it prioritizes its major projects.

“It depends on the availability of capital improvement funding, which all the county agencies compete for,” Messina said, adding that major high-priority projects like the Hilo Wastewater Treatment Plant likely will take up the lion’s share of county CIP funds, leaving other projects to fight over the remainder.

Messina said Parks and Rec itself has several other projects in need of funding, including deferred maintenance work at dozens of parks islandwide.

As for whether the HPP project can receive enough funding to be completed in one fell swoop, Messina remained ambivalent. While an $80 million district park might be a tough sell compared to other county projects — “I’ve never seen it happen before,” Messina said — he added he also has never seen such focused community support for a project before, either.

The October public meeting about the park was widely attended by residents who urged the county to accelerate the project, since the growing subdivision is in dire need of community spaces.

Messina urged residents to submit comments on the draft EA during its current public comment period, since those comments will not only be used to influence the final EA, but also could be used to amend the HPP District Park Master Plan.

A master plan for the park was first drafted in 1997, and was amended more than 20 years later to include a preliminary design based on community feedback.

Messina said feedback on the final EA will help finalize the master plan and determine what park facilities the community thinks are most important to include.

The final master plan is slated to be completed in January.

A broad timeline included in the draft EA estimates the final design and permitting processes could be completed in one year.

The contract bidding process would add another six months, and construction could possibly begin in two years and take another two years to complete.

The draft EA can be read at tinyurl.com/y22vmhab.

Community members are asked to submit comments to Jennifer Scheffel at consultant group SSFM International at jscheffel@ssfm.com.

The state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands has received a $72 million federal “Internet for All” grant to deliver broadband access to thousands of homesteaders with slow or no internet service and provide job training to DHHL lessees.

The new grant brings the total Hawaiian Homes broadband funding via the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to $89 million.

“This new federal funding will mean communities on Hawaiian homelands will have better, more reliable high-speed internet at home, helping more people access education, health care, and employment resources online,” said U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz in a written statement. The Hawaii Democrat is chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

At a press conference Tuesday, DHHL Broadband Coordinator Jaren Tengan said the money will be used to deliver faster internet connections to DHHL lands on Molokai, Maui, Big Island, Kauai and Oahu.

It will upgrade service to existing lots with substandard, and also finance broadband connections to new housing developments. Grant funds will be distributed over a four-year period.

The grants will help rural homesteads that lost service in June when telecommunications provider Sandwich Isles Communications abruptly laid off its employees and terminated service on Hawaiian Home lands.

That left at least 100 homesteads and businesses across the state on the wrong side of the digital divide, particularly on Molokai. Tengan said the federal grant “helps us increase competition, so we are able to avoid a situation like Sandwich Isles again.”

Sandwich Isles had an agreement with DHHL to provide service to homesteaders, including those who were unable to hook up to any other telecommunications companies because their lots are in isolated areas.

Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, who is leading the Green administration’s high-speed internet initiative known as Connect Kākou, said “connectivity and reliable internet is not just something that is nice to have, but it’s a necessity.”

Connectivity is needed to work from home and for online learning, and “in rural communities even health care access depends on reliable internet,” she said.

The latest NTIA funding is part of a surge in federal broadband funding already committed to Hawaii for a variety of projects. The money is being provided under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, which included $65 billion for broadband initiatives across the country.

The other funding earmarked for Hawaii include $115 million in U.S. Treasury Capital Projects Funding, some of which is being used to partially fund installation of new fiber lines between the islands.

The state picked Georgia-based Ocean Networks Inc. to develop that project, which is also a public-private partnership that seeks to create a new player in the Hawaii telecom market. The state plans to retain partial ownership of the new Ocean Networks system.

That system is supposed to be completed by 2026, and will be called the Hawaiian Islands Fiber Link. The undersea segment of the project is expected to total more than 408 miles.

Another $149 million is also in the works in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding from NTIA to upgrade service across the state. The first priority for that money is to deliver service to an estimated 12,700 homes that lack adequate broadband service today.

The state is expected to distribute much of that BEAD funding to existing internet providers such as Charter Communications or Hawaiian Telcom, which will then install fiber optic cabling to properties that now have substandard service.

Hawaiian Telcom was also awarded a separate, competitive $37 million federal broadband grant from NTIA last year. The utility plans to use that money and another $50 million in private funding and in-kind contributions to lay both undersea and land-based fiber.

Those new fiber lines will provide redundancy to make the islands’ networks more reliable, and will also reach into areas currently without service.

Civil Beat’s coverage of Native Hawaiian issues and initiatives is supported by a grant from the Abigail Kawananakoa Foundation.