Puna alternate route study delayed six months, evacuation options await

A six-month delay in the Puna Alternate Route Study keeps lower Puna waiting for relief from Highway 130, the district’s only major transportation corridor and the road residents rely on for commutes, emergency response and evacuation. Officials say the study is still moving forward, but the extra time pushes the final report farther out while families in Pāhoa, Āinaloa and nearby communities keep asking how they will get out if the highway is blocked again.

The $2.5 million project is now set to examine six possible routes, split between makai and mauka alignments, after the county broadened the scope from an earlier makai-only idea. Those options are supposed to be judged on engineering feasibility, land-use impacts and protection of natural resources, a combination that reflects how road planning on Hawaii Island quickly becomes a fight over access, culture, environmental limits and who bears the burden of growth.

That tension has already shaped the study. The routes cannot cross Department of Hawaiian Home Lands property, a restriction added after protests from residents in Panaewa and Keaukaha who argued their neighborhoods already carry too much of the island’s infrastructure, including the airport, landfill and transfer station, raceway park and wastewater facilities. County officials are now assembling a steering committee of government leaders and community members, and they say at least three public meetings will be held so residents can weigh in before any final recommendation is made.

The funding path has been just as rocky as the route map. In late 2023, the County Council first rejected $1.5 million for a Puna Makai Alternate Route Study before reversing itself and approving the money, with the original plan relying on $1 million from the state and a $500,000 county match. The state funds later lapsed in mid-2024 after the county did not release its required match in time. By March 2025, County Public Works Director Hugh Ono told council members the study could still move ahead with county money and called the loss of the state money “unforgivable.”

Lawmakers restored the financing in the 2025 state budget, adding $1.5 million for the makai study and another $1 million for a separate Puna Mauka Alternate Route Study. That brought the overall package back to $2.5 million and shifted the makai money directly to the Hawaii Department of Transportation, instead of depending on a county match. The county had said in October 2024 that the study would not start until early 2025, no consultant had been selected and the scope was still being worked out.

Wilson Okamoto Corp. was later awarded the contract, with work due by December 2026. Even with that schedule in place, the delay means residents are still waiting for answers about whether Puna will get a safer evacuation path before the next crisis forces the issue. Greggor Ilagan has said the need keeps coming up in his Puna makai town halls, and Ed Sniffen has said all options need to be on the table. For a district that nearly lost Highway 130 in the June 27, 2014 lava flow and watched the pavement bulge and crack again during the 2018 Kīlauea eruption, every extra month deepens the sense that one blocked road is still too much.