For more years than they can remember, club paddlers using the Kapahulu end of the Ala Wai Canal to launch their canoes have had to bring jugs of water to rinse off the muck of the canal or use a hose across the road from the paddling site.

Some paddlers have resorted to using a jury-rigged shower coupling that requires them to have a key to hook up the shower head to the coupling each time they use it.

"We bring our own water in jugs,"said Robert Viernes, a former head coach for Lokahi Canoe Club. "Bathrooms are a big problem too. The club rents portable luas (bathrooms) for the paddlers."

But there's hope in sight for paddlers of the Outrigger and Lokahi canoe clubs. The City Council added $200,000 to the city's parks budget to design and build an outdoor shower, said Lester Chang, city Department of Parks and Recreation director.

The plan is to have it operating within two years if the money is approved, Chang said.

The jury-rigged shower is unacceptable because it allows run-off to go into the Ala Wai. But the permanent shower would be designed so that no run-off goes into the canal.

It's been a long road for paddlers, who thought that their problems had been solved in 2001 when then-Mayor Jeremy Harris' Vision Team program identified the need for restrooms and a shower at that end of the canal. Studies were done and designs drafted for both the canoe halau and the bath house, but the projects never got built.

The canoe halau and shower facility is something the community and the neighborhood board have always supported, said Rick Egged, Diamond Head/Kapahulu/St. Louis Heights board member.

When the project was proposed six years ago, the city estimated it would cost $700,000 to build a bath house, and that didn't take into account the cost of designing the facility, said Eugene Lee, city Department of Design and Construction director.

There are no plans now for a bath house or canoe halau, the two projects that had been planned in 2001, Lee said.

"There is no intent to proceed with either project as the funding for both have lapsed," he said. "No decision has been made on whether to proceed with the project."

Today, with incidents of staph infection and millions of gallons of raw sewage dumped into the waterway last year after a sewer pipe ruptured, the need for showers and restrooms is more pronounced, said City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi. She represents the area from Kapahulu to Makiki, and put the money in the city's budget for an outdoor shower.

"It's not fair for the paddlers," Kobayashi said. "It's the city that polluted the Ala Wai."

Lokahi Canoe Club paddler Mon Morris said if the little shed housing the water hose isn't open, paddlers have to bring their own water.

"A lot of people are grossed out by the water condition in the Ala Wai," Morris said. "I've never gotten staph. But it's a big concern with people who have cuts and stuff."

Reach Suzanne Roig at sroig@honoluluadvertiser.com.