LIHU'E, Kaua'i — A long-awaited dredging project on Kaua'i has bogged down in permitting issues, leaving Kíkíaola Small Boat Harbor all but unusable to the more than 100 recreational boaters and 18 commercially permitted fishing or tour boats it serves.

Only boaters with craft of 20 feet or less and knowledge of local conditions, working with the tides and having at least two people to get the boat in and out of the water at the boat ramp dare launch at Kíkíaola.

And even then, they risk damage to their boat, trailer or truck, say those familiar with the area.

The shallow bottom combined with ocean surge has made it treacherous to launch even small boats at Kíkíaola's ramp, said commercial fisherman Greg Holzman.

"It has been a game of patience with the fishermen who have really been suffering through this, with a lot of broken trucks and broken boats," Holzman said.

For more than a year, boats longer than 20 feet have been launching at Port Allen Harbor, which adds transit time and fuel cost, Holzman said.

The harbor has been dredged no more than twice in the past 30 years and has become increasingly difficult to use for more than a decade, Holzman said.

A $21 million joint state and federal dredging project finally got under way early this year, with extensive dredging work on the outer harbor and work on rock breakwaters completed in August.

But until dredging is completed near the harbor's boat ramp, it remains difficult or impossible for boaters to launch.

TWO-MONTH WAIT

American Marine Co. has been waiting two months to resume a $1.4 million contract to remove 25,000 cubic yards of sand from the inner harbor, company supervisor Doug Fraser said.

Work stopped by the county in September could resume Monday if Kaua'i County OKs a permit to stockpile dredged sand at an inland site, Fraser said.

The county confirmed it is processing a permit but did not say this week whether it had been approved.

The remaining work is the final phase of the joint state and federal project.

Kíkíaola is the westernmost harbor on Kaua'i's west side, between the towns of Waimea and Kekaha, and the preferred launch site for summer tours of the Nä Pali coast.

"This project has been full of rosy good news and then as time progresses, either nothing happens, or somebody finds something wrong that now they can't do what they said they were going to do," Holzman said.

Damage to boats or trucks has been caused by depths as little as 2 feet, combined with surges that can knock a boat off a trailer before it can be pulled up the ramp, Holzman said.

"It's gotten really bad to a point where it's hit or miss whether you're able to get the boat out of the water by yourself," he said.

Some boaters — including Holzman and Glenn Mossman, president of the Kíkíaola Westside Boat Club — say the surge and the sand have gotten worse since the federal portion of the work changed the breakwater configuration at the harbor mouth.

Mossman and Holzman said they hope the U.S. Corps of Engineers, which supervised the breakwater changes, will return and fix them after the state portion of the harbor dredging is complete.

But getting the inner harbor dredged is tops on their to-do list. (They later hope to harness community volunteers to fix the condemned dock at the harbor. That project was proposed shortly after west Kaua'i residents successfully repaired a flood-damaged access road and bridge at Polihale State Park last spring, to national praise for their can-do attitude during hard economic times.)

State Rep. Roland Sagum, D-16th (Ni'ihau, Waimea, Koloa), renewed public attention to the dredging delay with a press release last week that urged state and county permits to be granted to allow the dredging to resume.

"I am deeply concerned about the lack of progress on the dredging of Kíkíaola Small Boat Harbor," Sagum said in his release, which called on state and county officials to move things along.

APPROVAL NEEDED

The holdup has been no approval from the county of Kaua'i for a "stockpiling permit" that allows the dredged sand to be placed on Kíkíaola Land Co. property about half a mile from the shoreline, said Debbie Ward, spokeswoman for the state Department of Land and Natural Resources.

The county permit was awaiting feedback from the state Department of Health, regarding transport of dredged soil to the inland stockpile site, Ward said.

Ward said precautions for transport of the sand to Kíkíaola Land Co.'s property will include using water-tight truck beds.

American Marine's Fraser said his company's responses to Kaua'i County's permit questions were to be delivered to the county Wednesday and that he hoped to get go-ahead approval for Monday.

Kaua'i County spokeswoman Beth Tokioka confirmed Wednesday that the county Department of Public Works is processing a permit request from American Marine.