An ancient sinkhole that many believe holds archaeological evidence of Hawaii’s earliest Polynesian past is a cause for concern for a city-run board.
The Oahu Historic Preservation Commission is meeting today to discuss Ordy Pond at Kalaeloa – the former Barbers Point Naval Air Station – and how the board could “examine the limitations” and “make recommendations for the long-term care and optimal use of the site.”
The original plan was to give the old pond, which is located on the Navy grounds, to the state.
But in early June, the Hawaii Community Development Authority declined to acquire 213 acres of marine land, which included Ordy Pond near Tripoli Road, because it feared the costs associated with maintaining and rehabilitating the property would be too high.
The pond itself is a place where the Navy dumped weapons scrap for decades, giving it the name “Ordy Pond.”
And although a city committee is studying the future of the pond site, the mayor’s office says it has no plans to own it.
“To our knowledge, Ordy Pond is located on the property that the Navy (Base Realignment and Closure program) offered to HCDA and they turned it down,” Scott Humber, the mayor’s communications director, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser via email. “No offer was made to the city and at this time we have no interest in the property.”
In a separate move in June, the city took ownership of about 400 acres of former naval land in Kalaeloa, which was ostensibly to be used for public recreation purposes, the city said.
The acquisition of this six-parcel land has been underway since the city, along with the Navy and the National Park Service, first applied for the land in 1999. Transferring the Navy property to the city cost the city nothing.
Nevertheless, the potential exploration of the Ordy Pond site is enticing to the scientific community.
Among them is Thomas S. Dye, a Honolulu-based archaeologist and historic preservationist who recently published a white paper on the subject.
In his July 6 document entitled “The Significance of Ordy Pond,” Dye described the sinkhole as a unique formation that reveals some of the earliest Polynesian settlements on the island.
“Sediment cores from Ordy Pond have yielded a wide range of materials used in historical studies; two of these – charcoal and pollen – have been particularly influential in determining the timing and environmental impact of Polynesian discovery and settlement,” Dye wrote. “Charcoal is absent from sediments below 6.4 (meters), suggesting that natural fires were unknown on Oahu in the early Holocene. In addition, microscopic charcoal patches in the sediment are interpreted as wind-borne particles from the smoke of cooking fires lit by the early Polynesian settlers. The age/depth model yields an estimate of 884–1121 AD for the charcoal at 6.4 (meters).”
“The Ordy Pond estimate supports the current archaeological consensus estimate of Polynesian discoveries between 940 and 1130 AD, which also takes into account the dating of plants and animals introduced by Polynesians,” he wrote. “Further studies of Ordy Pond using modern techniques could greatly deepen historical inferences about the events surrounding the Polynesian discovery of Hawaii. Ordy Pond is significant because of the information about Hawaii’s history that it has provided and is likely to provide.”
In the same document, Dye points out that Steve Athens, a retired archaeological consultant and lead investigator of Ordy Pond, agreed via email that the pond site was “worthy of preservation.”
“As you know, this is a more or less unique repository of detailed information about environmental changes and the dating of those changes that occurred throughout most of the Holocene, including the arrival of the first Polynesians in Hawaii,” Athens said. “In fact, Ordy Pond contains a 7,500-year-old detailed record of those changes in its laminated sedimentary deposits. … Much more information could be obtained (e.g., a complete pollen study of the entire core, DNA fingerprinting of human presence in the sediment, and other studies).”
The commission meeting will begin at 12:00 p.m. in the Frank F. Fasi Municipal Building, 650 S. King St., sixth floor conference room.
———
Star-Advertiser writer Andrew Gomes contributed to this report.
