This is a brief history of the Kawaihae Harbor and the many times the Kawaihae Reef was destroyed due to the original placement of the deep draft harbor on top of the Kawaihae Reef.
The harbor construction started in 1959, before Hawaii’s Statehood. Over the years there were a minimum of three more times that the reef was carved up. Project Tugboat 1972 though a smaller scale, the harbor construction was done with extremely high explosives as an experiment.
Conclusion
The construction of the Kawaihae Harbor must be remembered as a terrible mistake. The decisions by USACE or whomever to destroy the largest reef on the island must not be repeated. The Corps after the initial blunder repeatedly made even more terrifying experiments with extremely high explosives to excavate more holes in the reef.
The tragic irony of this debacle is that the harbor can be built just north of the existing harbor, where the original anchorages occur. The area is sandy and deep, with no reef to destroy. The Corps would have to use more rocks which were readily available on this island made out of basalt.
In their 1949 USACE report, they decided that using the reef as a foundation was practical. That decision supported by the catastrophic decision to carve out the reef for a deep draft harbor, if they were made today would have been impossibly stupid. Yet, every time the coral reef is destroyed a mistake is made, and the Hawaii Department of Transportation with The Corps have piled on more mistakes and are willing to repeat the tragedy.
Any future decision regarding destroying the reef must have the consent of the reef.