Kēōkea Gulch

The Kēōkea gulch stream is the main gulch and drainageway running through central Kihei, and is tasked as being the neighborhood’s main drainage infrastructure. Hundreds of homes and business depend on this gulch and stream to manage stormwater, yet it is not a protected gulch, nor are there any protection in place that will save it from overdevelopment. Over the years, the stream has been encroached upon and built over, development is creeping close and closer to the mainstream bed, and more roads are being built over and through this waterway.

Kēōkea – Mauka to Makai: Kēōkea gulch, has a large catchment basin, in ranchland and farmland above the Pi’ilani Highway, then it flows down through the industrialized area mauka of Pi’ilani Highway, through a golf course, then forced around the recycling center, where it meets the floodplain. Here it enters the coastal wetland zone, where it splits into three possible streamways, or 4  if you count subduction into the groundwater aquifer. Overland flow can exit three directions downslope into the Halama Wetlands. The southern path into the Welakahao Wetland outlet, or through the Kēōkea stream’s “northern arm” where it flows under Kauha’a Street causeway, and into the Lāʻie Mauka Wetlands.