Sign up to receive updates when articles like this are published. Sign up to receive alerts when articles like this are published. It's on both the national and state historic registers, and as such, from a legal standpoint, it can't be torn down. He wants the pool torn down to make way for a new 400-foot beach with only the memorial archway restored. ''That beach is like a lung for the people of Honolulu. Last spring, the opponents of restoration won one round when a Circuit Court judge ruled that any new pool would have to comply with clarity and water quality standards for freshwater pools.
City officials say compliance is impossible.
But this summer, another judge refused to block the city from beginning restoration of the bleachers, changing rooms and archways on the land side while the State Health Department draws up new regulations specifying standards for saltwater pools. Now, rusted steel rods and crumbling concrete are being replaced, and a new head will be cast for a majestic bald eagle on the facade. City officials do not dispute that the original pool was an engineering disaster almost from the start. It was finally closed as a health hazard in 1979. But officials say their new plan, together with a pair of groins to be built out into the ocean to trap passing drift, mean the water quality in the new pool will be the same as in the ocean.