Soil Survey Investigation Reports

Dating from the 1965 to 1988, their data include geotechnical borings done for building foundations on Oahu. The borings unveiled detailed geologic information.

Reports include those made for the construction of the following:

• Suburban communities -- Mililani Town, Enchanted Lake in Kailua, and Hawaii Kai
• State government projects -- Honolulu International Airport (now Daniel K. Inouye International Airport)
• Commercial and non-profit projects -- Pearlridge Shopping Center and Kuakini Hospital
• Colleges and schools -- Hawaii Loa College (later combined with Hawaii Pacific University), Honolulu Community College, Kaimuki High School, and Our Redeemer Lutheran School
• Private homes

Property owners submitted these reports to the City’s Dept. of Planning and Permitting to obtain approval for construction.

Engineers, consultants, property owners, and graduate students have used these reports for research. For example, University of Hawaii hydrogeologist Frank Peterson assigned students to collect and compile their data.

The City considers these reports as publicly released documents.

This digital collection results from a collaboration between these organizations in the University of Hawaii at Manoa:

• Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology
• Water Resources Research Center
• Department of Geology and Geophysics
• Hawai‘i Groundwater and Geothermal Resources Center
• UH Manoa Library
• Ike Wai -- Epscor Hawaii

The following people made this project happen:

• WRRC faculty and HGGRC director Dr. Nicole Lautze led this project -- overseeing the digitization, metadata generation, and posting of these files.
• Geology faculty member Dr. Scott Rowland picked up the print copies from the City.
• Digitization Coordinator Alice Kim created the metadata.
• Research assistants David Perreira and Honour Booth scanned the reports.
• Library programmer Daniel Ishimitsu set up the collection onto ScholarSpace, the University’s digital repository, and will maintain it.

The National Science Foundation via the Ike Wai -- Epscor project (award #1557349) and UH Manoa Water Resources Research Center sponsored this digitization project.

Previously, the City’s Municipal Reference Center stored the hard copies of the reports in file cabinets. In 2017, the City decided to discard them and offered them to the University.

Hawai‘i Groundwater and Geothermal Resources Center https://www.higp.hawaii.edu/hggrc/