State Water Commission, Land Board Have Lost Sight of Their Mandates
The long wait is almost over. If all goes according to plan, by mid-summer, the twin falls at the back of Waipi`o Valley should be restored. The picture-postcard-perfect vista will be healed. The legends associated with the falls, legends that reach back centuries, will once more be manifest in a thrilling natural setting.
That’s cause for unalloyed joy and pats on the back for everyone who had a hand in this: Chris Rathbun, the Waipi`o Valley farmer whose complaint started this train moving; Kamehameha Schools, whose decision to remove three diversions above the falls puts paid to any lingering doubts that its new strategic plan might be nothing more than lofty but empty talk; and Earthjustice, whose efforts to get the Water Commission to do something about the wasting of water finally paid off.
Conspicuous by its absence would be members of the Commission on Water Resource Management. For most of the 10 years it has known about the waste of water at Lalakea Reservoir and another, illegal diversion that completely shut off Hakalaoa Falls, the commission seemed intent not on restoration at all, but on devising a near-endless series of reasons to avoid action.
In short, the commission seems to have lost sight of the fact that its mission is to protect Hawai`i’s streams and not to advance the cause of diversified ag or give succor to flagging economies. While these may be defensible interests, they are not the kuleana of the commission. At the February 27 meeting, anyone listening to the commissioners interrogate Kamehameha Schools’ representatives would have thought they were sitting in on a meeting of, say, the Board of Agriculture or the Chamber of Commerce. Was Kamehameha Schools really, really certain it wanted to give up this valuable asset? commissioners asked. Had it honestly considered the full costs of removing the diversion?
It is too soon to know how far Kamehameha Schools intends to take its new Strategic Plan, which provided it with a sound framework for reassessing the value of the Lalakea system. Yet all who had a hand in the crafting of this welcome decision should stand up and take a bow.
Pu`uwa`awa`a
Just around the corner from Waipi`o Valley, no similar happy ending is in store for the lands of Pu`uwa`awa`a. Thanks to an unholy alliance of hunters and misguided members of the Board of Land and Natural Resources, a historic opportunity to restore the area’s dwindling yet precious natural resources has been lost. Absent the Land Board’s commitment to a stewardship plan proposed by the non-profit Ka `Ahahui o Pu`uwa`awa`a, the foundation grants that Ka `Ahahui had secured have vanished.
We can think of a lot of folks to blame. First and foremost are the hunter’s friend (and Big Island Board member) Fred Holschuh, and Lynn McCrory, board member from Kaua`i whose stubborn insistence on a business plan from Ka `Ahahui threw the last monkey wrench into the works. Why has no similar plan been asked of the hunters and the ranchers, whose ongoing abuse of the flogged pasture land has never — not once in the hundred years its been managed by the territory or state — been so justified? As for Holschuh, I can only say it’s a relief to see his unfortunate term on the board coming to an end with the governor’s decision not to reappoint him.
Close behind them has to be Mike Buck, head of the state Division of Forestry and Wildlife, who apparently saw no pressing need to rally himself or his troops behind Pu`uwa`awa`a’s last and best hope for resuscitation. Couldn’t take the heat from the hunters, huh, Mike?
Now the Division of Forestry and Wildlife is seeking volunteers from the public to serve on an ahupua`a advisory council for Pu`uwa`awa`a. With inadequate state funds to manage resources there being a dead certainty, with a Land Board membership that still doesn’t seem to “get it” when it comes to management of public resources that may include native species whose populations are in the single digits, and with DOFAW leadership still laboring in the belief that appeasing hunters is the division’s chief mission, the only question that remains is: why would anyone in his or her right mind want to participate on this panel?
Still and all, if anything at Pu`uwa`awa`a is to be preserved, it will require the work of people willing to engage in the long, protracted, and highly unsatisfying discussions that have cursed management of this land for so many decades. The odds of succeeding are long, but what is at stake is so great, the opportunity should not be passed up.
One can only hope that with the departure of the obstructionist Holschuh from the Land Board and the appointment of two fresh faces, Virginia Goldstein and Toby Martin, Pu`uwa`awa`a’s future will be in gentler hands.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 12, Number 10 April 2002