In late December, the Water Commission heard testimony on the motion for a reconsideration of the order denying “existing use” status to several parties who had been denied use of Waiahole water in August 1995, when the commission issued its Order No. 8.
The witnesses were quite candid. Howard Hamamoto, the receiver for Royal O`ahu Resort golf course, told the Water Commission that it took between 300,000 and 1.3 million gallons a day to irrigate the golf course, with an average use of 750,000 gallons a day. He acknowledged that Order No. 8 restricted his permitted use to 4,800 gallons a day, but said he still took “whatever we need” on a daily basis. The golf course was paying Waiahole Irrigation Company $1.26 per thousand gallons, or an average of $945 per day, for the water, Hamamoto said.
The golf course had just obtained a permit from the Water Commission to pump up to 750,000 gallons a day of potable water from a former O`ahu Sugar well, but, according to Hamamoto, “there may be infrastructure problems associated with” using pumped water. To put in place the infrastructure needed to bring water from Waikele Stream, another suggested alternative, would cost $9 million, Hamamoto said — although he offered no evidence for that claim.
On a per-acre basis, Royal O`ahu’s use amounts to 4,600 gallons per day, Hamamoto testified. By comparison, the golf course at Mililani uses 880 gallons per acre per day while the city’s Ted Makalena golf course uses 1,126 gallons per acre per day. When asked about this vast, more than four-fold difference, Hamamoto simply said that “different golf courses must, depending on climatic conditions, use different amounts of water.”
The golf course had been ready for play for about a year, Hamamoto said, but still was not open. He indicated he was hopeful that by the end of 1996, the financing would be in place to put in the needed infrastructure for use of pumped water.
When asked about the future financial prospects of the golf course, Hamamoto said: “The last five years, there have been a total of about eight new golf courses. There are currently 35 golf courses on the island of O`ahu. There are five private golf courses, five municipal golf courses, and seven military golf courses. And the rest are privately owned courses open for public play.
“Because of the numbers of new golf courses that have come on the market, there is obviously a decrease in the number of rounds that’s played per course…. My assessment of what the situation is now economically for golf courses is that it certainly was not as good as it was five years ago. I also understand that the mix of tourists coming to Hawai`i, particularly from Japan, has changed in structure so not as many of them are playing golf. And that was a good source of income for golf courses in the past.
“Are golf courses viable? I don’t believe that a golf course can easily recover its investment today.”
And at Pu`u Makakilo…
A similar tale emerged during testimony of Robert Creps, vice president of finance for Grace Pacific Corporation. At a court-ordered foreclosure auction in November 1994, Grace Pacific purchased the 312-acre site of the partly finished Pu`u Makakilo golf course. “At the time of the purchase,” Creps told the commission, “the previous owner of the site had ceased construction activities, leaving a partially completed clubhouse and seven completed holes of the golf course, with the remainder of the golf course and driving range partially graded but unlandscaped.”
Pu`u Makakilo was denied use of Waiahole water, but continued to use an average of 150,000 gallons a day to water the front seven holes and “to establish a ground cover on the back nine, which has been mass graded but had been abandoned,” Creps said.
The rate of payment to Waiahole Irrigation Company was $1.20 per thousand gallons, he added.
Unresolved Issues
In January, the Water Commission issued an Order No. 29 in the contested case, ordering the various parties to show cause why they should not cease and desist the prohibited transfers and uses of water.
During testimony on that order in February 1996, Alan Oshima, attorney for WIC, said his client was “not knowingly violating a commission order.” The water that was being sold to the non-permitted users under Order No. 8 was not water from the windward side at all, he claimed, but rather was part of the water that was developed as the ditch ran through Bishop Estate land, on the leeward side of the Ko`olau crest, or, alternately, might be part of the estimated 2.1 million gallons a day of surface water that was collected in the ditch on the windward side. (The taking of windward surface water is not regulated under the Water Commission’s designation of windward O`ahu as a groundwater management area.)
Paul Achitoff, attorney for the windward parties, noted that whether the water developed in the windward or leeward side of the tunnel mattered not, since in either case, “it develops in a groundwater management area, and the Water Code prohibits anyone from using such water without a water use permit or an interim allocation for an existing use.”
Royal O`ahu’s attorney, Ronald Sakamoto, argued that Royal O`ahu was entitled, as a matter of law, to take the water, since the golf course was built with all proper land use and zoning permits. Former Justice Walter Heen, attorney for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, pointed out that this argument “clearly point[s] out the fallacy of water following planning. If you follow his argument correctly, once they got the permits they were entitled to water from somebody. And they felt at least entitled to use this water, notwithstanding the fact that they did not have a permit.”
After additional testimony was taken, a further order — Order No. 31 — was issued, requiring WIC to provide additional ongoing information about the unpermitted uses.
As of press time, the commission has not issued any cease-and-desist order, and the uses continue more than a year after the commission disallowed them. Besides Royal O`ahu and Pu`u Makakilo, parties named in the show-cause order are Eiko Nakama, a banana farmer, and WIC.
Volume 7, Number 2 August 1996