A mediated settlement has been reached over what to do in the short term about Waiahole Ditch water that has been emptied into gulches on the leeward side of O`ahu. O`ahu Sugar Company’s practice of wasting the water — 14 million gallons a day, and more — had been challenged by windward O`ahu groups seeking to restore natural flows to windward streams that, for the last 80 years, had been diminished by the diversions that transferred water to now-fallow cane fields.
The settlement order was embraced by 15 of the 17 parties who participated in the mediation process. The two parties refusing to sign were Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate and the state of Hawai`i Department of Land and Natural Resources.
The settlement allows up to 8 million gallons a day to be transferred to the leeward side, but every gallon above that amount is to be released into the Waiahole Stream and, perhaps later, other windward streams as well. Water delivered to the leeward side will be used to irrigate fields newly planted with diverse agricultural crops, two golf courses, and the Mililani Cemetery.
Over the next six months, while the agreement is in effect, the state Commission on Water Resource Management will hold a contested case hearing on a long-term resolution to the dispute over the water. The subject of the contested case is the petition of three windward O`ahu groups (the Waiahole-Waikane Community Association, the Kahalu`u Neighborhood Board, and the Hakipu`u Ohana) to restore the instream flows to certain windward streams. Water in the streams has been diverted to the leeward side since completion of the Waiahole Ditch in 1916, built to deliver water to cane fields on O`ahu’s central plain. With the last crop of sugar watered by the ditch now having been harvested, the windward groups applied to the Water Commission to have the natural flows in the streams restored.
Their petition has been contested by current and potential users of the Waiahole Ditch water, as well as by the state of Hawai`i Department of Land and Natural Resources. The Water Commission is now in the process of determining which of the many parties who have expressed an interest in the water shall be granted formal standing in the contested case proceeding, a quasi-legal forum that can extend over many months.
Most of the parties seeking to engage in the contested case hearing were also parties to the mediation proceeding. As reported mediator Peter Adler reported to the commission, 90 percent of the parties involved in the mediation (15 of 17, in other words) agreed with the outcome, which the commission then accepted and ordered to be carried out.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 5, Number 7 January 1995
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