The fresh water on Lana’i is found exclusively within the high level aquifer. However, at the aquifer’s fringe, water tends to exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended standard for chlorides in drinking water (250 parts per million).
The Lana’i Company defends its use of the water from the high-level aquifer by noting that the water it pumps for irrigation is from the brackish part of the aquifer.
In the long and well-documented debate over use of the high-level aquifer, the experts agreed that under the most optimal conditions, the aquifer could be pumped no more than six million gallons a day, no matter where that pumpage occurred. In other words, pumping the fresh or the brackish water makes no difference to the overall yield; what matters is the total volume pumped.
This, then, is the crux of the dispute between the Lana’i Company and the Land Use Commission, Maui County, and the Lanaians for Sensible Growth: By using any water from the high-level aquifer for irrigation, the company is diminishing the island’s only source of fresh water.
In any event, what the company claims is brackish (between 300 and 500 ppm chloride) would be regarded as sweet in most parts of the world. In Los Angeles, for example, drinking water can be up to 500 ppm chloride content, while in other countries, drinking water of up to 1,000 ppm is standard.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 4, Number 8 February 1994
Leave a Reply