The Hawaii Water Plan is a state document, but most of its elements are not the product of any public agency. While Maui County prepared its own Water Use and Development Plan, the other plans were written by consultants:
George A.L. Yuen & Associates (Water Resources Protection);
Fukunaga & Associates (Water Projects);
KRP Information Services (Water Quality);
Megumi Kon (Hawai`i County Water Use and Development);
R.M. Towill Corp. (Kaua`i County Water Use and Development);
Wilson Okamoto & Associates (O`ahu Water Management); and
Bradley J. Mossman (the “umbrella” Hawaii Water Plan).
Yuen and Fukunaga were paid $100,000 each for their initial reports. Yuen received $50,000 more for supplemental work. Fukunaga is to be paid an additional $25,000 on completion of tasks specified in an amendment to its contract. KRP received $30,000 for preparing the Water Quality Plan. The requirement that Mossman “draft a document for distribution to the public” is one of several items in the scope of services he is to perform for the state. While it is not possible to know how much the state has paid for that document, overall, Mossman is to be paid $38,202 for work on the Hawaii Water Plan. Each county received $150,000 from the state for preparation of the county plans.
The total cost of preparing the Hawai`i Water Plan is $943,202 so far, with the bulk of that money going to private contractors. This does not include incidental costs or costs of consultants’ travel to neighbor islands during the hearings process.
Are taxpayers getting their money’s worth?
To judge by volume alone, one might think so. Lined up, the various plans occupy easily more than a foot of shelf space.
To judge by content, several of the plans come up short. The Hawai`i County plan reads as though written by someone who slept through four years of high-school English. Some tables in the O`ahu plan seem to have been compiled by someone who played hooky when the rest of the class was learning how to add.
A WR(i)PP-Off?
Because of the central importance of the Water Resources Protection Plan, it warrants special attention. In general, it is padded, carelessly put together and sloppily researched, at least in some sections. Parts of it seem to have been lifted intact from a Chamber of Commerce brochure or a travel guide, with no thought as to whether the information was accurate, unbiased, or otherwise worth repeating.
Frequently, recommendations seem to have been drawn from publications of the American Water Works Association with no thought given as to whether they apply to Hawai`i. For example, the plan suggests checking out whether waste heat from nuclear power plants might be used in the desalination process. That recommendation would probably stir controversy even in a state that has nuclear plants. In Hawai`i, where they are banned by the Constitution, the recommendation is absurd.
A discussion of low water-use landscaping mentions what Denver and California are doing. No mention is made of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply’s xeriscape garden.
Sometimes the report seems to be serving a political agenda. It says, for example, that “the Legislature has been responsive to the need to protect our watersheds and there is every reason to believe that it will continue to do so in the future.”
The comment that the Big Island is “successfully undertaking geothermal electricity generation” seems to be another instance of boosterism overriding the need to for dispassionate, factual reporting.
The drilling of the first artesian well is set in Kamehameha’s time (“circa 1759”), when it occurred 120 years later. The University of Hawai`i is described as one of several “mainland universities” operating telescopes atop Mauna Kea.
The discussion of Hawaiian flora and fauna is not acceptable. It implies that immigrants from “countries from the Far East” arrived before Western contact. It does not mention at all the impact of plants and animals introduced since 1778. It fails to note the unique circumstances of the evolution of Hawai`i’s native plants and animals, many of which are found nowhere else on earth.
Of all the omissions, perhaps the gravest is the report’s failure to place a price tag on any of the water development options it proposes. Some of these can be assumed to be quite expensive: for example, bulkheading of dikes, weather modification, development of methods to keep ground water from leaking to the sea.
In any decision as to how to meet future water needs, cost has to be a major factor. Electric utilities here and on the mainland are being forced not simply to provide power at any cost, but to provide power at the least cost. Similar demands (with due respect to environmental concerns) should be made for water development.
Apart from that, the contract between the consultant and the Water Resource Management Commission requires Yuen & Associates to provide “cost implications” for recommended options. The failure to mention costs, then, may also represent a breach of contract.
If the consultant is so careless in dealing with matters where the public can be presumed to have some independent means of judging the accuracy of the plan, one can only wonder if the same casual attitude has been taking in preparing the more specialized parts of the plan.
It’s Never Too Late…
Each county has different water needs and water supplies. Still, the public would have been better served if the county plans had been written in the same format. As it is, the plans are widely divergent, and this makes it difficult, if not almost impossible, to make meaningful comparisons.
In fact, however, the people preparing the Hawai`i Water Plan anticipated this occurring, and engaged the services of a consultant to “formulate a uniform Water Use and Development Plan format” for use by the counties. That work was stipulated in an amendment to the original contract between the Commission on Water Resource Management and Fukunaga & Associates, which prepared the State Water Projects Plan.
The amendment was dated June 15, 1989. That wouldn’t have given Fukunaga & Associates a lot of time to complete the task; on the other hand, any effort to give some semblance of uniformity to the county plans would have been helpful.
As it is, however — months after the county plans have been submitted — the work to develop a format for them hasn’t even been started. A person on the staff of the Division of Water and Land Development said Fukunaga would be asked any day now to begin the work.
Volume 1, Number 2 August 1990