Above photo: Honokōhau Stream below Aotaki Weir. Credit: CWRM At its February 24 meeting, the state Commission on Water Resource Management directed Honokōhau ditch owner Maui Land and Pineapple Company to pay for a new U.S. Geological Survey stream gauge … Continued
Above photo: A discharge from the Cox Drain in 2021, looking seaward. The drain is one of the outlets whose discharges are regulated under the NPDES permit issued in October. A decade ago, the state Agribusiness Development Corporation let lapse … Continued
Environment Hawaiʻi editor Patricia Tummons recently interviewed Ciara Kahahane, the deputy director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources and effectively the executive director of the Commission on Water Resource Management. The focus of the discussion was the way … Continued
Here we go again. On October 29, Environmental Court Judge Lisa W. Cataldo issued an opinion in the Sierra Club of Hawai‘i’s appeal of a 2022 Land Board decision to grant revocable permits to Alexander & Baldwin and East Maui … Continued
In June 2024, the state Supreme Court ordered the Commission on Water Resource Management to revisit its findings in a contested case over stream flows in Nā Wai ʻEhā, the four great waters of central Maui. That was the second … Continued
Housing Scandal Update: Sentencing for all four defendants in the federal fraud case involving abuse of Hawaiʻi County’s system of awarding credits for affordable housing has been postponed yet again. Ex-county employee Alan Rudo, who pleaded guilty in 2022 to … Continued
“If you don’t make a credible case, you’re not going to get the water,” Water Commissioner Aurora Kagawa-Viviani said November 18 of the permit applications submitted two years ago for water from the streams and aquifers of West Maui, also … Continued
Swift action on the water use permit applications for the Lahaina Aquifer Sector groundwater and surface water management area is not the only thing members of the public are clamoring for. “Where the heck is the shortage plan? I’m … … Continued
The Hawaiʻi Water Service has a plan to encourage its customers to conserve water. You won’t find it filed with the water use permit applications submitted to the Commission on Water Resource Management. But the three-page plan does appear in … Continued
Last month, when Ayron Strauch, hydrologist with the Commission on Water Resource Management, was giving commission members a summary of water use applications received, he described the challenges. Applications were not uniform. End uses were not well matched with sources. … Continued