Groups Ask Court to Declare Prohibition On East Maui Water Lease to Private Party “Climate change and variability in weather patterns makes it impossible for [the Board of Land and Natural Resources] to guarantee that anyone will be able to … Continued
In a letter to the Public Utilities Commission on March 25, Douglas Codiga, attorney for the Wailuku Water Company, reported that the recent severe storms so severely damaged its irrigation and water delivery systems that the company is on the … Continued
If the state does not acquire the system as a whole, basically it’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” the Land Division’s acting assistant administrator Lauren Yasaka told the state Board of Land and Natural Resources at … Continued
On March 2, Ryan Kanakaʻole, acting chair of the state Commission on Water Resource Management, did what members of the public clamored for him to do at the commission’s meeting last month: He rescinded an August 21 email then-commission chair … Continued
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