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\tIf a warning is declared, permittees who draw water for municipal or military uses will have to reduce their water use by 15 percent of their last reported monthly pump age before an alert was issued. Those with permits for industrial or golf course use will have to reduce their use by 20 percent. (Under the commission\u2019s administrative rules, permittees are required to submit monthly water use reports and violations are subject to a maximum fine of $5,000 per violation per day.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tDomestic users and those with permits for habitat maintenance will simply have to follow the water use shortage plan that they prepared as a requirement of their permit approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tA water shortage watch would not require any cutbacks, and an alert would simply require all permittees to follow their individual water shortage plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tCommissioner Wayne Katayama asked the planning branch\u2019s Lenore Ohye if the commission had the ability to control the military\u2019s water use. Commissioner Kamana Beamer mentioned that a recent water audit showed that the military was by far one of the largest water users on the island.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\t\u201cAccording to the Navy, it\u2019s voluntary,\u201d Ohye said of its compliance with the water shortage plan. She said the commission has had a problem even getting the military to apply for the state water use permits. \u201cWe agreed to disagree. They submitted their applications,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\t\u201cThey do have that trump card over the state,\u201d she said, adding that the Navy did submit a water shortage plan. \u201cWe\u2019re very appreciative of their cooperation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\t\u201cCongratulations,\u201d Katayama replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\tIn approving the plan, the commission added a condition that staff must reach out to the public for further comments and report back in one year. The addition was in response to testimony that the public had not had ample time to review the plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rising Waters<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently, freshwater levels in all six of the deep monitoring wells in the Pearl Harbor Aquifer Sector have increased since 1995, when O\u02bbahu Sugar Company ended its sugarcane operations, according to Patrick Casey, a geologist with the Water Commission\u2019s survey branch. Levels have increased 0.21 to 3.7 feet, depending on the well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tThe wells penetrate hundreds of feet through the freshwater basal aquifer into the underlying brackish water and then to the salt water below. Up until the COVID-19 epidemic, commission staff would visit the wells quarterly to collect measurements on water temperature, depth, and salinity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \tAll but one of the aquifers have a relatively thick freshwater section, with a smaller brackish transition zone. The well in Halawa near Red Hill, is \u201ca little unusual,\u201d Casey said. It has just 100 feet of freshwater over an unusually thick brackish zone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have an up flow of brackish water from somewhere, we don\u2019t know where. It displaces the freshwater,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tCommissioner Paul Meyer asked whether there is any geological reason why the brackish layer should be so thick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \t\u201cUSGS has spent some time looking into this. It\u2019s a mystery that hasn\u2019t really been unravelled. \u2026 In our studies at Red Hill, we\u2019re finding it\u2019s a very complex geologic setting. Things are not as simple as we thought it might be,\u201d Casey said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \t\u201cThis might be a very local phenomenon because we don\u2019t see it anyplace else. \u2026 USGS is very curious about this. Some thought and some energy being is put to trying to explain it,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tCommissioner Mike Buck asked Casey what he thought will happen to water levels as the level of sea water rises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \tCasey said whether influenced by climate change or overall pumpage, the aquifer area is huge and water levels do not change rapidly. Trends may develop, \u201cbut what causes them could be a number factors,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Teresa Dawson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On August 14, the state Commission on Water Resource Management approved a Pearl Harbor Water Shortage Plan, which dictates how the commission will determine when there is a water shortage and the actions various types of permitted users of the … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[473,28],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-12841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-september-2020","category-water","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}