With members touting the need to support diversified agriculture, the Board of Land and Natural Resources unanimously voted on September 24 to accept the final environmental impact statement Alexander & Baldwin and East Maui irrigation Company had prepared for a 30-year water lease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lease would cover 33,000 acres of state land across four licenses areas in East Maui: Nahiku, Keanae, Honomanu, and Huelo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under a June 2018 decision and order from the Commission on Water Resource Management setting interim instream flow standards for about two dozen East Maui streams, nearly 88 million gallons a day (mgd) would be available for reasonable and beneficial offstream uses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A&B and EMI propose to take all of it, plus an additional 4.37 mgd from EMI\u2019s own aqueduct system. It total, the companies propose to divert about 92 mgd from East Maui.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The companies plan to provide 7.1 mgd of that water to the Maui Department of Water Supply for domestic and agricultural uses. The rest, about 85 mgd, would used to fulfill the diversified agriculture plans of EMI co-owner, Mahi Pono, LLC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A&B and EMI have estimated that more than 20 percent of that water will be lost in their irrigation system, through transpiration or seepage. The remaining 66 mgd would be available to Mahi Pono for use on its fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the EIS, Mahi Pono proposes to plant orchards, tropical fruits, row and annual crops, energy crops, and to raise livestock and produce green energy on 30,000 acres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under revocable permits granted by the Land Board, the companies currently divert about 25 mgd, although very little of that is actually used to irrigate Mahi Pono\u2019s fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the Land Board meeting, members of the public both for and against the proposed lease testified at length on whether or not the board should accept the final EIS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many of those who testified against acceptance argued that the document failed to adequately address the issue of system losses, or what many of them called waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The EIS does note that the Water Commission\u2019s 2018 decision and order recognizes EMI\u2019s irrigation system losses of 22.7 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Attorney David Kimo Frankel, who represents the Sierra Club of Hawai\u2018i in its ongoing fight to restore water to streams in the Huelo license area that the Water Commission\u2019s 2018 decision and order does not cover, pointed out that the commission also stated explicitly that such a rate of loss was unacceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Specifically, the decision and order states, \u201c[A]lthough estimates of over 20 percent transmission system losses may comport with current industry standards, they do not reflect best practices, will not serve the interests of future generations and are not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe primary issue for you is whether the EIS discloses what it needs to disclose. It has to discuss mitigating measures to reduce the severity of impacts. … The Water Commission demanded minimizing leakage and waste. The EIS doesn\u2019t address the issue in any meaningful way,\u201d Frankel said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEvery 1 million gallons a day that is saved from waste is a million gallons of day that should really be in our streams,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ken Nakamoto, a former deputy director of the Water Commission and consultant who helped prepare the EIS, and Mahi Pono\u2019s director of water resources, Mark Vaught, later testified that the water going into the company\u2019s unlined reservoirs in Central Maui isn\u2019t actually wasted. It recharges the aquifer below, they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Board chair Suzanne Case rebuffed Frankel\u2019s efforts to respond, noting that the board was past taking public testimony. But while the board met in executive session to discuss the standards of acceptance of the EIS, Frankel took the opportunity to share his rebuttal with any members of the public still listening via YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell since the board won\u2019t listen to my comments, I\u2019ll tell them to you,\u201d he began. He argued that Mahi Pono had mischaracterized a USGS report to support an argument that there is a net gain in water through tunnel seepage. If EMI were to line the ditch there would be less seepage and less loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also noted that right now, \u201c80 percent of the water in many months that they take from streams is wasted. … It goes into the reservoirs and seeps into the ground. A&B\u2019s consultants say, \u2018Well, it recharges the aquifer.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t matter if it recharges the aquifer. We\u2019re going to drain streams dry to recharge an aquifer nobody is using? What kind of logic is that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He continued that \u201cA&B and its consultant forget that the Water Commission [in a recent decision regarding water from the Na Wai \u2018Eh\u0101 area in Central Maui] just limited the amount of water that can be wasted to 5 percent. Here, they are talking about wasting 20 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the executive session, the deputy attorney general advising the board, Lauren Chun, reported that the Land Board has some leeway in determining whether a final EIS was acceptable. She suggested that it could be accepted so long as the document was compiled in good faith and allowed the board to fully consider the environmental factors involved and make a \u201creasoned choice between alternatives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yuen then suggested that the comments being raised at the meeting regarding waste should have been raised in comments on the draft EIS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can definitely say this question of system losses, which was certainly out there, … was not a major focus of public comments,\u201d he said. However, he added, \u201cI take it as a serious issue if and when it does come before the board as a lease.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In making the motion to accept the EIS, Maui Land Board member Doreen Canto seemed to be arguing in favor of Mahi Pono\u2019s efforts, in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe can no longer fall back on tourism to drive our economy. While I\u2019m not here to promote Mahi Pono LLC, … I believe there is promise in a business that supplies employment,\u201d she said, appearing to read from a statement she had prepared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2014 Teresa Dawson<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With members touting the need to support diversified agriculture, the Board of Land and Natural Resources unanimously voted on September 24 to accept the final environmental impact statement Alexander & Baldwin and East Maui irrigation Company had prepared for a … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,488,28],"tags":[3],"class_list":["post-13878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-board-talk","category-october-2021","category-water","tag-teresa-dawson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13878","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=13878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/environment-hawaii.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}