The administration of President Donald Trump is going full steam ahead with plans to allow mining of metal-rich nodules on the seafloor in international waters. In April, he signed Executive Order 14285, “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources,” which … Continued
Dolphin, Whale Strandings: A study of dolphin and whale strandings on Hawaiian and other Pacific Islands from 2006 to 2024 found that nearly two-thirds of the stranded animals died as a result of human-caused injury or infectious disease. The research … 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
Forty-one months have passed since the Commission on Water Resource Management voted to designate the ground and surface water of West Maui as water management areas. Thirty-nine months have passed since the date the designation became effective. Twenty-seven months ago, … 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
At a hearing of the Hawaiʻi County Board of Appeals last August, neighbors of a 10,000-square-foot house in the state Agricultural Land Use District challenged the decision of the planning director dismissing their complaints that the fellow who managed the … Continued
What, exactly, is going on in Hawaiʻi County? Its own laws and rules specifically forbid the operation of vacation rentals on properties that lie within the state Agricultural District. It passed an ordinance in 2018 that limits these uses to … Continued
Here’s a puzzle. A large house on a five-acre lot in the state Agricultural District is rented out to tourists for more than $700 a night, according to a recent listing on the VRBO website. Inside, near the kitchen door, … Continued