Hawaii First Water

Hawaii’s Fresh Water Leaks to the Ocean Through Underground Rivers

By Matt Kaplan, NYT. (NOV)

There are few things on the island of Hawaii that are more valuable than fresh water. This is not because the island is dry. There is plenty of rain. The trouble is that there is tremendous demand for this water and much of it that does accumulate on the island’s surface disappears before it can be used.

New research by marine geophysicists reveals that underground rivers running off the large island’s western coast are a key force behind this vanishing act.

Fresh water is often pumped on the island from aquifers formed from rain at higher elevations where it is easy to access. The drawback is that if too much water gets pumped to meet demand, little remains to travel through rocks to farms and fragile ecosystems that depend upon it. To make matters worse, recent studies of this water labeled with isotopes and tracked over time have revealed that these aquifers are also heavily leaking somewhere else.

“Everyone assumed that this missing fresh water was seeping out at the coastline or traveling laterally along the island,” said Eric Attias, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii, who led the new study published Wednesday in Science Advances. “But I had a hunch that the leak might be subsurface and offshore.”

The big island of Hawaii is like an iceberg. Only a tiny fraction of the island sticks out of the ocean. The rest is submerged. To study the hydrogeology of these sections, Dr. Attias turned to electromagnetic imaging.
Ocean water conducts electricity exceptionally well because of the presence of dissolved salt ions. By comparison, fresh water is a rather poor conductor. Aware of these different electrical properties, Dr. Attias worked with a team at Scripps Institute of Oceanography to tow a 3,200-foot long system behind a boat that emitted electromagnetic fields down through the submerged coastal rocks near Hualalai volcano on the west coast.

 

ImageDr. Eric Attias and his team deploying the controlled-source electromagnetic sounding device off the coast of Hawaii.
Credit…University of Hawai’i

Dr. Attias’ work shows that within the rock of the island below the waves, there are underground rivers of fresh water flowing 2-½ miles out into the ocean. These rivers are flowing through fractured volcanic rock and surrounded by porous rocks that are saturated with salt water. Between all of this salt water and the flowing fresh water are thin layers of rock formed from compacted ash and soil that appear to be impermeable and thus keeping the two types of water separated. In total, these rivers appear to contain enough fresh water to fill about 1.4 million Olympic swimming pools.

For the rest of the article see

For Honolulu, Rising Seas Deliver Flood Risks Three Ways

OCT 2020/Brett Walton, Circle of Blue/

Build a wall?

The biggest source of flooding linked to sea-level rise for Hawaii’s capital city comes not from the sea itself. It comes from underground.

It seems like an intuitive response for protecting a coastal city from rising seas. Just raise your external defenses. But the intuitive response, in certain cases, is also the wrong response, says Shellie Habel.

If the plan to prevent flooding in a city like Honolulu were to be simply block the ocean, “it’s not going to work,” Habel told Circle of Blue. Water has other, less obvious ways of invading, and that stealth movement has implications for water pollution and transportation in Hawaii’s largest city.

Habel is a coastal geologist with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources and Hawaii Sea Grant. She is the lead author on a study that investigated three flooding pathways in Honolulu, all of which are a consequence of rising seas. The study is the first to attribute the percent of flooded area in the city that is due to each factor individually and in combination. The likelihood that floods will come from multiple pathways simultaneously — and cause more infrastructure damage — rises along with the seas.

In Honolulu’s case, a sea wall would be a losing strategy against sea-level rise because a wall would not address the most serious flooding problem. The largest source of inundation for the city’s roughly 350,000 residents is not the ocean. It’s groundwater.

Habel and her colleagues found that little more than 2 to 3 percent of flooded area in Honolulu’s urban core is a result only of overland marine flooding. That range holds for the four sea-level elevations that the study looked at.

Groundwater flooding, by contrast, is the predominant individual source of flooding. How does this happen? Groundwater in the coastal region is hydrologically connected to the ocean. When the Pacific swells, so does the inland water table.

A hypothetical wall on the Honolulu waterfront would fail to prevent flooding, Habel said, because water would still bubble up from underground and come through backed up storm drains, which are the third flooding pathway. Groundwater flooding today swamps basements and roadways in low-lying areas and is noticeable in underground parking garages.

“So even if you put in a sea wall, even if you change the type of drainage management, you still have flooding,” she said, adding that a solution that only addresses marine flooding will not work because 97 percent of the total area that is projected to flood will still flood from rising groundwater and storm drain backups. Places like New Orleans and cities in the Netherlands, which also have groundwater flooding problems, employ pumps for that purpose. “In order to mitigate all the flooding you have to adapt to all three pathways.”

For the rest of this article see…

How Efforts To Save Hawaii’s Forests Are Preventing A ‘Freshwater Crisis’

Sept/ Civil Beat; Claire Caulfield.

When Serene Smalley hikes into the Koolau mountains, her goal is to kill as many plants as possible. Armed with a machete and syringes full of herbicide earlier this summer, her sights were set on the mule’s foot fern: a giant Jurassic-looking plant.

Smalley pulled out her cellphone, scrolling through a map app with hundreds of white pins. Each GPS marker pins the suspected location of a mule’s foot fern. A local conservationist spent weeks during the pandemic combing through satellite images and identifying the GPS coordinates of mule’s foot ferns on the mountain range.

Oahu Watersheds Poamoho Wahiawa Serene Smalley Invasive Fern

Serene Smalley uses a machete to fell branches of the fern before injecting a small amount of pesticide into the base of the plant.

Credit: Kuʻu Kauanoe/Civil Beat

To the untrained eye, a mule’s foot fern can look like a native plant, the hapuu fern. “The hapuu is very lacy and pretty,” she said, while the fond of the invasive fern is pointed. “Which reminds me of a snake.”

Some of the offending ferns are right off the Poamoho Ridge Trail near Wahiawa, but to reach others she will have to scale steep slopes in the rain. Smalley invested $60 in specialized shoes that look like hooves and have metal spikes embedded in the soles for traction. They were designed for fishermen and she uses duct tape to stabilize her ankles for the long hike ahead.

For six years Smalley has been scaling mountains, camping on remote peaks and navigating mudslides to kill thousands of non-native plants. She’s one of only about a dozen elite volunteers trusted by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to assist in the dangerous task of eradicating invasive plants from the nearly 2.2 million acres of protected forests across the state.

“I can definitely see progress,” Smalley said. “It’s very, very rewarding.”

Oahu Watersheds Poamoho Wahiawa Summit Wide

Watersheds provide clean drinking water, carbon sequestration and help prevent floods and droughts. A University of Hawaii study estimated the Koolau Range provides between $7.4 billion and $14 billion in value to the state.

Credit: Kuʻu Kauanoe/Civil Beat

These volunteers, along with hundreds of state employees, dozens of environmental groups and an army of local hunters are fighting an uphill battle to protect Hawaii’s forests — and Hawaii’s drinking water.

The efforts involve coordinating a diverse group of stakeholders that don’t always see eye-to-eye, expensive land acquisitions, millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded fencing and excursions to some of the most remote areas of the island to remove invasive plants.

All this work is amid a backdrop of climate change, which the Honolulu Board of Water supply says is a top threat to drinking water security on the island.

More than 90% of Hawaii’s drinking water comes from aquifers: underground reservoirs of freshwater. Rising sea levels will make some freshwater aquifers turn brackish.

Hawaii’s population has almost doubled since statehood, and pre-pandemic the state was seeing a record number of visitors. But rainfall patterns have taken the opposite trajectory: decreasing at least 18% in the past 30 years, said state sustainability coordinator Danielle Bass.

Healthy forests could provide a one-two punch to the effects of climate change in Hawaii: sequestering carbon and allowing freshwater aquifers to recharge with rainfall.

“Without the necessary coordination and action, we risk a potential freshwater crisis for Hawaii’s future,” Bass said.

 

For the rest of article click here…

Worsening drought forces state of emergency in Puerto Rico

(July/ Editor Comments:  This could happen in Hawaii!!  Puerto Rico is roughly 1/2 the size of all the Hawaiian islands combined with double the population.  Like Hawaii, Puerto Rico’s options are pretty limited in a time of water scarcity although it is located closer to the mainland.)
By DÁNICA COTO; SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico’s governor on Monday declared a state of emergency as a worsening drought creeps across the U.S. territory amid a coronavirus pandemic.

Starting July 2, nearly 140,000 clients, including some in the capital of San Juan, will be without water for 24 hours every other day as part of strict rationing measures. Puerto Rico’s utilities company urged people to not excessively stockpile water because it would worsen the situation, and officials asked that everyone use masks and maintain social distancing if they seek water from one of 23 water trucks set up across the island.

“We’re asking people to please use moderation,” said Doriel Pagán, executive director of Puerto Rico’s Water and Sewer Authority, adding that she could not say how long the rationing measures will last.

Fernanda Ramos, a meteorologist with the U.S. National Weather Service in San Juan, said ongoing dry conditions will be interrupted by thunderstorms forecast to affect the island on Wednesday and Thursday.

“However, we are not expecting enough rain… to solve the problem we’re seeing,” she said.

More than 26% of the island is experiencing a severe drought and another 60% is under a moderate drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Water rationing measures affecting more than 16,000 clients were imposed earlier this month in some communities in the island’s northeast region.

Gov. Wanda Vázquez said 21 of 78 municipalities are affected by the severe drought while another 29 by the moderate drought. An additional 12 municipalities face abnormally dry conditions. The worst of the drought is concentrated in Puerto Rico’s southern region, which continues to be affected by aftershocks following a 6.0-magnitude earthquake that hit in early January and caused millions of dollars in damage.

An administrative order signed Monday prohibits certain activities in most municipalities including watering gardens during daylight hours, filling pools and using a hose or non-recycled water to wash cars. Those caught face fines ranging from $250 for residents to $2,500 for industries for a first violation.

Vázquez’s announcement comes amid criticism of her administration for not dredging reservoirs, which would eliminate sediment and avoid excess loss of water. Pagán said the utilities company has been in conversation with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency since Hurricane Maria about a $300 million dredging investment. She blamed the lengthy process on the number of studies and analysis needed and that require FEMA’s approval.

To see the rest of the article see this link

UH research essential in federal Clean Water Act ruling

June, Cindy Knapman/UH: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that the federal Clean Water Act, which regulates the discharge of pollutants into the nation’s surface waters, including lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands and coastal areas, must also consider pollutant inputs to those waters by groundwater. This ruling was based on scientific findings from researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).

Over the last decade, Maui coral reefs have experienced a decline in health and overgrowth by invasive algae. Concerns arose that submarine groundwater discharge was carrying nutrients from wastewater infrastructure to nearby coral reefs, contributing to this decline. However, the quantity and locations of submarine groundwater discharge along Maui’s coasts were poorly known. It was also unclear whether the groundwater carried high concentrations of nutrient or other pollution.

SOEST researchers from the Department of Earth Sciences were awarded grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center to investigate the hydrological connections between deep injected effluent from a municipal wastewater treatment plant on Maui and nearby coastal waters.

The researchers applied novel techniques including using aircraft to collect thermal infrared imagery to map oceanic inputs and the extent of effluent discharge, deployed scuba seafloor mapping, analyzed groundwater and algae samples to look for isotopic signatures unique to wastewater, used radioisotopes to help establish flow rates, and deployed tracer dyes to track rates and paths of the injected wastewater effluent to Maui’s coastal waters. The tracer dye test provided unequivocal evidence that the injected wastewater travels through groundwater to the coastal ocean.

Lahaina, Maui map
Lahaina map showing groundwater seeps, heat signature of effluent plume. Credit: Glenn, et al., 2013

“This was a very impactful scientific study with regard to protecting the environment, and with far-reaching socio-economic and sustainability implications for the State of Hawaiʻi and the nation as a whole. Our high-caliber UH team was glad that we could make it happen,” said Craig Glenn, lead author of the study and professor of Earth Sciences at SOEST.

The research team conclusively demonstrated that millions of gallons per day of deeply injected treated sewage effluent from the West Maui wastewater reclamation facility are being added to Maui’s adjacent ocean waters.

for the rest of the article see here

US Supreme Court Rules Against Maui In Major Clean Water Case

April 2020, Civil Beat, Gruber. WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Maui County can’t skirt the Clean Water Act by merely pumping its sewage into groundwater before discharging it into the ocean.

In a 6-3 opinion written by Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, the majority ruled that Maui County, like other municipalities and businesses dumping pollutants into the nation’s rivers, lakes and oceans, must have a permit to do so.

The ruling is both a rebuke of Maui County and the Trump administration, which had joined the county in arguing that the Clean Water Act should only cover waste that was discharged directly into navigable waters, and not pollutants that were first filtered through groundwater before reaching their final destination.

To See the rest of the article in the Civil Beat, click here…

Raise Your Hand: Honolulu Advertiser 2020/ Water In the Islands

(Editor Comment:  We commend high school senior Megan Okuma for her insightful article on water scarcity in the islands.)

By: Megan Okuma, Leilehua High School, Class of 2020.

As inhabitants of an island, most of Hawaii cannot fathom running out of water. However, although we are surrounded by such a precious resource, only 0.4% of the world’s water is drinkable. In Hawaii, most of our water comes from aquifers where it has traveled for years through soil and volcanic rock. This extensive, natural purifying system is the reason why Hawaii ranks first for water quality domestically. Yet with the population increasing and climate change affecting our rainfall patterns, Hawaii may see a decline of the cleanest water in the country within the next 100 years.

Conserving water is one of the easiest tasks in our environmental crisis to tackle as individuals because each of our actions directly affect the state of our water supply. We have complete control over the amount of water we use and if we take responsibility for this natural resource, we control the future of our water supply.

Water is not an infinite resource and, with a water cycle that has sustained Hawaii for ages, it makes more sense to change our habits rather than continue harvesting a finite resource with the same practices that created the problem in the first place. Of the 164 gallons of water used by residents every day, 100 gallons are used just for basic tasks: 20 to 50 gallons for showering, 18 to 24 gallons for flushing toilets and 26 gallons on running faucets. Through installing water- saving technology and routinely checking for leaks, the amount of water used can be reduced significantly.  Fortunately, there is an array of technology designed to combat the water crisis from focusing on bigger efforts like creating a new source of freshwater to simpler efforts like home instillations.

For the rest of the article see here…

Our (Water) Project in Hawaii

December 2019 (LK: this is a fascinating article on water desal using solar power to begin to reforest an area on the Big Island) by Author Yishan Wong in Medium: In considering large-scale strategies to fix climate change, it turns out that the lowest-risk, lowest-cost, and most politically feasible strategy is the massive global reforestation of 3 billion acres.

To concretely prove out key technologies and costs, we have recently completed construction of the world’s largest fully off-grid 100% solar-powered desalination facility. There are other larger desalination plants, but they are all grid-tied and/or reliant at least partially on fossil fuels. In contrast, we are completely independent and 100% powered by solar energy.

Our facility comprises a half -acre of solar panels rated at roughly 128 kW total generating power and 300 kWh of battery storage. It is designed to produce 128,000 liters/day (34,000 gallons/day, or 128 m3/day) of freshwater, more than enough to irrigate the entire property. The facility is off the grid, so we have created our own electrical and water utility.

Recent cost improvements in solar mean that green desalination is now feasible. The significance of this cannot be understated, because desalination is uniquely suited to using solar power, as it avoids the solar intermittency issue.

The area of North Kohala where our project is located used to be covered with an ancient sandalwood forest, from the mountains to the shore. Hundreds of years ago, the entire forest was cut down to supply the profitable sandalwood trade and the region never recovered. It remains a desert to this day.

For the rest of this article see it here…

Mayor: Maui Will Not Withdraw Supreme Court Appeal in Lahaina Injection Well Case

(Editor Comment:  Environmentalists would like to settle this case out of court fearing that a more conservative Supreme Court will weaken the Federal Clean Water Act.)

October 2019: Maui Now: Wendy Osher: Maui Mayor Michael Victorino says the County of Maui will not withdraw its appeal of the Lahaina injection well case from consideration by the US Supreme Court.

He is now seeking clarification from the high court saying, “I want Maui County taxpayers and ratepayers to have their day before the US Supreme Court and get clarity on this important question on the application of the Clean Water Act.”

In a statement issued on Friday, Mayor Victorino said:

“To allow this to go unanswered leaves us vulnerable to more lawsuits, to uncertain regulatory requirements and staggering costs – all for what would be a negligible environmental benefit. The legal exposure is immense, not only for the County but for private property owners as well. It goes far beyond injection wells. The Ninth Circuit’s decision means that many County facilities – including Parks, Public Works, Environmental Management are likely in violation of the federal law as it’s interpreted by this court. Penalties can be imposed of nearly $55,000 per day per source. The effect on private property values, and the associated property taxes which fund the majority of County operations, cannot be ignored.”

Attached is Mayor Victorino’s letter to Maui County residents and a Corporation Counsel opinion on settlement authority. Letters, memorandums and other documents connected with the case can be found online.

Four community groups, represented by Earthjustice (Sierra Club and the Surfrider Foundation, with support from Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund and West Maui Preservation Association) filed a complaint with in Hawai‘i Federal District Court in 2012, alleging that Maui County was in violation of the Clean Water Act for its injection well discharges of municipal wastewater into the Pacific Ocean just offshore of Kahekili Beach Park in West Maui.

The groups claim that pollutants from the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility are flowing to the ocean and harming coral reefs.  Environmental groups who brought the lawsuit say they’re asking the County to fix nearshore deadzones and give Maui’s reefs a chance to recover.

The rest of the Maui Now article is here….

State of Hawaii Freshwater Dashboard

October 2019  (Editor Comment:  According the State of Hawaii Dashboard, as of April 2019, the state estimated that we saved about 11 million gallons of water per day (gwd) of our target of 100 million gwd which we are aiming to hit by 2030.

  • We have used about 4 years of our 14 year timeline which is about 29% of our time period.
  • Ideally we would be hitting about 30 million gwd rather than 11 million gwd, which suggests we are slowly falling behind our target.

Is there any hope that we will actually achieve our 2030 water goal?  Regretfully climate change is making this an uphill battle.  But there is room for optimism.

  • The population increase is slowing on the islands and more and more low water appliances are being used by Hawaii households.
  • The increasing funds for watershed conservation and the implementation of stormwater utilities will also have a positive impact on replenishing our groundwater reserves.

The reuse of wastewater by businesses remains the speed bump in the road, smart regulations and increased incentives toward sustainability practices will help.

Here is the link to the Water Dashboard

Increase Fresh Water Capacity by 100 Million Gallons per Day

HOW WE’RE TRACKING PROGRESS: The baseline is 0 starting January 1, 2016. This goal is measured by tracking increased additional, reliable fresh water capacity from water conservation, recharge, and reuse.Explore the data
11Million Gallons per Day of Water Recharge, Conservation, and Reuse
Current as of Apr 2019