Hawaii First Water

Red Hill Crisis Underscores Water Insecurity In Hawaii

(LK comment:  Jacob is right on…  In addition to conservation and reuse, Hawaii needs to begin to think about a Desal pilot program just in case.  The price of Desal has significantly decreased and we have seen what one Red Hill situation can cause and we have not seen the end of this crisis.) April 2022, Civil Beat Opinion Jacob Wiencek: Late last year a devastating water crisis hit Hawaii as thousands of gallons of fuel from the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility leaked into the groundwater.

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Thousands of mostly military families were relocated out of housing and the crisis worsened military-community relations given the preceding years of intense debate about the environmental impact of the facility.

However, most disturbingly it revealed a fundamental weakness that impacts not just Honolulu but all of Hawaii: our near single source dependence on underground aquifers presents an enduring threat to the state’s water security.

The Red Hill crisis is not the only water crisis to face Hawaii in the recent past. Maui County had to issue a water conservation noticethat inflamed an age-old debate about balancing water for residents and one of our primary economic pillars, tourism.

More broadly, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration holds that the entire state of Hawaii is either in abnormally dry conditions or at least moderate to severe drought.

Whether through a man-made crisis or climate change we are facing increasing pressure on our water resources — and that pressure will only intensify as Hawaii’s population continues to grow (we clocked a 7% growth rate from 2010-2020).

To see the rest of this excellent piece see: https://www.civilbeat.org/2022/04/red-hill-crisis-underscores-water-insecurity-in-hawaii/

 

 

10/21/21-PARTICIPATE IN “IMAGINE A DAY WITHOUT WATER”

(October 2021) (DLNR/Honolulu) – Imagine a Day Without Water, on Oct. 21 is a day to pause and reflect on the value of water in our daily lives. COVID-19 and the climate crisis have underscored the critical role that natural and man-made water systems play in our communities. They protect our health and safeguard the environment. DLNR is partnering with the Honolulu Board of Water Supply for this nationwide awareness event.

Not having water is a reality for many people. Across Hawai‘i, some families still lack access to reliable and safe drinking water. They eagerly await the next rainstorm so they can collect and filter the water that falls on their rooftops. During periods of prolonged drought, their only options are filling containers at remote stations or paying high prices to have water delivered to their home. “Some rural communities in Hawai‘i actually live without water security,” explained Commission on Water Resource Management (CWRM) Deputy Kaleo Manuel. “Streams continue to be diverted that impact instream biota and traditional and customary rights, water rates are increasing on private and public water systems, and some families have to make real decisions about whether to pay for electricity or water .”

 

To see more of article see. https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/blog/2021/10/15/nr21-181/

NEW HAWAII STORMWATER UTILITY SPARKS STATE EXEMPTION DEBATE

(August 2021) By Justin Jacques, Water Environment Federation.  On the Hawaiian island of Oahu, efforts have been underway since 2015 to establish a stormwater utility that would charge each of the island’s property owners a monthly fee based on the amount of impervious area their land contains. The decision would provide Honolulu and its neighboring municipalities with a new, dedicated funding source for projects that aim to discourage flooding, protect local water quality, and enhance climate change resilience.

Randall Wakumoto, civil engineer for the City and County of Honolulu Department of Facility Maintenance (DFM), explained during a July 15 Water Environment Federation (WEF; Alexandria, Virginia) Stormwater Institute webcast that although the new utility would address “one of the biggest threats to the island’s sustainability and resilience,” the proposition of a new fee has faced considerable opposition. For example, in February 2021, members of the Hawaii House of Representatives introduced a bill that would exempt all state-owned properties from any fees imposed by the new utility.

Proponents of the exemption described in written testimonials that state-owned properties, particularly airports and harbors owned by the Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT), are already subject to an array of regulatory requirements for stormwater management and that an additional fee based on impervious space would be unnecessarily burdensome. Detractors, however, argued that exempting state-owned properties would place additional financial stress on Oahu’s residents, whose taxes currently make up roughly 75% of the City and County of Honolulu’s stormwater management budget. Financial documents from an advisory group driving the utility’s establishment state that residential properties own 85% of the island’s parcels, but only about 44% of its impervious area.

“The bill eventually died and was not passed during this year’s legislative session,” Wakumoto said. “However, it did shed some light on the subject of how a stormwater utility would affect various state properties, and what alternatives could be considered to allow for a working relationship to exist between the county and the state government.”

For the rest of the article…

International Tropical Islands Water Conference

April 2021: (Editor Comment:  This virtual UH sponsored water conference has a small fee for students, but has a very robust schedule of events which will be a “one of a kind” water educational event for Hawai’i)

This virtual event will be held April 12-15, 2021 from 11 am – 3 pm Hawaiʻi Standard Time*, and is organized by the Water Resources Research Center (WRRC, Hawaiʻi) and Hawai‘i EPSCoR ʻIke Wai at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, in collaboration with our partner water centers: the Water Environmental Research Institute of the Western Pacific, University of Guam (Water and Environmental Research Institute) and the Virgin Islands Water Resources Research Institute, University of the Virgin Islands (Water Resources Research Institute), and the Water Resources Research Act Program of the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

here is the link to website and registration page

EPA requires seven Kauai cesspools to be closed to protect groundwater, fines Hawai‘i DLNR again

(March ’21)

Four prior EPA enforcement actions against Hawai‘i DLNR have closed 74 cesspools, collected $407,400 in fines

03/04/2021
Contact Information:
Alejandro Diaz ([email protected])
808-541-2711

(Comment:  Closing “large” cesspools is a good start on closing the 90,000 individual cesspools on the islands by the State’s mandated 2050 goal)

HONOLULU – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken enforcement action on Kauai to direct the closure of seven large-capacity cesspools (LCCs) and collect $221,670 in fines from the Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR). In 2005 EPA banned LCCs, which can pollute water resources, under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

“EPA has taken several actions against Hawai’i DLNR and encouraged them to conduct an audit of all remaining properties to identify any remaining illegal large capacity cesspools to prevent future fines,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Director of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Amy Miller. “Large-capacity cesspools can contaminate our groundwater, streams and ocean resources. EPA will continue efforts to identify, fine and close all remaining LCCs in Hawaii.”

EPA is authorized to issue compliance orders and/or assess penalties to violators of the Safe Drinking Water Act’s LCC regulations. EPA’s enforcement action to close LCCs owned by DLNR is based on an August 2019 inspection and additional submitted information. The enforcement action includes the following DLNR properties:

  • Camp Hale Koa: Located in the Kokee Mountain State Park, EPA found three LCCs associated with the campgrounds. A non-profit organization leases the property from DLNR and operates the land parcel as a camping property that is available for daily or weekly group camping. These cesspools have been closed.
  • Waineke Cabins: Also located in the Kokee Mountain State Park, EPA found two LCCs serving the cabins. The United Church of Christ, under its Hawaii Conference Foundation body, leases the property from DLNR and operates the land parcel as a group camping property. These cesspools have been closed.
  • Kukui Street commercial property: Located in the town of Kapaʻa, EPA discovered two LCCs serving 4569 Kukui Street. aFein Holdings, LLC, leases the property from DLNR and operates the land parcel as a multi-tenant commercial property. The Kukui property must close the cesspool by June 30, 2022.

Since the 2005 LCC ban, more than 3,600 LCCs in Hawaii have been closed; however, many hundreds remain in operation. Cesspools collect and release untreated raw sewage into the ground, where disease-causing pathogens and harmful chemicals can contaminate groundwater, streams, and the ocean. Groundwater provides 95% of all local water supply in Hawaii, where cesspools are used more widely than in any other state.

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

February ’21 repeat of an excellent September ’20 Civil Beat article by Claire Caulfield.  (Larry note:  this is a great report on why the forests play a major role in filling the aquifers in Hawaii)

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.

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.

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.

Here is a link to the rest of this excellent article…

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

(Nov ’20) By Matt Kaplan, NYT.

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…

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….

Maui County committee agrees to settle injection well case

September 2019; WAILUKU, Maui (AP) — County officials have recommended settling with environmental groups that sued over the use of injection wells.

Members of the Maui County Committee on Governance, Ethics, and Transparency voted 5-3 to recommend that the full council settle and remove the case ahead of U.S. Supreme Court consideration in November.

See the rest of the article here...