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Archives for September 2015

Someone Is Going To Get Seriously Hurt’: Flooding leaves neighbors grappling with questions of responsibility

September 30, 2015

30 Sept 2015;
By Bret Yager West Hawaii Today byager@westhawaiitoday.com

Flooding that turned coffee fields into wastelands of rock this week has Kainaliu coffee farmers asking how the water can be managed in a way that doesn’t pit neighbor against neighbor.

When rain clouds parked over the Kona coffee belt and dumped up to three inches an hour on Thursday, Nasi Fernandez’s coffee orchard became a deep-cut gorge of mud and bare rock, coffee trees uprooted and buried, an acre and half of land stripped and rendered unusable. When the channel exited his property, it charged through Shawna Gunnarson’s farm, leaving trenches and boulder fields through her coffee trees. It filled her pastures with mud, flooded greenhouses and outbuildings, and ripped out fencing and irrigation.

“It was like a freight train,” she said. “Terrifying.”

Saturday, Gunnarson estimated the flood has cost her at least $20,000, not counting an acre of lost orchard and the labor it will take to dig out buried coffee trees so their roots don’t smother under the new layer of soil.

Gunnarson doesn’t blame the Fernandezs for the landslide of rock and flood debris any more than that family is able to pinpoint the source mauka of their own farm. But it begs the question a lot of folks along the road have been asking themselves over the past couple of days.

“How will development up mauka be managed in such a way that that it doesn’t affect the people down below?” asked Ruth Fernandez, standing at the edge of a muddy road with other farmers and neighbors Saturday.

For the rest of the story see…

Filed Under: Rainfall, Streams and Rivers, Water Contamination

Five Million Gallon Oil Plume Beneath Pearl Harbor

September 26, 2015

18 Sept 2015,

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) –

For decades, leaks from Pearl Harbor’s fuel tanks and other sources have been collecting beneath the ground near the naval base’s Halawa gate.

Hawaii News Now has obtained records issued by the Navy that indicate that the subsurface oil plume there now contains more than 5 million gallons of fuel.

That’s roughly half the volume of Alaska’s Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 and nearly 200 times the size of last year’s leak at the Navy’s Red Hill underground fuel facility.

To see the rest of this story see

Filed Under: Groundwater, Water Contamination

Flowing waters…

September 12, 2015

Hawaii Magazine Article, 7 Sept,

By Catherine Toth Fox,

When Dr. Craig China purchased a vacant lot in Nuuanu Valley in 1999, he was surprised to find he’d also bought a little-known, little-seen remnant of Oahu history, too. The deed to China’s 12,000-square-foot property indicated that he was now responsible for the upkeep of its portion of the Nuuanu auwai, early Hawaiian irrigation canals that once flowed into an extensive network of loi kalo (terraced taro fields) blanketing the lush, residential valley neighboring urban Honolulu. The auwai coursed through his property and down the road, emptying into Nuuanu Stream, the valley’s principal stream.

“I’d wanted something unique, and this water feature was it,” says the 56-year-old geriatrician, as we walk the ‘auwai, now filled with colorful koi and lined with rocks, running across his front yard. “It brings people back to the old days, how ancient waterways can mix with modern development within a harmonious environment. It really defines Nuuanu.”

Read the rest of this wonderful article on the early Hawaii irrigation ditches ‘auwai in Nuuanu Valley here.

 

Filed Under: Groundwater, Streams and Rivers, Water Conservation

State of Hawaii looking to undergo $2M water recycling study for its airports

September 5, 2015

4 Sept 2015, Pacific Business News, Shimogawa:

 

The Hawaii State Department of Transportation, through its Airports Division, is looking to undergo a $2 million water recycling study at airports across the state, according to public records.

The feasibility study would include looking into the re-use of water, including water scalping technology at Honolulu International Airport, Kahului airport on Maui, Hilo International Airport and Kona International Airport at Keahole, both on the Big Island, according to a request for proposals released by the state.

The process of water scalping involves the extraction of usable water from a sewer network.

Full article is here…

Filed Under: Water Conservation, Water Economics

About Hawaii First Water

This blog focuses on shaping water strategies for the Hawaiian Islands.

Articles

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