By Kalea Nagasako
West Maui’s water supply remains at a dangerous flow level. For residents in Honokōhau, their water source is their rivers. The Maui Land & Pineapple Company is diverting the water to hotels for tourism. The problem residents are facing is that their rivers aren’t flowing how they used to. Water is the main resource for their livelihood and is getting taken away from them.
Wili Wood, who restores taro patches, echoed the community’s concerns and recounted an incident where a sudden automatic release of a “small wave of water” from a “Taro Gate” dam washed nearly a dozen children about 100 yards downstream. Luckily, because they were familiar with those rivers, they were all okay.
Wood was born and raised in Kahana, Maui, but currently lives in Honokōhau Valley. Who’s getting affected by this situation? We are all affected in both positive and negative ways by this situation.
The positive effect is that everyone gets all their municipal waters in West Maui from the Honokōhau streams. Years ago, the Lahaina and the Honokōhau streams would mix with the water streams in Kahoma. Today, Honokōhau streams only flow through the Mahinahina water treatment plant. Kapalua has their own water treatment purification facilities.
Why do you think this is happening? Originally it was for agricultural reasons. The Honokōhau Ditch was built in the late 1890s. It was created to lease the water to the Pioneer Mill, so that they were able to grow sugar.
According to the Fleming’s Journal, at the time Maui Land and Pine owned land which was Royal Patent 8130 belonging to Moses Kekuaiwa, grandson of Kamehameha I. Leasing the water to Pioneer Mill, Maui Land and Pineapple were able to gain resources from Makaluapuna all the way to the north end of Honokowai Valley.
The ditch system fills three reservoirs: Plantation, Village, and Mahinahina water treatment. The water travels through watersheds. All but the Village reservoir have been taken care of. It’s a big hold. A plastic liner was placed over this hold and shredded pieces of plastic have been floating around in it for over 30 years now.
Anytime there is a high river flow in Honokōhau, they don’t take any water; they let all the water rush out into the ocean. Which is good for the stream, so debris can flush out. But it would be good to capture this high water, when it’s abundant, you could store it into those different reservoirs. During drought conditions in the summer there is very little water flow. There is barely enough to feed the taro system.
Effort should be put in, even if the entire water system has to be redone. It is on the edge of catastrophic failure. Nobody is going to get any water – again you only have 10 days once it fails. We are trying to sound the alarm prior to the catastrophic failure.
