STOP STEALING MAUI'S WATER PETITON!
Rise in Defense of Maui’s Waters!
Email Dawn Chang: dawn.chang@hawaii.gov
Call Governor Green: (808)586-0034
Maui’s freshwater resources are in deep jeopardy and need your help! Corporations are making moves right now to snatch up more water than the law allows. Maui residents are asking us to back them in defending their water from corporate interests intent on exploiting the chaos of the wildfire crisis to take what is not theirs.
3 THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW:
Sign this petition calling for the return of Kaleo Manuel as Deputy Director of the Water Commission and more: LINK
Watch the “All Hawaii Stands With Maui” press conference on Thursday at 11AM on LINK
Learn the history of water struggles in Hawaii. You can start here at: Ola I Ka Wai the website, or here at Ola I Ka Wai the movie.
WHAT IS GOING ON?
Plantation Disaster Capitalism, that is what. In the chaos and suffering caused by the wildfires on Maui, attorneys for West Maui Land Company made moves to snatch more water than the law allotted to them. Their letters to the Department of Land and Natural Resources misleadingly suggested that filling reservoirs at Launiupoko would have helped fight the wildfires that ravaged Lahaina, but that the lead staff person at the Water Commission did not immediately allow that water to be taken from the stream.
In response, Governor Green re-assigned the lead staff person for the Water Commission, Kaleo Manuel. He also issued an emergency proclamation that suspends the Water Code for West Maui, and then said he would be introducing legislation to make permanent some of the actions taken by emergency proclamation. He did all of this without consulting the only entity authorized to make decisions about Hawaii’s freshwater resources, the Commission on Water Resource Management (CWRM or Water Commission). And this is all happening in the context of another emergency proclamation that Governor Green issued on housing that fast tracks construction for any kind of housing. It’s a lot, let’s walk through each element.
THE 5 DEMANDS
1. RETURN KALEO MANUEL
Kaleo has served as the Water Commission’s lead staff person for nearly 5 years, the longest term of any previous deputy. He is also the first water deputy to be of Native Hawaiian ancestry and a bonafide expert in water policy. He is also the first deputy appointed by the Water Commission that was not somehow connected to or influenced by the corporations that control most of the wealth in Hawaii. Many of these corporations started as sugar plantations – some will recall the leading role sugar plantation owners played in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 – and have transitioned into real estate developers.
The Governor through Chair Dawn Chang unilaterally re-assigned Kaleo citing no reason, and without consulting the entity that hired him and to whom he answers, the Water Commission. We can surmise from the timeline of events that the reason for his re-assignment is his unwillingness to bend to the will of West Maui Land Company and other corporations like them that have been taking more than their fair share of water for decades. In every decision he has made over the last five years, Kaleo stood up for the interests of regular people and the streams themselves.
We want Kaleo back at the helm of the Water Commission so that he can help safely steer the agency through these very challenging times.
2. REINSTATE THE WATER CODE
Emergency Proclamation #3 suspends the Water Code for West Maui. The Water Code is the law Hawaii established in 1987 to balance the needs of our streams with a system for fairly sharing the water among many important uses.
The water code provides a process for balancing the various uses for water. This law prioritizes domestic water uses, along with in-watershed food production and maintaining a healthy stream ecosystem, over other uses of water including commercial activity, like golf courses, and diversions out of the watershed, like plantations. The law established a non-political panel of experts to oversee permitting for water uses in a management area. These expert volunteers rely on the water commission staff to help them assess stream health and calculate the minimum amount of water the stream needs to thrive.
It is not clear what it means that the Water Code is suspended. This uncertainty creates an opening for corporations, luxury hotels, and luxury subdivisions to act like it is the Wild West again.
3. RESPECT THE MAUI KOMOHANA WATER MANAGEMENT AREA
After years of advocacy, the Maui Komohana community successfully designated their stream and groundwater as a Water Management Area with the Water Commission. It took a really long time to secure this status. The attorneys and lobbyists for the corporations fought the process at every step because they wanted to continue taking all the water they wanted with little accountability or oversight.
This historical and modern plantation economy WML seeks to preserve has taken a tremendous toll on water in particular, draining Indigenous ecologies of their natural moisture. Lahaina, once known as the Venice of the Pacific, has been transformed into a parched desert, which is part of what has made it so vulnerable to fire. Plantation skimming wells dried up Mokuhinia, an at least 15-acre freshwater fishpond, that nourished Mokuʻula, an island within the pond that was the seat of the Hawaiian Kingdom. In the early 1900s, the plantation filled Mokuhinia with dirt, and eventually a baseball field and parking lot appeared over the sacred site.
Even long after most of those original plantations closed, the infrastructure and dynamics of water theft remained. Today, many Native Hawaiian communities, who have lived in Maui Komohana since time immemorial, remain cut off from water for their basic needs, including drinking, laundry and traditional crop irrigation. That’s because the streams that once flowed through their valley are diverted for luxury subdivisions, which often occupy plantation-controlled lands.
For example, the Native Hawaiian families of Kauaʻula valley, which flanks Lahaina, are beholden to Launiupoko Irrigation Co (LIC), a subsidiary of WML, because LIC owns the valley’s plantation-era water system. It takes nearly all of Kauaʻula Stream to service affluent estates in a neighboring valley and shuts off water completely to the Kauaʻula families’ homes when it alleges that there is not enough water to both sell to its customers and comply with the water commission’s stream protection standard.
Together, the communities have been fighting for their right to manage their own water rather than watch as it is diverted for often frivolous uses. June 2022 saw a historic victory: heeding the overwhelming demands of Native Hawaiians and other residents, the water commission voted unanimously to designate west Maui as a surface and groundwater management area. Under Hawaii’s water code, this designation invokes the commission’s permitting authority to protect priority Native Hawaiian rights and the environment over the historical and ongoing overexploitation of water by plantations and developers.
To be designated a WMA means that taking water from underground or a stream now requires a permit from the Water Commission. The purpose of this permitting process is to ensure that water is fairly shared between users, is not wasted, and the sources of water are never exhausted. The applications for the first set of permits ever issued in the Maui Komohana WMA were due on Monday August 7th, the day before the wildfires in Lahaina.
Maui Komohana is so close to restoring the ancient streams that once fed the vibrant wetland in the heart of Lahaina. For the Governor to say now that he would rather just scrap that whole process is heartbreaking for area residents to hear. After all that Lahaina has been through, it is unconscionable for the Governor to suggest such a thing.
4. RECENTER LĀHAINĀ RESIDENTS IN DECISIONS ABOUT LĀHAINĀ
While the Governor has said that he is prioritizing Lahaina residents’ needs in the rebuilding of Lahaina, that is not what is playing out in real life. In Lahaina right now, real estate investors are offering to buy homes destroyed in the wildfires for very cheap, and outside developers are talking about using the Emergency Proclamation on Housing to streamline and expedite all kinds of construction in the name of Lahaina, but without consulting any Lahaina residents.
The Emergency Proclamation on Housing was issued on July 17, 2023 for the purpose of expediting the construction of all housing types. This proclamation suspends laws protecting burials, requiring environmental evaluations, and shielding farmland from speculation. This proclamation whittles down Hawaii public hearing process down to one public meeting held by the project proponent. LIST OTHER THINGS THE EP DOES.
Governor Green has already said that this proclamation will be in effect for at least a year, and that he would re-introduce failed legislation in the hopes of making this unconstitutionally streamlined process permanent. Private developers are already meeting to discuss new construction on Maui using the Emergency Proclamation on Housing.
This is why Maui residents are asking for our solidarity in demanding time for residents to grieve and heal before decisions are made about how Lahaina proceeds into the future.
5. REINSTATE SUNSHINE LAW TO RESTORE PUBLIC MEETINGS AND DECISION MAKING TRANSPARENCY
It is a lot! And it is bad. It will take a long time and a lot of community-led effort to untangle the mess that Governor Green’s actions have created. We are asking that you take this first step with us today by joining the call to return Kaleo Manuel to the Water Commission, and then ho’omaukaukau for the next phase in this long, long struggle to restore Hawaii’s water.
We will be in touch with additional ways you can take action to ensure that our water is protected for all of us.
Mahalo for taking action!
Tell Governor Green and DLNR Chair Chang to Reinstate Kalei Manuel and Prevent this Water Grab!
Email Dawn Chang: dawn.chang@hawaii.gov
Call Governor Green: (808)586-0034
This blog is a kāhea issued by Hui o Nā Wai ʻEhā and Community Partners. https://www.instagram.com/hui_o_na_wai_eha/ webpage: https://www.huionawaieha.org please visit their pages for more updates and resources.
About the Author
Nanea Lo, HAPA’s Administrative and Programs Coordinator
Nanea Lo is from Papakōlea, Oʻahu. She is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian). Lo's educational expertise is in community planning and urban planning infrastructures. She is also a podcast host for Native Stories.
Lo is a public servant and serves as the Kona representative for the Oʻahu Burial Council, a commissioner on the Oʻahu Historic Preservation Commission, sits on the board of the Hawaiʻi Workers Center, and serves on the grant making committee for Hawaiʻi People’s Fund.
Through civic engagement, podcast hosting, and community organizing, Lo advocates for Hawaiian sovereignty, Aloha 'Āina, and feminism on the national and international scale. She has been a part of innovative local and international education and advocacy programs such as Planned Parenthood “National” Storyteller for the Pacific Northwest and Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi-Asia Pacific Leadership Program, Native American Political Leadership Program, Kuleana Academy, Young Pacific Leaders, and Peace Scholars. She believes that relationships are the fabric of life and that Aloha ʻĀina is forever.
