Any sustainability conversation must include water, and all of its forms and uses.  Taking this vital resource for granted has serious consequences for the future of Hawaii and its livability.  As Dr. Richard Bennett explains, “…water is the essence of life and the media upon which our world and communities are entirely dependent.”

With a focus on Hawaii Island, the authors sum things up this way… “Hawaiʻi Island has a long history of drought episodes.  We have dealt with these short-term events with various site-specific mitigations, however, any changes in how water is managed, allocated, and used, remain elusive and are often controversial.“

BeyondKona is pleased to present Richard H. Bennett Ph.D. and Rhiannon R. Tereari‘i Chandler-‘Īao, Esq. of Waiwai Ola ʻOhana, and their analysis of all things water for Hawaii…

Adding to the County of Hawaii’s Sustainability Conversation:  Water, Law, and Policy

This paper advocates for a comprehensive approach to water use policy for Hawai‘i Island.

Water resource and use policies are scattered among several county departments and agencies without requiring the policies to be congruent or coordinated.

When we discuss sustainability, we look out into our future and ask what must be sustained if the natural world, our lives, and our economy will thrive without significant external inputs of money, energy, and resources.

Any sustainability conversation must include water and all of its forms and uses. Water is the essence of life and the media upon which our world and communities are entirely dependent.

This article is a conversation starter for a more comprehensive policy discussion of our water resources, no matter the source.

Changing Climate:  There is an international scientific consensus that our climate is changing rapidly.  The changes are attributed to human activities that have added insulating gases to the earthʻs atmosphere.  How this change will impact specific locations is a matter of considerable scientific uncertainty. However, the recent historical record for Hawai‘i portends significant rainfall declines coincident with sea-level rise.

Many authors stress the issue of water resource sustainability, notably:  “Given that approximately 70% of the annual rainfall happens during the wet season, Hawaiʻi is expected to face an overall reduction in annual rainfall leading to a decline in sustainability of groundwater recharge” (Burnett and Wada, 2014).

Rainfall for the state has declined about 14% overall.

Confounding this observation are drier and wetter trends for specific communities on all islands.   Hawai’i Island’s leeward or Kona side appears to be drier than any statewide trend may suggest.  Wisdom and prudence declare that we must assume the worst-case scenario and plan accordingly.  We will be pleasantly surprised should heavier rainfall occur from year to year.  In contrast, being shocked and unprepared when protracted drought occurs might inspire emergency restrictions that serve only as band-aids.

Fresh Water:  Our water reservoir is a finite underground bubble that floats on the more dense seawater saturating the fractured rock beneath the island.  This bubble or lens is rainfall and dew dependent.   There is no underground river of fresh water that flows underground, as occurs in some states and aquifers of the mainland.

Our rainfall dependency is also confounded by the time of a rain event until that water joins the lens.   Unlike a lake reservoir, this latency of the water volume can make effective water use planning difficult and provide an illusion of water abundance. This raises the question of how best to determine the sustainable yield and limits of our water resource.

Home Water Use:  There are many options for reducing in-home water use.  Most of these are structural, such as low flow fixtures and appliances.

The most significant use of water in the home is landscape irrigation.   Plant species selection and effective irrigation management can save 30-50% of the water used outside the home. The Board of Water Supply for the City and County of Honolulu states that with the proper choices, a homeowner can save 30 to 50% of the water used on landscaping (2021 Board of Water Supply, City and County of Honolulu). This option conserves water, reduces the family water bill, and addresses multiple crucial sustainability issues.

Irrigation water conservation programs must be an essential component of any sustainability effort for Hawaii.   Water conserved for other domestic demands will be far less expensive than increasing pumping capacity, and the energy to drive that capacity, for additional water.

Redirecting the best quality wastewater from sinks, showers, and washing machines can replace 30 to 40% of the water needs for landscaping. Many nations and communities in the arid parts of the world reuse water by necessity and mandate.

The challenge for Hawaii County is how best to achieve sustainable policies and water conservation education.  The Department of Water Supply is not noted for progressive water conservation policies or effective public education. A change in policy and programmatic efforts will likely require enlightened leadership and engagement from the Mayor Roth and the County Council to effect significant water conservation measures. However, the most significant impediments to greywater reuse are state and local regulations that are onerous, out-of-date and not science-based, and, in some cases, make greywater reuse illegal.

Wastewater Reuse:  Hawai‘i Island has several wastewater treatment plants.  Some are public; most are private.  By statute, our communities may have a typical sewer system into which all wastewater is combined.  Toilet water is mixed with sink, shower, and laundry water, and as such, it all becomes “Black Water.”  This water must be treated to reduce its pollutant loads and disinfected to reduce the prevalence of presumptive disease-causing microbes.  This treatment process is expensive to construct and operate.   The proper disposal of the treated wastewater is costly and especially problematic for an island in which sewer connections are more the exception than the norm.

Water inexorably flows downhill to the sea.   On the Hilo side, about 212 rivers and streams flow continuously, allowing people to see the hydrologic cycle in action.  The Wailuku River in Hilo is a dramatic example.  Its watershed is a vast mountainside.  Heavy rains create a torrent of brown water carrying dirt and fine sediments into Hilo Bay.  Less apparent are the urban drainages of the Waiākea and Wailoa rivers.  A drive through Hilo town reveals many storm drains and gutters that convey street rain runoff to these rivers and the bay.

In figure 3, Kona’s Subterranean Estuary is depicted as a model of the water flowing from land-to-sea.

There is only one storm water channel in the Kona area that drains Holualoa mauka.  Most rainfall runoff migrates underground and joins the subterranean estuary that flows under the entire Kona plain.

University of Hawaiʻi hydrologists suggest the brackish ground water flows into the sea at the rate of about 2.5 million gallons per mile of coastline, per day (Peterson 2009).

As apparent in this illustration,  all water eventually flows into the sea.  In some cases by design, and others by default, as is the case with Hawaii Island’s wastewater plant injection wells.  In both situations, the law requires all such disposal to be subject to disposal permit requirements to ensure that the nearshore waters are not impaired.

The wastewater of the Kealakehe Wastewater Treatment Plant is a glaring example of water resource mismanagement and nearshore pollution.  For over 20 years about 1.8 million gallons a day of partially treated wastewater is dumped in a pit 0.7 of a mile from Honokohau Harbor.   At least ten scientific studies document how this water flows seaward, in our subterranean estuary, polluting the harbor and the ocean.   A plan that was funded by the EPA in 1993 required the reuse of the water for irrigation.

Over 20+ years, 13 billion gallons of wastewater were indirectly dumped into the sea while government agencies looked the other way.   The water could be used today to irrigate the recreation areas at the Old Airport.  Our limited freshwater is used instead in what is nothing more than multi-agency myopia.

Water Policy:  The sustainability of our water resources is the kingpin for just about every other sustainability issue.  The County of Hawaii and the DWS (water department) must coalesce to implement a whole range of sustainable water policies and practices.  Without ample high-quality water for all, at affordable prices, sustainability becomes moot.  It is time to become proactive, pick the can up and fix these problems, rather than continue to kick the can down the road of climate resiliency.

In aggregate, storm water runoff and cesspool leachate are the most significant pollutant loads that impair the coastal ecosystem. We must also redesign our communities to manage these waters effectively. Thinking outside the box is not enough. The box itself must be redesigned.

Public Trust:  Article XI, section 1 of Hawai‘i’s Constitution establishes that “all public natural resources are held in trust by the State for the benefit of the people,” and Article XI, section 7 of Hawai‘i’s Constitution specifically references water and includes the directive “to protect, control, and regulate the use of Hawai‘i’s water resources for the benefit of its people.”  Article XI, section 7 also establishes the State Commission on Water Resource Management (Water Commission), which is currently housed within the Department of Land and Natural Resources.   As provided in our State Constitution, all of the state’s resources shall be managed in the “Public Trust.”

Today, “the people of [Hawaii] have elevated the public trust doctrine to the level of a constitutional mandate.”[1]  Pursuant to the Constitution, Water Code, and common law, the “state water resources trust” applies to “all water resources without exception or distinction.

[1] Waiāhole I, 94 Hawai‘i 97, 131, 9 P.3d 409, 443 (2000).

The counties and the legislature have largely ignored this doctrine while enacting its business.  Embracing this “Trust” will carry us effectively toward a sustainable future.

Sustainability means designing the future from the future, and nothing is more important than water.  This is the place to begin.

Breaking News Update – July 13th

A coalition of conservation groups, Native Hawaiian fishers, and cultural practitioners took legal action today to require the Hawai‘i Board of Land and Natural Resources to protect West Hawai‘i’s reefs and coastal areas from commercial extraction of fish and other wildlife for the aquarium pet trade. 

In the complaint filed on their behalf by Earthjustice, the coalition is challenging the Board’s failure to reject the latest environmental impact statement submitted by trade representatives, which the group says violates state environmental protection laws.

In the past decade science finally caught up with what many divers and avid snorkelers already knew, that Hawaii’s reef fish play a vital role in the health of state’s reef system.

A pair of two yearlong studies by University of Georgia and Florida International University show that reef fish contribute more nutrients to their local ecosystems than any other source; enough to cause changes in the growth rates of the organisms at the base of the food web.

That contribution to the health of near shore marine ecosystem is dependent on a diverse and robust fish population, but is presently threatened by multiple stressors, e.g., climate-driven bleaching events, coral acidification, over fishing and other human impacts.

Coral reefs are important ecosystems where up to 8,000 species of fish live.

These reefs provide many services to humans. For instance, they protect shores against large waves and provide a food source for the fish humans eat, but most of all represent both irreplaceable environmental and economic assets to Hawaii..

Hawaii’s coral reef ecosystem, because of its isolation, has more than 1,250 unique species of marine life that can be found only on Hawaii’s reefs. Hawaii’s reef fish the ecosystem of which they a vital role are endangered by multiple 21^st century stressors ranging from global heating impacts to manmade mismanagement — the latter most recent example is BLNR, and its enforcement arm DLNR, in their duty to protect Hawaii marine environment assets, beginning with native reef fish.

The Hawaiian Islands have 410,000 acres of living reef in the main islands alone, more than the landmass of Oahu, and for the fish extraction trade in aquarium trade is mostly off limits, except of Hawaii Island’s West Coast reefs — a policy formulated by Oahu-based bureaucrats.

The Oahu based state board that governs certain decision making processes over the Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) and the Division of Aquatic Resources (DAR), in a tie decision left open the possibility of legally admitting the Aquarium trade back in to business in West Hawaii.

With one Board member absent, this resulted in a 3-3 “no decision” tie vote. The Hawaiʻi state environmental review law dictates that a tie vote is automatically deemed as accepted after 30 days, July 8th in this instance.

In such cases when environmental resources along with traditional and customary Hawaiian rights and practices are considered, and where uncertainty exists, it can be legally argued that the state’s duty (the DAR, DLNR, and BLNR) in executing their duty as a public trustee, includes public resource protection.

If the board’s tie decision and default to proceed if legally challenge, it is likely the plaintiffs will argue the inadequacy of the trade’s EIS report submission.  The Hawaii branch of the Sierra Club and or perhaps the Hawaii-Pacific division of EarthJustice will be up to the public defense of this misguided agency decision, which allows the return of an  unwarranted extraction trade of Hawaii Island reef fish and the corresponding impact from that extraction to the island’s marine ecosystem.

The aquarium trade applicants’ preferred alternative would allow seven permitted fish extractors to collect only yellow tang, kole, orangespine unicornfish, potter’s angelfish, brown surgeonfish Thompson’s surgeonfish, black surgeonfish and bird wrasse within the West Hawaii Regional Fishery Management Area (WHRFMA), which spans nearly the entire coastline of West Hawaii Island.

Kole Tang

Orangespine Unicornfish                                               

Potter’s Anglefish

Brown Surgeonfish

Thomson’s Surgeonfish

Black Surgeonfish

and last, but not least … 

Bird Wassel

A special thanks to Robert Culbertson of Reef Keepers for his contribution to this article.

Tomos Roberts, London based filmmaker, released on YouTube, “The Great Realisation”.  It has been viewed tens of millions of times, and since translated independently into multiple languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian.

Set in an unspecified future, the poem looks back on pre-pandemic life and imagines a “great realization” sparked by COVID-19.

Roberts tells his viewers about pre-pandemic life — “a world of waste and wonder, of poverty and plenty” — that falls apart when the virus hits, and yet in the end initiates something better: a society in which people are kinder and more mindful, and spend more time outdoors and with their families than on screens or at the office.

It’s a simple rhyming tale which takes on heavy themes — corporate greed, familial alienation, the pandemic — and somehow comes up with a happy ending.

Watch and listen: https://youtu.be/Nw5KQMXDiM4

Tomos Roberts: I kept hearing people say, “I hope things go back to normal.” And I thought, wouldn’t it be even better if instead of going back to normal it went to something that was even better than before? I think that would be infinitely more interesting.

Coral Reefs Provide Flood Protection Worth $1.8 Billion Annually — Key Reasons Hawai’i Must Protect This State Asset

For anyone who visits or lives in Hawai’i, and who dives or snorkels Hawaii’s various island reefs, it’s obvious the reef has been in trouble for some time.   This has been especially true since the supercharged El Nino climate event of 2015-16, which hit the islands hard and precipitated a major coral die-off.  By some estimates, there now is a 90% loss of coral — especially hard hit is Hawaii Island’s west shoreline.

The once robust and dominant reef cover of Hawaii’s brain coral is now mostly dead, but with some recently reported isolated signs of minor recovery.<

2019 – outer reef wall off of Kakapa Bay, Hawaii Island

A new UN report released this week, compiled by hundreds of scientists from 50 countries, concluded that the Earth is losing species faster than at any other time in human history.  And, thanks to climate change, coastal development and the impacts of activities such as logging, farming and fishing, roughly 1 million plants and animals are now facing extinction.  The UN report calls for rapid action at every level, from local-to-global, to conserve nature and use these finite resources sustainably.

The report’s good news is that many ecosystems now at risk can (should) be protected, preserved, and can become sustainable contributors to the local economies dependent on these natural assets.

The biggest obstacle to investing in natural infrastructure, such as wetlands and reefs, is that experts until now have not figured out how to value the protection that these habitats provide in economic terms. But a new report published by the USGS addresses that problem by focusing on Hawaii’s and the planet’s most bio diverse ecosystems: coral reefs.

This USGS report shows that coral reefs in U.S. waters, from Florida and the Caribbean to Hawaii and Guam, provide our country with more than $1.8 billion dollars in flood protection benefits every year. They reduce direct flood damages to public and private property worth more than $800 million annually, and help avert other costs to lives and livelihoods worth an additional $1 billion. Valuing reef assets and their benefits to society is the first step towards mobilizing resources to protect them.

USGS estimates the value of reefs in terms of flood protection, but the agency fails to consider the environmental values and the economies of scale which are derived from Hawaii’s marine assets — more specifically, Hawaii’s tourism, fishing, and near shore marine food supply. 

Breaking Waves and Blocking Floods

In 2017, tropical storms alone did over $265 billion in damage across the nation.

Reefs act like submerged breakwaters. They “break” the force of waves and drain away their energy offshore, before flooding coastal properties and communities.

Man-made defenses, such as sea walls, can damage adjoining habitats and harm species that rely on them. In contrast, healthy reefs enhance their surroundings by protecting shorelines and supporting fisheries and recreation, from diving to surfing.

The flood protection benefits that reefs provide across the U.S. are similar to those in more than 60 other nations. In a separate study, Nature Communications reports that the global cost of storm damage to the world’s coastlines would double without reefs.

Local Flood Protection Value

USGS employed a study model of more than 60 years of hourly wave data for all U.S. states and territories with reefs — a total area of over 1,900 miles — we developed flood risk maps projecting the extent and depth of flooding that would occur across many storms, both regular and catastrophic, with reefs present and then without them. They calculated these values in grid cells that measured just 100 square meters, or about 1,000 square feet — the footprint of a small house.

They also overlaid flood risk maps employing the latest information from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to identify people and properties at risk — and benefiting from the presence of reefs — in each location.

• Map showing the 100-year floodplains on south Maui, Hawai’i. They show the flooding in a once in a century flood event with reefs at present (blue) and the extra flooding predicted (red) if we lost the topmost 1m (3 ft) of reef. The people and property under the red zone are those predicted to benefit by keeping reefs intact. USGS

It is well known that coral reefs are under heavy stress from climate change, which is warming oceans, causing coral bleaching. Pollution and over-fishing are also doing serious damage.

As the UN report on biodiversity loss notes, Earth has lost approximately half of its live coral reef cover since the 1870s. And that trend leaves 100-300 million people in coastal areas at increased risk due to loss of coastal habitat protection.

The USGS report was also able to identified economic benefits reef systems provide. For example, Florida receives more than $675 million in annual flood protection from reefs, and Puerto Rico gets $183 million in protection yearly.

In Honolulu alone, USGS found that the local reef provides more than $435 million in protection from a catastrophic 1-in-50-year storm.

Investing in Natural Defenses

First, applying Federal disaster recovery funding to proactively address natural coastal defenses.

Nationally, after Hurricane Sandy in 2012, only about 1% of recovery funding went toward rebuilding natural resilience, despite subsequent research showing that marshes in the Northeast can reduce flood damages by some 16% annually.

More than $100 billion has been appropriated to recover from hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Irma. It certainly would make economic sense for the Federal government to become proactive in addressing climate change impacts and by not only recognizing, but spending on rebuilding protective reef systems.

In a promising move, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has created opportunities to include ecosystem services such as flood protection and fishery production in official benefit to cost analysis calculations to support flood mitigation funding.

Second, the Insurance Industry is an important economic stakeholder in offering incentives and supporting investments in nature-based defenses for risk reduction.
Insurers have warned that climate change could make insurance coverage unaffordable for ordinary people after the world’s largest reinsurance firm blamed global warming for $24 billion of losses in California’s devastating 2018 wildfires.

“The insurance sector is concerned that continuing global increases in temperature could make it increasingly difficult to offer the affordable financial protection that people deserve, and that modern society requires to function properly,” …Nicolas Jeanmart, the head of macroeconomics at Insurance Europe, an association representing Europe’s major insurers.