Shameless grab at Maui Hikina streams thwarted
by Kirsten Kagimoto, Chapter Communications Manager and Wayne Tanaka, Chapter Director | Reading time: 3.5 minutes
As the near entirety of Hawaiʻi pulled together to do whatever they could to save lives and ʻāina from the ravages of devastating fires, government lawyers in Honolulu worked alongside corporate attorneys for Alexander & Baldwin, to falsely claim that stream protections for Maui Hikina (East Maui) left the island with “not enough water . . . to battle the wildfires.”
These claims were submitted to the Hawai‘i Supreme Court on Wednesday, August 9—the day after the Lāhainā and Kula fires started—in an attempt to overturn an environmental court judge’s ruling that temporarily limited the amount of water, from 40.49 million gallons of water per day to 31.5 million gallons per day, that the real estate investment corporation can divert from Maui Hikina’s watersheds.
The claim that there is not enough water to fight fires is outrageously false - as confirmed in a declaration by an attorney for Maui County - and is yet another example of the Green Administration aiding disaster capitalism at the expense of our streams, ‘āina, and communities.
The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court heard oral arguments regarding these claims in the afternoon of August 23 and quickly denied the state’s and A&B’s petition the next morning.
From the start, attorneys for the BLNR and A&B made clear that they did not have any evidence to support their claims that there was not enough water from Maui Hikina for firefighting. Maui County’s attorney also established that the environmental court’s ruling had no impact on firefighting efforts, and that the county had only used 37,000 gallons of water in fighting the Central Maui wildfires over the course of five days - orders of magnitude less than the millions of gallons that were available in Central Maui’s reservoirs, or the additional two million gallons that flow into them from Maui Hikina’s streams every single day.
Nonetheless, state deputy attorney general Miranda Steed refused to “walk back” the claims that there was not enough water for firefighting, despite being given multiple opportunities to do so. Even the justices seemed confused and frustrated by the state’s aggressive language and obstinate refusal to retract the unfounded claims in their petition.
The fact that attorneys for BLNR and A&B filed their baseless petition the very next day after the tragic fires in Lāhainā and Kula is a reflection of their shameful priorities.
Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi’s superstar attorney, David Kimo Frankel, presented some pretty damning evidence in our written response and during oral arguments, clarifying that:
Water from Maui Hikina and diverted to Central Maui is not used to fight fires in Maui Komohana (West Maui);
Even under the environmental court’s ruling, A&B had access to 31.5 million gallons of water a day (mgd) from Maui Hikina, an allocation by the environmental court that was based on A&B’s own water use reports, and exceeded their actual daily uses;
7.5 mgd of Maui Hikina stream water - the full amount approved by the BLNR - was expressly permitted to be diverted by the environmental court, for various purposes including firefighting;
Stream-fed reservoirs in Central Maui contain millions of gallons of water on any given day, with at least two million gallons of water also flowing into the reservoirs every day; and
Maui County can only physically use a few hundred thousand gallons of diverted water at most to fight a fire - accordingly, the amount of water diverted from Maui Hikina’s streams is clearly not the limiting factor for its use in firefighting, but rather available equipment (e.g., helicopters and tankers) and personnel limitations.
We are grateful for the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court justices' vigilant questioning and quick ruling. We are, however, still appalled at the state and A&B's unapologetic exploitation of the ongoing tragedy in Lāhinā in an attempt to take more from Maui Hikina streams for corporate profit and power.
Alarmingly, this was not the only attempt by the state and large wealthy landowners to go for a massive water grab in the wake of the devastating fires that swept through Maui Komohana and Kula. Click here to learn more about the water theft attempts in Maui Komohana.