Group News: Hawaiʻi Island, Maui, Oʻahu
Hawaiʻi Island Group
Federal Agencies and Corporations Seek to Privatize Federal Waters for Open Ocean Aquaculture
By Chuck Flaherty | Reading time: 4 minutes
Ten years ago, local and national environmental and Native Hawaiian Organizations created the Pono Aquaculture Alliance (PAA) to oppose political and financial special interests’ efforts to begin concentrated fish feeding operations or, Open Ocean Aquaculture (OOA) in Hawaiian state waters.
Not only was the PAA successful in their opposition to OOA, but PAA also worked with the state legislature, then-Governor Abercrombie and the Department of Land and Natural Resources to pass legislation that streamlined the state permitting process for the restoration and sustainable operation of loko i’a, traditional Hawaiian fishponds, which once fed thousands of kanaka maoli.
Once again, corporations are teaming up with federal agencies to obtain taxpayer-funded grants and venture capital money to construct and operate experimental OOA, this time in the U.S Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), including the Pacific Island Region (PIR). The PIR covers 1.5 million square miles. Twenty-five percent of that area is designated Marine National Monuments.
In June 2018, Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) introduced the “Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture” (AQUAA) Act in the U.S. Senate to establish national standards for “sustainable” offshore aquaculture. The bill designated the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as the lead federal agency for marine aquaculture. The legislation also directed NOAA to harmonize the permitting system for offshore aquaculture for farms in federal waters, and directed the agency to lead a research and development grant program to spur innovation throughout the industry. The proposed legislation died in session.
In March 2020, the AQUAA Act was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time.
In April 2020, the Sierra Club announced its opposition to the reintroduction of the AQUAA Act in the Senate.
Despite the Sierra Club and numerous other organizations’ opposition, U.S Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai’i) joined Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) as co-sponsors and reintroduced the AQUAA Act.
Concurrent with efforts to pass the AQUAA Act, NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Service published a Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for a proposed aquaculture management program in the PIR. The Hawai’i Island Group of the Sierra Club of Hawai’i provided comments in August 2021, detailing numerous environmental, socio-economic, and legal concerns.
Also this month, venture capitalist Neil Sims of Ocean Era, Inc., which is located at the Natural Energy Laboratory (NELHA) in Kona, announced plans for his next proposed experimental OOA in Hawai’i state waters offshore Oahu. Mr. Sims had already succeeded in obtaining approval for an OOA in Hawai’i state marine waters in 2006 offshore Kona.
The new OOA farm is being proposed despite an article in this month’s Environment Hawai’i which details a years-long long study of the negative impacts the existing Kona OOA farm has on the behavior of marine mammals, especially bottlenose dolphins.
The Sierra Club will be commenting once the Draft Environment Impact Statement for newly proposed OOA is published. An action alert will be sent to members who also may want to comment on their own or contribute to the Sierra Club’s comments.
In 2019, Mr. Sims attempted to begin an experimental OOA project in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida. However, the Recirculating Farms Coalition sued and obtained a judgment from the U.S Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals which found current laws, rules, and regulations did not allow for OOA in federal waters. This ruling has increased the political efforts of OOA special interests to pass the AQUAA Act, which would circumvent existing laws preventing OOA in federal waters.
The Sierra Club of Hawai’i will be joining with national Sierra Club in opposing the AQUAA Act and OOA in Hawai’i state marine waters.
We urge you to contact Senator Schatz at (202) 224-3934 and ask that he withdraw his support of the AQUAA Act and instead support local land-based aquaculture, such as traditional Hawaiian fishponds and aquaponics, in order to help promote the domestic economy and sustainable food security.
Other articles written by HIG members this month:
Maui Group
Sierra Club Maui helping East Maui Residents Keep Eyes on Our Streams
By Lucienne de Naie | Reading time: 2 minutes
Community members check out possible monitoring locations above EMI diversion on Hoalua stream, one of the twelve “forgotten” streams of Huelo.
East Maui residents have been asking for many years for more research, testing and monitoring to be done on the streams their communities depend upon. After all, these streams are mostly on public lands and are part of our public trust resources. After twenty years of hearings and court appeals, about one quarter of East Maui’s more than 40 streams are supposed to be fully restored. Follow up testing and monitoring on actual conditions in ”restored” streams has been limited. And then there is the matter of the dozen East Maui streams, located in the Huelo area, that were just “forgotten.”
Some of these forgotten streams and their pools and waterfalls are listed in every visitor guidebook or app as “must see” attractions, yet they were left out of the 20 years of stream discussions at the state Water Commission, and are only beginning to have some basic testing done. During the days when Maui’s HC&S sugar plantation was in full production and diverting over 100 million gallons a day of East Maui stream water, most of these “forgotten streams” were drained dry by four elevations of rock and concrete aqueducts. Hundreds of families who lived along these streams could only stand by and watch as their only source of water was reduced to a trickle, except during rainstorms.
It’s the rainy season! Why doesn’t this “forgotten” stream in Huelo have any flow below the EMI diversion? Community volunteers try to get the facts.
Thirsty sugar crops are now part of Maui’s past, but judging from a recent Final Environmental Impact Assessment (FEIS) issued to support 30-year water diversion leases from 30,000 acres of public lands in East Maui, putting large demands on East Maui streams without adequate data is still considered standard operating procedure.
The FEIS released by East Maui Irrigation Co (“EMI”) and its parent Company A&B, REIT, appears to assume every one of the 12 forgotten Huelo streams can be completely diverted into the EMI ditch system and carried to central Maui---- all with no in-depth studies, no ongoing testing or monitoring, no community consent and “no environmental impacts.”
That’s why Sierra Club Maui recently offered a popular online community event titled “Eyes on Our Streams” (available to watch on YouTube) introducing the community to a new citizen science-based stream monitoring and testing program that Maui Group is sponsoring. “Thanks to the generous support of local Huelo farm owner Lori Grace we have received a grant to cover the cost of some user friendly water testing equipment for local East Maui communities to get to work learning more about what’s going on in their streams,” said alakaʻi (project leader) Tara Apo-Priest. The first hands-on session with the equipment will be September 25 in Huelo. Citizens will learn to test for turbidity (water clarity/soil run-off), pH, salinity, temperature, oxygen levels and other important characteristics of stream health.
For more information on this exciting project, contact: laluzmaui@gmail.com
To help support this effort, please go to our website to donate.
Oʻahu Group
Wāwāmalu Beach is Healing as City Reclaims Its Park-Land
Boulders were sourced from a nearby location where Henry J. Kaiser stored them during the development of Hawaiʻi Kai in the 1950s
The boulder barriers guarding Wāwāmalu Beach (the NE section of Sandy Beach Park) and protecting the natural features on the Ka Iwi coast, were initiated by Sierra Club activism; championed by Council Chair Tommy Waters; pushed by the Hawaii Kai Neighborhood Board, Livable Hawaii Kai Hui, and The Surfrider Foundation; enabled by the Caldwell Administration; and installed by the Blangiardi Administration in January and April this year. Only the occasional off-roader succeeds in penetrating the barriers and driving on the beach and among the dunes - we await the installation of a guardrail by the State Department of Transportation to seal the highway entry points used by the off-roaders.
First park signage is posted at the NE access area known as “Alan Davis”
Encouragingly, the Honolulu Police Department has adopted the “zero-tolerance for driving trespassers” at Wāwāmalu Beach that the Hawaiʻi Kai Neighborhood Board requested.
And in August, the Parks Department’s East Honolulu District Office installed the first “parks” signs to be seen at Wāwāmalu Beach since 2018 - at its NE access area (aka Alan Davis) - a sure sign that the city is reclaiming this Wāwāmalu Beach section of Sandy Beach Park from the off-roaders who have degraded it for decades. Hopefully, more parks signage will soon be installed elsewhere along the park border.
In another good sign, Mayor Blangiardi scheduled a blessing for this reclaimed city-park area for mid-September (since postponed due to deteriorating COVID-19 pandemic conditions). Stay tuned for the rescheduling of the public blessing and opportunity for Sierra Club to publicly claim another victory.
Evidence of the improved growing conditions for the native plants that populate the dunes: ʻAkiʻaki grass and pōhuehue vines creep from the dunes into former driving lanes
Want to contribute to the healing of the natural features of the Ka Iwi Coast?
808CleanUps stages conservation efforts at neighboring Ka Iwi State Scenic Shoreline every Tuesday from 4-6 PM. The scenery and camaraderie are terrific, and personal physical conditioning, work gloves, tools, and ice water are provided.