Victory over the Lahaina Wastewater Injection Wells

We did it!!! The Supreme Court just ruled that Maui County cannot inject treated sewage into the groundwater without a permit when it destroys the reefs in the ocean nearby. This is a huge victory for the Clean Water Act and communities throughout the U.S. who are fighting to protect their rivers, lakes, and oceans from big polluters trying to create a loophole in this bedrock environmental law.

Big mahalos to the Earthjustice team and their staff attorney David Henkin, who represents the do-gooders in this case: Hawaiʻi Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation and West Maui Preservation Association. We embarked on this case together in April 2012, after decades of advocacy with Maui County lawmakers, to fix the improper use of this injection well.

We argued then that to protect our water, the Clean Water Act “requires permits for discharges of pollutants that move to jurisdictional surface waters”—here, the Pacific Ocean off Kahekili Beach—“through groundwater with a direct hydrological connection.” Because Maui County failed to secure the required permit and comply with permit terms necessary to protect water quality, its use of the Lahaina injection wells is illegal.

And now, today in April of 2020, it is confirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court. It took several decades, but we have finally succeeded -- for Maui, for Hawaiʻi, and for every community throughout the U.S. working to protect their waterways from pollution. If we have learned anything, it is that we should never, ever give up in fighting for the environment that sustains us all.