Water Commission denies Keauhou aquifer petition

KAILUA-KONA — After hours of testimony before a packed hearing room at the West Hawaii Civic Center, the state Commission on Water Resource Management Tuesday denied the National Park Service’s petition to declare the Keauhou Aquifer system a state ground water management area.

The decision puts an end to a multi-year effort by the Park Service to get stricter controls in place for groundwater usage in the aquifer system, which covers a region from Makalawena Beach to north of Kealakekua Bay and includes Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park.

Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park superintendent Tammy Duchesne called the commission’s decision to deny the petition “regrettable.”

“We truly believe that public trust measures are threatened and that the time to apply protective measures is now,” she said after the hearing.

The Park Service filed the petition in September 2013 out of concern that existing and planned wells mauka of Kaloko-Honokohau threaten the park’s ecosystems.

The park includes fishponds and anchialine pools that house species reliant on a balance of salt water and fresh water that flows out of the aquifer.

Kaloko-Honokohau is home to several endangered species, including the Hawaiian damselfly, the Hawaiian coot and Hawaiian stilt.

Designating the aquifer a management area would have given the Park Service the opportunity to weigh in on the potential impacts proposed wells could have on the park’s ecosystems.

But before designation, the state commission needed to consider several criteria.

That includes a determination about whether increased water use could cause withdrawals to exceed 90 percent of the determined sustainable yield, a figure that represents the maximum pump rate at which water can be withdrawn from its source without a reduction in quality.

The Keauhou Aquifer’s sustainable yield is about 38 million gallons per day.

Ultimately, the commission decided, the Park Service didn’t meet that burden.

“I think the National Park Service has absolutely asked the right question,” said commission chairperson Suzanne D. Case. “I just think the answer is ‘We’re not there yet.’”

Had the commission moved forward with the petition, it still would have required a public hearing before the commission could designate the aquifer.

Duchesne said holding that hearing “would allow a forum for the data, studies, and testimony of witnesses to be shared and formal facts to be determined.”

However, after a public hearing that attracted dozens and heard testimony that lasted hours, the commission ultimately voted to deny the petition to designate the aquifer and instead consider several recommendations in lieu of designation.

The commission’s decision on the matter was near unanimous; Kamana Beamer was the sole member to vote against the motion.

“What we have in my estimation is clearly a serious dispute with respect to the use of groundwater resources in Keauhou,” he said.

The issue, he said, is a multi-faceted one, with diverse perspectives and in some cases conflicting science about the aquifer system.

However, he said, as a commissioner he has a duty to “protect the resource.”

And the commission, he said, is required to err on the side of management when scientific evidence is lacking.

“I’m a scientist myself and I value as much as possible objectivity and certainty, but it’s really the mandate of this commission to do that, to take the precautionary principle when we have issues of serious water disputes,” he said.

His colleague on the commission Milton D. Pavao said he believed the commission had ample information to make its decision.

“This issue has been going on for three and a half years at considerable expense for everybody—monies that could be spent probably more beneficially someplace else,” he said. “But I think this commission has bent over backwards to take into consideration the issues brought up by the National Park Service.”

Contrary to what Beamer said, Pavao said he thinks there’s been lots of science to refuse the designation.

“We’ve had scientists come and tell us the ponds are healthy. There’s nothing wrong with the ponds; there’s no degradation,” he said. “I think we’ve done more than we should, I think, sometimes.”

“But I think we’ve done enough,” he added later. “I think enough is enough.”

The remaining commissioners all voted to deny the petition.

But the multi-year effort wasn’t for nothing.

Earlier in the day, the Commission voted to approve the County of Hawaii Water Use and Development Plan Update Phase 2 for the Keauhou Aquifer System Area.

That plan establishes a comprehensive plan for the use of water resources in the area.

Among other things, the update includes county plans to reduce reliance on wells lower in elevation and offset existing needs and future demand with more high-level sources of water.

Case specifically credited the National Park Service and its move to designate the aquifer system as a driving force behind the plan.

“I want to thank very much the National Park Service for bringing these issues to our attention collectively as a community over a long period of time,” she said. “I don’t think we would have nearly the quality of the plan that we have now or the attention to the connection between development in Kona and our available water and the impacts of using that water on our natural and cultural resources.”

Although she said she’d be voting to deny the petition, she said they ought to appreciate the efforts to keep attention on how water use in the region develops.

“To me it’s a very, very important, kind-of, ‘shot across the bow,’ that they’ve given us and that we should be happy to have because we need to keep our eye on these questions so that we really protect the Hawaii that we love,” she said.

Although the commission denied the Park Service’s petition, they adopted several recommendations proposed in a report commission staff prepared in advance of Tuesday’s hearing.

In that report, staff recommended against designation, saying none of the eight criteria required for designating a water management area had been met.

In lieu of designation then, staff suggested eight other measures, including better enforcement of water monitoring.

Anyone who fails to report pump rates, water levels and chlorides — an indicator of saltwater intrusion — can be brought before the commission for possible sanctions.

Staff also recommended the referral of all well permit applications to the non-regulatory Aha Moku system for review and recommendations for the protection of traditional and customary practices that might be affected by the application in question.

If a proposed well might affect traditional practices, there could be special conditions to mitigate the well’s impacts.

The commission, in adopting the recommendations, voted to also include the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands in that process as well.

To control the distribution of wells, the report proposed that if alternative water sources or high-level sources in the system’s southern area fail to materialize and the withdrawal rate goes above 45 percent of the system’s sustainable yield, the commission would start up public informational hearings.

Keith Okamoto from the county’s Department of Water Supply said that recommendation “keeps us accountable.”

“Basically it says if we don’t abide by our own plan, we’re gonna bring this back for public hearing,” he said. “And we’re fine with that. We’re fine with that.”

“It means we’ve got to do what we say we’re going to do, and that’s what we intend to do,” he added.