Irrigation Ditches Wasting Water?

Surplus water regularly ends up being "dumped"

October 22, 2004
Ed Lindsey and Lucienne de Naie
for Maui Tomorrow

Pictured is unneeded (wasted) water from Waihe’e ditch as viewed today (October 22, 2004) from Honoapiilani Hiway at Pohakea bridge in Waikapu, Maui. This flow is not the result of rainy runoff. Rather it is the result of overflowing ditches and reservoirs in the Wailuku Ag/HC&S system that continue to receive a combined total of up to 40 mgd of stream water that was once necessary to irrigate thousands of acres of ag fields.

While most of the vast pineapple, cane and mac nut fields this water once irrigated now lie dormant, the ditch flows have not been reduced (except when extremely dry weather lowers stream flows) .

This surplus water regularly ends up being "dumped,"  flowing into normally dry gulches from Waikapu to Ma’alaea. The cane fields bordering these gulches already are being irrigated through drip lines and have no need of this surplus flow. Because of this, the "dumped" water is then absorbed into the dry isthmus earth, far from the natural streams where it is desperately needed to sustain native stream live cycles and water traditional crops. We have photos of this same dumping pattern at various times and locations over the last year in central Maui that are part of our petition to the State Water Commission.

The same cycle of water dumping happened in the Ewa plain of O’ahu. A decade ago, large plantations there closed down their sugar operations, but claimed they still needed huge amounts of water diverted from windward Oa’hu (Waiahole and Waikane valleys) for continued diversified ag operations.  Plantiffs in that case proved that much of  the precious stream water was simply running into dry gulches or empty fields. The State Supreme Court ordered a portion of that "wasted" flow to be returned to the windward streams and the communities they served. The results were most beneficial to local taro farming, native stream life and marine fisheries in Kaneohe bay that were fed by those streams.

 We offer a letter to the editor below to give our comments on the situation, in response to recent claims by Wailuku Ag and HC&S.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR:
 

We are surprised by Wailuku Ag’s and HC&S’s outright denial that they are wasting  Maui stream water.  It just doesn’t make sense. Maui residents can see with their own eyes the dry riverbeds in `Iao and Waihe`e streams . Hundreds of acres from Waiehu to Ma’alaea no longer have crops to irrigate. Stripped of water rights, they’ve been sold to developers.
 
Cane fields still cultivated on the isthmus have drip irrigation. But many days, large amounts of diverted stream water overflows ditches and reservoirs and is soaked up in dry gulches running along the irrigated fields. Should the lifegiving waters of Kane be taken from our streams, only to be dumped in far away cane fields where they are unneeded?
 
 If Wailuku Ag and HC&S aren’t dumping water they have nothing to hide, but many are skeptical of their claims.  Both have ignored state requests to regularly report specifically how much water they divert from Na Wai Eha streams, as state law requires. Other plantations, such as Pioneer Mill and ML&P filed such reports with the state for many years, but not these two companies.   HC&S has provided no information whatsoever. Wailuku Ag submitted sketchy reports up to 2003 and nothing since.

 Wailuku Ag and HC&S need to prove their case by producing full reports of past and current water use.  Until then, the only proof we have is what we can see.  Attached is a picture of unneeded stream water being dumped into Pohakea Gulch today.