Sugar changed the face of the Hawaiian Islands, but water was the instrument of that change. Dam by dam, tunnel by tunnel, ditch by ditch, the sugar plantations transformed the landscape in a process that, retrospectively, is breathtaking in its dimensions.
In Sugar Water, Carol Wilcox – one of the most ardent champions of free-flowing streams in Hawai’i – punctiliously docu ments the stages of this transformation. Using plantation and industry archives as well as state records, Wilcox gives readers a genealogy of plantations as well as the major efforts they undertook to bring water to fertile but arid fields. She describes the evolution of Hawai’i’s hydraulic systems from the first tentative attempts to the last monumental projects and in doing so brings to life the remarkable visionaries who designed them.
Wilcox gives the plantation water systems their due – but no more. She presents them and their builders as products of their time. They were men who ably exploited the Hawaiian monarchy’s -and later the Hawaiian government’s – de sire to develop a commodity that would keep it from “becoming a political and economic nothing – a backwater nation.” As Wilcox writes, “This did not fit the vision that the monarch, the resident haole, or the people had for the future of the kingdom. Just as earlier monarchs had turned to natural resources to correct the balance of trade, later ones turned to agriculture. In King Kalakaua’s view, the economics of sugar was compelling.”
In the first part of the book, Wilcox provides one of the most concise and comprehen sive discussions yet published of the historical political, and legal issues surrounding water use in Hawai’i. Her discussion terminates with the passage of the state Water Code in 1987, which establishes a new framework for judging water disputes – a framework that gives Wilcox a hopeful view of future develop ments: “Just as water shifted along with the social and economic changes of the 1880s, it is again shitting with the changes of the 1980s. Perhaps the day is coming when ‘water’ will mean, like the Hawaiian’s wai, life, wealth, law, and justice.”
While Wilcox presents sugar’s rise to power in an understanding way, she is critical of the Western view of natural resources that lay behind it. “One can admire the vision and initiative of the early sugar planters while at the same time mourning the loss of water re sources and authentic Hawaiian lifestyle,” she writes in the introduction.
“The era dominated by sugar gives way to new times, new challenges, and new opportu nities. Among them is a chance to manage water resources wisely for future generations. With the contraction of the endlessly thirsty sugar industry, there is now an opportunity to consider restoring a watershed management concept in Hawai’i – where water is managed within the context of the ahupua ‘a, where a modern konohiki thinks globally, acts locally. ”
No review of the book would be complete without mentioning the stunning black-and-white photographs that illustrate it. Many are from archival collections; the modern ones are the work of well-known island photographer David Franzen. Nor would a review be good without high praise for Beryl Blaich’s poem “The Crop,” which prefaces the volume.
Volume 7, Number 12 June 1997
Leave a Reply