Commission Approves Waiawa Wells Despite Environmental, Legal Concerns

posted in: December 2005, Water | 0

Last October, the Commission on Water Resource Management granted permission to Waiawa Development, LLC and Kamehameha Schools to withdraw roughly one million gallons of water a day from the Waipahu-Waiawa Ground Water Management Area in Central O`ahu.

Over objections from the Sierra Club, Hawai`i Chapter, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, CWRM approved the issuance of two new well permits for the water, which will be used to irrigate Waiawa’s golf course, the centerpiece of its Gentry Master Planned Community.

Originally, landowner Kamehameha Schools had sought Waiahole Ditch water for the golf course. But with Waiahole water still the subject of an ongoing contested case, KS decided to abandon its surface water request and seek only a groundwater permit.

The permits first came to the Water Commission for approval on August 17. At that meeting, the Sierra Club and OHA submitted testimony suggesting that the wells, if allowed, could potentially affect the salinity of wells down gradient.

Barry Usagawa of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply added that his agency also had concerns about the effects of pumping mauka wells on water quality in lower wells.

“We don’t know the impact at this point. We know the aquifer is fairly thick and we will probably not see those kinds of impacts for a number of years. But the way I think we could resolve this is to continue to monitor the situation, monitor the chlorides and well yields,” he said.

OHA noted that golf course irrigation is a non-public trust use in a designated water management and should not be approved until a comprehensive plan for native Hawaiian uses, among other things, is developed.

Sierra Club-Hawai`i executive director Jeff Mikulina objected to the use of high-quality drinking water for golf course watering and recommended the developer use reclaimed or recycled water.

“If it’s not available yet, maybe we wait for it to happen. Maybe we wait for the entire Waiawa development to be complete where they put in those facilities and create the R1 [recycled] water. Or maybe we use this sort of desire for golf course irrigation to help leverage those facilities, perhaps a regional facility in Central O`ahu,” he said.

OHA and Mikulina also opposed issuing the well permits without updated state and county water plans.

Mikulina said that an updated Hawai`i Water Plan and O`ahu integrated resources plan would provide context for future water withdrawals, “especially for our overtapped aquifers at Pearl Harbor.”

“We don’t like this idea of planning by conditions where you just go until you hit something, and then you go in another direction,” he said.

CWRM staffer Lenore Nakama said she believed the permit’s standard conditions were sufficient to protect the public trust. “Should public trust purposes be competing in the future, the commission can revoke permits,” she said, noting that the sustainable yield of the aquifer is estimated at 20 million gallons a day.

“The permit is approved with the understanding that treated wastewater will become a source, provided the Department of Health has no problem with its use over a potable aquifer,” she added.

Water Commissioner Lawrence Miike expanded on Nakama’s argument.

“My understanding of public trust purposes is there is no absolute priority, one way or the other… The Sierra Club, or whoever’s asking for things to be set aside [before] you deal with other issues, that’s not a correct reading of the law. But when the issues come up, we can always take water away from permittees if it’s shown that the presumption in favor of a public trust purpose can’t be overcome…The law does not require us to set aside resources in perpetuity for a particular purpose,” he said.

Patrice Liu, project director for Waiawa Development, LLC, noted that the amount of water her company was requesting is less than the Water Commission’s guideline of 4,000 gallons per acre per day for golf courses.

“Our plan is to convert to R1 effluent when it comes available in central O`ahu,” she added.

Although Miike didn’t object to using effluent as a future alternate source, he was annoyed by the fact Waiawa was no longer considering using Waiahole Ditch water.

“One can’t just refuse to consider an alternative…,” he said.

An attorney representing Waiawa attempted to explain: “The problem is, we can’t apply for Waiahole Ditch water … because we have been instructed by Kamehameha Schools that we cannot.”

The Water Code requires those seeking water permits, whether for surface water or ground water, to evaluate practical alternatives first. And during the Waiahole contested case hearing, the issue had been raised that ditch water could be considered an alternative to ground water, and vice versa. KS and Waiawa chose to resolve that dilemma by withdrawing the request for Waiahole water.

Miike, who is also the hearing officer for the Waiahole case, said, “It’s a funny way of trying to get around the law of doing a practical alternatives test… Underlying this, I know what kind of trouble you’ll get into if you apply for Waiahole ditch water given the history of the Waiahole ditch.”

Waiawa representatives noted that during the many public hearings on Waiahole, testimony was overwhelmingly opposed to Waiawa’s use of ditch water as an alternative.

Miike countered, “That doesn’t meet the practicality test. That meets the people are mad test. We face issues all the time….If you want to avoid controversy, that’s one of the issues, but it doesn’t meet my test of practical alternatives.”

The commission ultimately voted to defer acting on the permits that day because of reservations raised by the Board of Water Supply about drilling new potable water for golf course irrigation.

Usagawa had suggested that Waiawa use existing potable wells on site instead of drilling new wells.

“To be able to encourage the use of recycled water, it’s important that a golf course does not have its own private wells…,” he said. “Our experience in `Ewa really points this out.” Once a developer gets comfortable using its own private wells, Usagawa said, it doesn’t really want to incur the costs of switching to recycled water when it becomes available. The BWS, then, ends up subsidizing a lot of recycled water use. (Recycled water users pay just one-fifth of the cost to process the water, he noted.)

“We are not recovering our costs,” he said “In trying to leverage golf courses to use recycled water, if they’re a BWS customer, then we can switch them over…Making them a customer is better for us.

“If this commission allows them to drill their own well, they become the developer and could step back and sell the property with the well. Then we have to deal with the [new] developer to try to bring recycled water to the course and they don’t have financial capacity… and the BWS has to do the rest and we probably will not do it.”

When commissioners asked whether the county had an ordinance requiring the use of recycled water if it’s available, Usagawa said that “available” is a very broad term. “Is it next door? Is it affordable?”

After the August meeting, BWS and Waiawa later came to an agreement that Waiawa must use alternatives to potable water when they become available, and the Water Commission, including that as a condition of the well permits, approved the withdrawals at its following meeting in October.

— Teresa Dawson

Volume 16, Number 6 December 2005

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