The United States Department of Agriculture is in the final stages of preparing a draft environmental impact statement and master plan covering possible repairs to and restoration of the Lower Hamakua Ditch. According to staff at the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service in Portland, Oregon (where the report is being written), the draft EIS should be available in early September.
Restoration of the ditch is a key element of what has been labeled the Lower Hamakua Ditch Watershed Project. This project has been selected for federal financial assistance through a program established by Public Law 83-566, which provides help to regional agricultural water systems. Because of the federal help, the project requires preparation of an EIS meeting federal standards.
Although the draft document was not available in mid-August, clear indications of the direction it will take were provided in a series of meetings held in Honoka`a. At the last such public meeting, USDA planners reported these conclusions:
First, assuming that about 2,500 acres of land below the ditch will require intensive irrigation and almost 2,000 acres would be converted to irrigated pasture, and assuming that an aquaculture project is established, which would require 1 million gallons a day, about 13.3 million gallons a day of water would be needed from the ditch. Allowing a buffer of 3 million gallons brings the total to about 16 mgd, or about half of the average daily flow the ditch has carried in recent years. When peak needs are considered (in especially dry times), the maximum amount of water to be drawn from the ditch approaches 17.2 mgd. In winter, flows required to support this level of activity are far lower, averaging 7-8 mgd.
Second, the total cost of repairing the ditch (including restoration of Hakalaoa Falls)1 and installing related on-the-ground improvements comes to $10,251,000. For improvements to the ditch alone, the estimated cost comes to $2,729,000 (not including engineering costs, administration fees, and other costs generally charged to overhead). Annual ditch maintenance costs are estimated to run $448,000.
Third, under a preliminary breakdown of federal and local (mainly state) participation, the federal contribution comes to $6,483.700, while the local contribution is $3,767,300.
The federal planners have proposed also to modify the stream intakes at the back of Waipi`o Valley so that water not being used in the ditch will flow through the valley. At the public meetings where this was proposed (in Honoka`a on July 18 and July 20), several key players — including Jeff Melrose, of Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate, and Robert Shioji, of the Hamakua-North Hilo Agricultural Cooperative — strongly objected to any reduction in the capacity of the ditch.
Green Light
To pay for the planning, about $100,000 was taken from unspent water-project funds appropriated to the state by Congress in the 1994 fiscal year. By March, most of the approvals were in place, and, on March 6, the state Department of Agriculture convened a meeting of “all parties that may either have an interest or have direct benefit from the continued operation of the Ditch System.” Invited to the discussion, centering on possible approaches to obtaining funds for ditch restoration, were representatives of several state and county departments and agencies. The only private parties invited were Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate and the Hamakua-North Hilo Agricultural Cooperative, a group of farmers seeking to develop new crops on the Hamakua Coast.
By mid-April, the approach had been decided: The project had a name and a geographic area that set it apart from other PL83-566 projects, and the Portland office of the NCRS (formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service) had committed a team of planners to preparing the draft EIS. In a memorandum dated April 19, 1995, to Kenneth Kaneshiro, head of the NCRS in Hawai`i, from the director of the NCRS’ West Regional Technical Center in Oregon, the original intention was to complete the final EIS and master plan before the end of the fiscal year (that is, September 30). The draft was to be available by July 21, with the final documents completed by the third week in September.
“Meeting the above objective, in the time allotted, is a difficult undertaking,” according to the acting regional NCRS director, Michael Somerville. “A steering committee, composed of agency and organization representatives and residents of the watershed, needs to be in place before the arrival of the team. This steering committee will be the sounding board and advisor to the team working on the Lower Hamakua Ditch project. If there are groups or individuals opposed to aspects of the project, invite their participation on the steering committee. It is good to deal with the opposition right at the start instead of after a good deal of time and money has been spent pursuing objectives that might not be implementable.”
In addition, Somerville informed Kaneshiro that “several public meetings will need to be held,” the first of which was to be a scoping meeting. That meeting, Somerville wrote, “needs to be well advertised.”
‘Fast Track’
The first scoping meeting was held May 9, but was not “well advertised.” Rather, notice of the meeting was sent by the state Department of Agriculture to just seven people, including Shioji of the Agriculture Co-op, Robert Lindsey of Bishop Estate, Gary DeRego of DeRego Services (under contract to maintain the ditch), and John Goss, trustee in bankruptcy for Hamakua Sugar.
On the evening of May 16, the first scoping session to which the public at large was invited was held. However, notice of the meeting at no point suggested it was intended to be a scoping session, as required under the governing federal law, the National Environmental Policy Act. Instead, a news release issued by the state Department of Agriculture stated that “a team of federal Natural Resources Conservation Service planners and engineers are in Hawai`i to develop a watershed plan for the Lower Hamakua Ditch… The communities of the West Hawai`i Region have the opportunity to voice their concerns during a public meeting… The public’s input is welcomed for any support would strengthen the state’s effort in securing federal funds for major ditch improvements.” According to that news release — which was published in extremely abbreviated form in the Hilo newspaper, the deadline for written comments on ditch restoration was May 30, 1995.
The formal notice of intent to prepare an EIS did not appear in the Federal Register until June 1, 1995. In Hawai`i, however, notice of preparation of an EIS has yet to appear in any publication — including the semi-monthly Bulletin of the Office of Environmental Quality Control.
Alternatives
The NCRS planners identified four alternatives whose impacts are to be explored in the environmental impact statement. The first is the “no-action” approach, under which the ditch would fall into disrepair. The type of agricultural enterprise supported by this would be forestry and pasture, requiring minimal irrigation. In a preliminary analysis of this alternative, NCRS planners found no economic benefit to this approach — despite a state consultant’s report that described profitable approaches to forestry in the Hamakua area and elsewhere.2 Nor did the planners take account of the possible increase in taro cultivation that could occur on the floor of Waipi`o Valley if stream flows were increased.
The second alternative (and what will probably be the one preferred by the state and federal agencies sponsoring the project) calls for restoring the ditch and modifying the intake system to increase stream flow to the valley. This approach, the planners say, will yield economic activity worth $1.7 million — although when the amortized cost of the improvements is subtracted from that amount, the net economic benefit is $805,000.
Alternative 3 would replace most of the open ditch with pipeline. Cost of the repairs is more than double that estimated for the restoration of open ditch line, however. Gross economic benefit is identical to that of the second alternative; net economic benefit is much reduced: $460,700.
The fourth and last alternative identified in preliminary planning calls for drilling wells as the source of water for irrigation. Total installation costs are nearly five times costs associated with the second alternative. While the total economic benefit is the same as that for alternatives two and three, the far greater costs associated with this approach mean that there is no net benefit to Alternative 4 and, instead, there is an overall economic loss.
Bottom Line
These alternatives were outlined at two public meetings in July. When Paul Matsuo, head of the state Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Resource Management branch, was asked who would make the final decision on the various alternatives, he answered that it was “up to the state to decide.” In the event of competing demands for the water by Hamakua and Waipi`o farmers, Matsuo said the decision would amount to “an exercise in deciding which side is going to give more value to the state.”
Chris Rathbun, a Waipi`o Valley taro farmer, responded that this statement ignored the fact that landowners in Waipi`o have appurtenant (and primary) claims to the water. NCRS planners have responded to such statements noncommittally; securing legal rights to use the water, to use the land over which the ditch travels, and other legal issues is the state’s responsibility, they say.
Poor Repair
In a two-volume report issued in May and June of 1995, Wai Engineering examined the ditch from its furthest intakes to its last reservoir, near Pa`auilo. This report was used by the NCRS as the basis for many of its estimates on the extent of repairs needed and their estimated cost.
According to that report, of the four stream intakes at the back of Waipi`o Valley, just three are functioning. The Waima intake is blocked off with rubble, while the pumps installed in the 1960s downstream of the Waima intake (to take spring water into the ditch system) have not been used for years.
Some 50 flumes lie between the main weir, at Kukuihaele, and the end of the ditch. The 20 wooden flumes show “signs of saturation, wet rot, and dry rot. Many are leaking along the entire length with vegetation growing in the cracks and seams,” according to the Wai report (page II-1). Total leakage from the ditch is estimated to be almost 4 million gallons a day.
In addition to examining the main ditch system, Wai Engineering was asked by the state to examine the water delivery systems in place on lands owned by the state but leased to Hamakua Sugar for sugar cultivation. Typically, these systems were designed to irrigate areas of between 20 and 70 acres at one time, according to Wai Engineering. In nearly every field examined, damaged elements (such as risers, goose-neck assemblies, and valves) outnumbered the undamaged ones, according to charts prepared by the firm.
What this means for conversion of the state-owned fields to smaller-scale agriculture is not clear. Irrigation infrastructure designed for large-scale plantation needs may not match up well with the requirements of smaller-scale agriculture. The draft environmental impact statement is to address this issue, according to NCRS planners.
1. For a discussion of the diversion at Hakalaoa Falls, see “[url=/members_archives/archives_more.php?id=1095_0_29_0_C]In Collapse of Tunnel at Hakalaoa, Geologic Time Breaks Human Clock[/url],” Environment Hawai`i, August 1995.
2. See the “Hawai`i Forestry Investment Memorandum,” prepared for the state of Hawai`i Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism, by Groome Poyry Limited (August 1994).
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 6, Number 3 September 1995
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