Water Commission needs expertise and vision to fulfill its mission

In an age when everyone’s "going green" and "The Lorax" is a blockbuster movie, Hawaii’s governor and legislators are leading an unprecedented attack against our aina.

Decades-old laws safeguarding our irreplaceable natural and cultural resources are being jettisoned for short-term special interests.

Our most precious resource — water — is another target of such myopic politics. The controversy over nominations to the state Water Commission, which is the primary authority over fresh water in Hawaii, highlights how the law and good government are taking a back seat to political favoritism.

Our state Constitution confirms that water is a public trust, not a private commodity. The same 1978 Constitutional Convention that enshrined this principle mandated the creation of the Water Commission as trustee for all the people, including future generations.

This was supposed to put to rest the 19th century colonial mentality in which a handful of plantations drained rivers and valleys dry for profit, heedless of the harms to the environment and local and Hawaiian communities dependent on flowing water for survival.

More than three decades later, plantation companies are still hoarding water as their private property. In Na Wai Eha (central Maui), for example, the former Wailuku Sugar plantation is now Wailuku Water Co., draining rivers and selling that water to the public. In East Maui, the HC&S plantation leaves dozens of watersheds critical to Hawaiians bone-dry.

Yet, the Water Commission for years has failed to hold these diverters accountable, forcing citizens to take legal action to uphold the public trust. The Hawaii Supreme Court has repeatedly reversed the commission for neglecting to adequately uphold public rights to water for purposes such as ecological protection and Hawaiian cultural practices. Now, on Maui, the commission has more blatantly than ever sided with the plantation diverters, again forcing citizens to court.

This administration has continued this decline. After the selection process for a commission vacancy languished for more than a year, the governor nominated a businessman who promptly quit and admitted he lacked the legally required qualifications of "substantial experience" in water management.

Days later, the governor nominated a Maui land appraiser who admitted he needed to learn on the job, but whose clients happen to include all the major landowners and developers on the island. If confirmed, four of the five appointed commissioners would be from Maui, in knee-jerk reaction to specific disputes there.

It also came to light that the committee charged with selecting the candidate list did not conduct any interviews and met only once for 45 minutes. The rest remains shrouded in secrecy, although it is known that eminently qualified candidates applied.

Our finite island water resources are too vital to be ruled by such backroom plantation politics. All of us, not just on Maui, stand to lose. On every island, including Oahu and Hawaii, planned development exceeds available water supplies. On Molokai, developers seek to encroach on Hawaiian homesteaders’ water entitlements. On Kauai, private companies are bottling spring water for sale or planning to empty rivers for hydropower. In our islands and around the world, a battle is escalating over whether water is a public trust and basic human right, or private property.

The Water Commission, especially, needs objective expertise and a macro-level, proactive vision to fulfill its trustee mission. Instead, its course remains provincial and reactive, which this latest nomination merely reinforces.

Ironically, this won’t solve any problems, just exacerbate them. As long as quick profit trumps forward-looking protection of public resources and rights that make living in Hawaii truly special, as long as politics rather than principle governs which way water flows, there can be no justice, and no peace.