Group blocks crews, says Maui river is being illegally diverted

Some 30 protesters gathered Friday at a site along the Wailuku River in an ongoing effort to prevent a private water company from diverting the flow of water into its Iao Intake.

“Their permit allows them to do maintenance on their diversion intake, to remove debris off of their intake,” said Tiare Lawrence, one of the protesters. “What they did is reroute the whole stream. … They built a huge island in the middle of the stream and rerouted 100 percent of the stream flow into their intake. They built a huge wall of dirt and mountains of sediment, which is in violation of the Clean Water Act.”

Police and state Division of Conservation and Resources Enforcement officers were sent to respond to the protesters, who claimed that work in the river conducted by the Wailuku Water Co. this week was unauthorized and called for the company to cease and desist, said Deborah Ward, spokeswoman for the Department of Land and Natural Resources.

Some 3.2 million gallons of water a day are allowed to be diverted to the customers of Wailuku Water Co. and the Maui Water Department as well as agricultural, domestic and kuleana users growing taro. The protesters were objecting to the way the water flow was being routed to apparently increase the amount of water diverted.

On Thursday, Lawrence and two other women blocked a heavy-equipment operator from continuing his work.

“We went there and confronted the operator, and we stood in front of the truck. We believe we did what … was needed to be done.”

Summer Kupau-Odo, an attorney for Earthjustice, said the protesters learned at a forum held Wednesday on Maui that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had issued a permit for maintenance, but it did not authorize the re-divergence of the stream flow.

Earthjustice represents Hui o na Wai Eha and the Maui Tomorrow Foundation, which for over a decade has been involved in a legal battle to restore stream flows to Na Wai Eha (the Four Great Waters of Maui), which includes the Wailuku River, the second largest.

Community members say the natural flow of the river is important to kalo farmers and to the health of marine and river life.

Lawrence said Jeff Pearson, CEO of the Commission on Water Resource Management and formerly with Maui County’s Department of Water Supply, admitted Wednesday night to those gathered at a meeting with Gov. David Ige and other state officials that the work being performed by the water company violated its permit.

The video of Pearson making the statement at the forum spread on social media, Kupau-Odo said.

Pearson and Avery Chumbley of the Wailuku Water Co. did not return calls for comment.

However, DLNR issued a news release Friday saying the Water Commission issued an emergency authorization to repair and conduct stream maintenance activities to its Iao Intake and that the Army Corps of Engineers issued a permit for the removal of boulders and debris to provide access to and to unblock the intake structure.

DLNR said the diversion of water from the Wailuku River is a permitted use and that water from this diversion supplies up to 3.2 million gallons per day to the Maui Department of Water Supply, WWC customers, agricultural and domestic users, and kalo growers.

“The emergency authorization issued yesterday (Oct. 6) doesn’t say anything about re-diverting the water flows,” said Kupau-Odo. “It doesn’t provide any parameters or guidance. This is the Water Commission’s responsibility. This is after the fact. They allowed the company to do as it pleases.”

She alleges that there is no transparency by the commission and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Lawrence said, “Water is life, and water feeds all of this ecosystem, it feeds our kalo. It feeds our muliwai (estuaries). It feeds our fisheries. It’s essential to spawning activities.”

She said that since the water was released, an increase in fish populations has been seen.

“The fact that a for-profit company is allowed to sell a public trust resource, to me is mind-boggling and illegal,” Lawrence said. “Yet on Maui the water has been held by multiple private water companies.”

The DLNR said the heavy rain and flooding in mid-September caused extensive damage to private homes, the county’s Kepaniwai Park, Iao Valley State Park and mauka watershed areas, and considerably altered the stream channel.

But the protesters are not objecting to repair work underway in those areas, only to the diversion of water by Wailuku Water.

On Friday the group also manually moved rocks in a effort to restore the natural flow of the former Iao Stream, which was renamed in 2015 to the Wailuku River by the Hawaii Board on Geographic Names.

Families living downstream of the diversion have concerns about losing life and property should the next storm hit, Kupau-Odo said. “Those are the people the Water Commission should be working with, but they’ve been ignored while a private corporation skates by and receives expedited treatment.”