Among the measures that were caught in the legislative pipeline this session was Senate Bill 426, aiming to speed up the process for closing residential cesspools, especially those posing a risk to water quality.

Among the states, Hawaii is one of the worst where this is concerned: More than 80,000 cesspools discharge about 50 million gallons of wastewater daily. The bill will get another shot next year, but environmentalists rightly argue that leaders have delayed a fix for too long already.