At the July 15 meeting of the Commission on Water Resource Management, commissioner Aurora Kagawa-Viviani was puzzled by a staff proposal to have the commission give its approval to proceed with development of a “first-generation” adaptive management plan for the Keauhou aquifer area in West Hawaiʻi.
“It’s not clear how this fits into our regulatory framework,” Kagawa-Viviani said after hearing the presentation of CWRM deputy director Ciara Kahahane and more than an hour of public testimony.
Jonathan Likeke Scheuer, who has worked closely on water issues in the Keauhou area, including as a consultant to the National Park Service, was harsher in his description of the proposal: “It’s drill, baby, drill. You’re going to allow a whole bunch of wells to go in and monitor stuff and see what happens. This flies in the face of your statutory duties.”
Commissioner Lawrence Miike, whose total time serving on the commission to date comes to 14 years, seemed skeptical as to the value of the effort. “As long as we don’t have a water management permit requirement” – available only in designated water management areas — “we’re sort of stuck,” he said. “We can have really great information but we’re still limited by the fact that if we continue to allow well construction and pump installation permits, we really don’t have control over sustainable yield.” Sustainable yield is the amount of water that can be withdrawn from an aquifer without impairing its long-term quantity or quality.
Sustainable yields, or, more precisely, the degree to which current and proposed development will draw from them, have until now been the most important metric used by the commission in determining whether to designate an aquifer as a groundwater management area, where more rigorous criteria attach to permits for existing and new water users.
But, according to a summary of the plan drawn up by CWRM staff, the commission “is reconsidering its approach to groundwater management in the Keauhou Aquifer System Area (KASA). Housing and economic growth require groundwater and the Keauhou region is part of the expanding Kona population center. However, CWRM has an affirmative duty to balance maximum beneficial use of water with the protection of the public trust, including maintenance of waters in their natural state, traditional and customary rights of Native Hawaiians, provision of adequate reserves of water for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, and domestic use.”
“I just think it’s nuts,” Miike said after listening to Kahahane explain the plan and acknowledge that at present, there is little the commission can do if the owner of a currently permitted well pumps so much that the water source is harmed. “Why don’t we just designate the area already? … I know basically counties are against that, a state-versus-county kind of thing. But we’re way beyond that.”
When Miike voiced his skepticism over the commission’s ability to regulate withdrawals in the absence of designation, Kahahane replied: “So, compliance with the adaptive management plan we’re proposing to attach as a condition for the approval of future pump installation permits in the aquifer. For the current wells, there’s not much we can do besides ask nicely, because we’re not in a designated water management area. But we’ve discussed with the folks who want to construct new wells in this aquifer that the adaptive management plan is essentially going to be a condition of their pump installation permit.”
The Plan
The idea for an adaptive management plan grew out of a symposium held in Kona in 2018, which in turn grew out of the petition by the National Park Service for designation of the Keauhou aquifer as a water management area, filed in 2013. That, in turn, traces back to concerns of the NPS, first expressed formally as early as 2007, that developments existing and planned upslope of the Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park were jeopardizing the park’s natural resources, especially the fisponds and many anchialine pools in the shoreline area.
The NPS petition was denied, but as a kind of consolation prize, the commission set up a working group that was to address the issues raised in the petition. The November 2018 symposium was the culmination of that effort.
At the same time, the commission agreed to eight conditions, dealing with, among other things, well approvals, monitoring wells, review by the Aha Moku council, siting of future wells,
Condition six triggers public information meetings if authorized planned uses reaches 80 percent of the sustainable yield, which amounts to 30.4 million gallons a day. As of February 2025, the staff report states, withdrawals reported to CWRM come to 14.82 mllion gallons a day, or around 37percent of sustainable yield.
“There’s a little complication here,” Kahahane said. The state Water Code defines authorized planned use as “the use or projected use of water by a development that has received the proper state land use designation and county development plan/community approvals.”
But, Kahahane added, “There’s no consensus right now among the various counties about what methodology should be used to determine authorized planned use and how it should be tracked for the purposes of anticipating future water demands.” This means, she continued, “as of today, there isn’t a coordinated effort between the commission and the county to compile a record of authorized planned uses in Keauhou. There’s also no adopted Keauhou Water Use and Development Plan, which would include recent development information to calculate water demands. So as a result, we, frankly, don’t know if authorized planned use has reached the trigger.”
To address this, Kahahane said, she was discussing the matter with the counties and “considering changes to both the Water Code and planning documents.” Or, as described in the staff submittal, staff are “engaged in discussions about APU and are considering changes to the Water Code and planning documents … to better define APU and reconceptualize its utility in the planning and designation process.”
As described in the staff proposal, “The core idea behind an AMP is to treat groundwater management as an evolving process. Instead of following a rigid planning approach, an AMP recognizes that uncertainties exist – such as how groundwater withdrawals may impact coastal and nearshore groundwater discharge, or how changes in climate may impact groundwater recharge. It proposes monitoring, data collection, and regular reassessment of management strategies based on any changing conditions.”
Last year, the U.S. Geological Survey published a report on predicted future groundwater recharge statewide under various climate scenarios. Even under the most favorable scenario, the Keauhou aquifer and surrounding aquifers were predicted to see decreases in annual groundwater recharge by at least 21 percent compared to a reference climate of 1978-2007.
Kahahane took some time to go over the plan in her presentation to the commission on July 15. The AMP, she said, would build on input from four working groups of three or four people, each of whom is an expert in their respective areas of knowledge: hydrology, biology (“indicator species”), contamination and pollution, and native Hawaiian traditional and cultural practices. A CWRM “point person” is to be assigned to each group.
Peter Adler of GUILD Consulting, LLC, and his assistant, Stephanie Sang, will write up their suggestions into a plan, which is then to be reviewed by an advisory committee of four people, Kahahane said – all by the end of November. In addition, an outside consultant, Scott McCreary of Concur, will provide his opinion on the final product. According to the staff submittal, “McCreary has substantial experience with adaptive management plans and joint fact-finding on natural resource matters.”
Kahahane went on to describe a proposal to recharacterize the sustainable yield for the area, using updated techniques and leaving in the dust RAM, the robust analytical model used for years to determine sustainable yield.
Overall, she said, “We’re all very excited about this pilot project. I believe, and my staff believe, that this approach, what we do in Keauhou, can inform and shape strategies for other critical areas, including … Lahaina.”
The Public Weighs In
Kahahane’s presentation, which largely followed the written submittal, took more than an hour and a half. After a break of 20 minutes, commission chair Dawn Chang invited the public to weigh in.
First to testify was Scheuer. He began by agreeing with comments from Miike to the effect that this might more accurately be regarded as an update to the state Water Resource Protection Plan’s section on Keauhou. If that were done, and then using that as a basis to permit wells, “most of what is in the proposal before you I would fully endorse.”
But what was actually being proposed, he continued, “flies in the face of your statutory duties.”
Scheuer launched into a history of the controversy over the Keauhou aquifer system, noting that it goes back at least 17 years, well beyond the “highly selective” shorter history that appears in the literature cited in the AMP.
When Scheuer stated that he was going to go into that history, he was interrupted by Chang, who asked him to summarize, “because your time is up.”
Scheuer objected, noting that the commission had Kahahane’s written submittal but that the commission and public “heard it all in person” as well.
“I’ve been involved in this for well over a decade and I’m going to ask for your discretion or ask one of the commissioners to allow me to finish my testimony…”
Chang asked how long his testimony would take.
“How about five minutes?” Scheuer replied.
“That’s going to be a little too long,” Chang said. “I’ve got other people.”
“I find it very disrespectful in deliberative processes to keep the public to two minutes on such an important issue,” he said.
Then he continued with his history, noting that it formally began 18 years ago, when the superintendent of the Kaloko-Honokohau park, Gerry Bell, and her staff met with CWRM staff, expressing concerns about the impacts to the park’s natural resources that depended on groundwater flows — “groundwater dependent ecosystems,” or GDEs.
At the time, CWRM staff suggested instead that the Park Service begin a dialogue with other parties interested in issues relating to groundwater. This groundwater working group met four times.
“At the fourth meeting,” Scheuer said, “consultants, including [former CWRM director] Peter Young, showed up and said we don’t need the groundwater working group that you guys are arranging anymore because we’re setting up the Kona Water Roundtable.”
The groundwater working group, he added, “had an open agenda, an open process for getting information,” with a focus on “trying to determine the best scientific information.”
On the other hand, the agenda of the Kona Water Roundtable was controlled by developers, he said, meeting from about 2008 to 2015, and “focused on showing that there’s no harm whatsoever to the aquifer.”
In 2013, a number of events led the National Park Service to file a petition for designation. By law, the commission is to consider the petition within 60 days, but “this body dragged that process out for three and a half years.”
The commission did issue a preliminary order in December 2014, which asked for three things: an updated Hawaiʻi County Water Use and Development Plan; a report from the National Park Service on the quantity of water needed to sustain its ecosystems; and a report on traditional and customary practices. Scheuer noted that he was one of two authors of that last report. Paula Cutillo of NPS prepared the second. The county Department of Water Supply was to prepare the first, and while it has developed a draft, that plan has never been approved by the County Council.
The last two reports were delivered in May 2015, Scheuer said, yet, “they’ve never been referenced by any of your subsequent reports.”
“Now why is the fact that we did these reports, presented them to you, and they’re never referenced again relevant?
“Because I believe what you guys are proposing, to allow drilling to go forward and study it, depends on the assumption that there’s been no reasonable allegation of harm to this system under the current pumping regime.
“But there has. Repeatedly. And you possess this in your own records, which gives you a duty under Kauaʻi Springs and other parts of the public trust doctrine … to not defer action and figure out what’s going on but to take action, to protect groundwater dependent ecosystems and traditional and customary practices associated with them.”
Scheuer then reminded them of other rulings by the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court that bear on the Keauhou dispute. In its Waiahole opinion, the court quoted the Water Commission itself: “Where scientific evidence is preliminary and not yet conclusive regarding the management of freshwater resources, which are part of the public trust, it is prudent to adopt ‘precautionary principles’ in protecting the resources. That is, where there are present or potential threats of serious damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be a basis for postponing effective measures to prevent environmental degradation. In addition, where uncertainty exists, a trustee’s duty is to protect the resource, mitigate in favor of choosing presumptions that also protect the resource’ — ”
Chang again interrupted Scheuer. “Jonathan, I’ve given you five minutes.”
“ — the opposite of what you’re doing.”
Commissioner Kagawa-Viviani asked that Scheuer be allowed to continue. “I would like to hear more. I think it’s important to hear some of the history that precedes.”
Scheuer then began to name names. When the Water Commission adopted conditions that were to be alternative to designation, those conditions, he said, “were actually written by the developers’ consultant, Peter Young. … The National Park Service wrote then-chair Suzanne Case asking why the commission was deferring its decision on how to protect public trust resources to a private consultant.” It never got an answer.
Scheuer then went on to raise concerns about the participation of some of the people involved in developing the Adaptive Management Plan, mentioning specifically the inclusion of Don Thomas as one of the hydrology experts.
In 2021, Thomas was a guest at a meeting of Sustainable Energy Hawaiʻi, Scheuer said. Former state Representative Jerry Chang, a participant, addresed Thomas, “You know, the lack of water in Kona is hindering a lot of developments that would otherwise be going forward,” going on to ask him if his own research supported that.
Thomas replied, “I think the National Park’s claims are a fairy story. And I think they know it. I’ve told them that. … I’ll be brutally honest. The Park Service just wants to take control of access to groundwater, access to the aquifer in Kona so they can control any further development there.”
Scheuer added: “So, the inclusion of experts who are known to be hostile to all the issues that are supposed to be considered here I find deeply problematic.”
Continuing Impacts
Ashley Obrey of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, representing Hui o Ka Wai, testified in person and also with lengthy written testimony, much of it concerning numerous omissions from the plan.
Hui o Ka Wai “acknowledges that there is value in the preparation of an AMP,” the written testimony states, but it will be useful “only if it acknowledges and addresses the harm that has already occurred to public trust uses of water as the result of previously approved pumping in the Keauhou Aquifer – and does not simply serve as a tool to fast-track future water development in Kona.”
“There are existing impacts from existing withdrawals,” Obrey said. “That’s an important baseline that needs to be considered when we’re thinking about cumulative impacts. The need for mitigation and not just monitoring. This shouldn’t just be forward-looking … but we’re also talking about where we are at, what our status quo is based on, and why we’re doing what we’re doing in the first place. There’s a bunch of questions about monitoring needs and triggers, which are critical to making the AMP function. We need these management actions. Otherwise, what’s the point of this document?”
Obrey suggested the commission defer approval of moving forward with the plan, as outlined by staff, inasmuch as it lacks sufficient detail to serve as a basis for managing the resource.
“If you don’t give good direction today, it could give you a false sense of security that we have this plan in place, but in reality, all we’re doing is checking a box and greenlighting more development, and there’s this plan here that isn’t addressing all the things we think it needs to,” she said.
“As Chair Chang mentioned, there is this mounting pressure to develop. So if we have this plan in place that really isn’t going to satisfy the needs of what I think the whole point of this is, that’s a concern.”
She also suggested the plan should address proposals to drill into the deep confined aquifer, which lies below sea level. The presumed existence of this is what’s “spurred a lot of this discussion in the first place,” she said.
“The ask, I guess, is to defer it until all these questions are answered and you feel this plan will be the best version of the AMP that we can have in light of the fact that we have not been designated and this will serve as a substitute until such time as this commission deems it is time to designate.”
Loke Aloua, a member of Hui o Ka Wai, poʻo for Kaloko-Honokahau and a former archaeologist for the National Park Service, described in detail the kinds of impacts she has observed at the fishponds and anchialine pools of the national park and listed numerous development proposals in Kona that were planning to drill wells in the Keauhou aquifer area, including in the deep basal aquifer.
Among others, she identified a well proposed by the Liliuʻokalani Trust, to pump from the deep basal aquifer, two wells proposed by the University of the Nations, and a second Department of Water Supply well at Waiʻaha, also intended to pump from the deep basal aquifer. “Most times,” Aloua said, “when they put in a production well, they put in a reserve well as backup. We may be looking at 3-4 mgd coming out of Waiʻaha.”
“Who is going to address this? How will that use be assessed for its connectivity to the entire three layers of the aquifer? What are the impacts to traditional and customary practices, including the ground-dependent ecosystems and these species,” she asked.
“The deep confined aquifer is misunderstood,” she continued. “There are multiple hypotheses surrounding connectivity and discharge. All these things are still in the investigative stage. Nothing has been finalized, but there are already plans in motion for Kona to tap into the deep confined aquifer.”
She went on to mention existing impacts of lack of freshwater flows into the ecosystems at Kaloko-Honokohau. “Currently, at least at Kaloko we already have an adversely impaired ecosystem. Pond conditions – the fishpond is sometimes saltier than the ocean. That is how salty we’re talking about the ponds getting. … The pond is currently at its breaking point.
“Seasonal algae blooms that result in heightened oxygen levels and this mass of algae that grows,” resulting in the death of fish, she said. With curtailed groundwater flows, water temperature rises, “which also contributes to sick and weak fish in the loka iʻa. … We’re talking about mature fish, … struggling in the fish pond. Right now.”
Blooms of native limu have fallen off as well for the last three years, with the last bloom she could see being two years ago. Limu, she said, is essential for the fish.
“These have really big impacts for us,” she said.
Also, the lack of freshwater is harming native birds. If they don’t have freshwater for the chicks, they won’t make it, she continued.
Fish can’t be recruited into the fishpond, she added, because there isn’t enough water. “If we don’t have that sweet water – that onaona – that alluring water that’s going to draw in the fish, then the fish pond is going to cease to be a fish pond. It’s just going to be one saltwater pond.”
“How can CWRM help us on the ground with these impacts we’re already seeing, every single year, consistently, at least for the last four years? … It’s very heartbreaking, because we’re doing everything we can on the ground,” she said.
A Motion
The submittal brought to the commission asked the commissioners for “approval to proceed” with the development of a first-generation AMP.
But as became clear during the course of the meeting, there was little the commissioners could do other than rubber-stamp what was an already done deal.
“Peter Adler’s already working on this, right? … A deferral might not necessarily stop work on this effort. Is that correct?” asked Kagawa-Viviani.
Kahahane seemed puzzled. “Well, I suppose I have to better understand the nature of the deferral.”
“I’m just saying a hypothetical deferral would not prevent him from continuing to further improve and work for meetings to happen,” Kagawa-Viviani said.
Kahahane wanted further clarification: “I’m hearing that we should continue working on expert groups … and we can continue to do that in the event of a deferral.”
Kagawa-Viviani noted that the request before the commission was for approval to proceed, “but you’re already working on it.” Then, she added, “how this AMP fits within our regulatory framework is not clear. … How do we translate this into action?”
Chang added her gloss: “This is just to permit staff to continue to move forward.”
In the end, despite the evident puzzlement about what, exactly, the commission was being asked to do, all six members voted to approve going forward with development of the AMP.
— Patricia Tummons
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