{"id":746011,"date":"2026-07-06T07:08:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T07:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/746011\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T07:08:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T07:08:13","slug":"public-or-private-the-future-of-east-mauis-water-is-at-stake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/746011\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Or Private? The Future Of East Maui’s Water Is At Stake"},"content":{"rendered":"

The East Maui Water Authority says it wants to work with Mahi Pono to preserve and protect the water system as rainfall becomes less predictable. But the farm has its own plan. <\/p>\n

A decision on how to determine who should manage a century-old ditch system in East Maui \u2014 and the millions of gallons of water per day it moves to Upcountry residents and farms in Central Maui \u2014 has been stalled since last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Back in November, the Board of Land and Natural Resources had announced that it would either recommend a contested case hearing, as the state land division recommended, or an executive order from Gov. Josh Green that would transfer ownership to the county. Rather than make that call, the board gave the voter-created East Maui Water Authority and Mahi Pono, a large farming operation run by a Canadian pension fund, six months to come to a consensus.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two parties are still at odds more than seven months later, and now a new leader is taking the reins of the land board. Ryan Kanaka\u2018ole, who had been serving as acting chair since Dawn Chang went on medical leave last December, officially begins Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Native Hawaiian from the remote Ka\u02bb\u016b district of Hawai\u02bbi island has spoken about growing up \u201con the outside\u201d of the halls of power and has promised not to forget<\/a> that fact. But it\u2019s not at all clear whether BLNR under his leadership will side with the kalo farmers, fellow Hawaiians and other East Maui community members who have been working with the water authority to bring about a more democratic approach to water management in the region.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"IrrigationMahi Pono\u2019s 41,000 acres of agricultural land on Maui requires millions of gallons of water. (Nathan Eagle\/Civil Beat\/2023)<\/p>\n

The issue could show up on the board\u2019s agenda in July, but it is complicated by a lawsuit<\/a>, brought by the Sierra Club and working its way through the state\u2019s Environmental Court, over the one-year revocable stream diversion permits the board has been issuing to Mahi Pono.<\/p>\n

For M\u0101healani Wendt, who alongside her husband Ed, a sixth-generation kalo farmer, waged a decades-long fight<\/a> to have the streams in East Maui restored, the delay and lack of transparency are par for the course, but discouraging nonetheless.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the advantage that moneyed interests have,\u201d Wendt said. \u201cThey can drag out the process. And, as they say, justice delayed is justice denied.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the board\u2019s role to decide management of the East Maui water system as a standalone matter, according to Department of Land and Natural Resources communications director Andrew Laurence.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Board is responsible for determining the appropriate disposition of water emanating from state lands and any related state interests consistent with applicable law, the public trust doctrine, and the record before the Board,\u201d he said in a statement, adding that community input is an important part of that process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The department declined requests for an interview with Kanaka\u2018ole. <\/p>\n

From Sugar To Citrus<\/p>\n

For over a century, water from the streams running down through the eastern slopes of Haleakal\u0101 has been diverted west toward the center of the island via a gravity-fed system of ditches and canals. Built by the sugarcane company Alexander & Baldwin, the aging system is run by East Maui Irrigation, now a subsidiary of Mahi Pono.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 41,000-acre farming operation includes citrus, watermelon, onions, coffee and macadamia nuts as well as alfalfa and corn for cattle feed and irrigated pastureland. All that production requires a great deal of water. The company estimates it needs 3,900 gallons of water per acre of land it operates every day,\u00a0and it recently reported using an average of 28 million gallons<\/a> of surface water a day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mahi Pono has been operating as a tenant under a series of one-year revocable permits for the last seven years. With its 2025 acquisition of EMI from A&B and the new lease, it hopes to effectively take over the system currently run by the state and begin acting as a de facto landlord.<\/p>\n

At a time when lawmakers are focused on reducing the state\u2019s dependence on imported food, Mahi Pono has positioned itself as a valuable new source of local produce. This spring, it provided mandarins for school meals through a partnership<\/a> with the Department of Education.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, critics say Mahi Pono\u2019s owner, PSP Investments, has a broader goal of acquiring water rights at relatively low prices in places where the natural resource is becoming increasingly scarce and eventually selling them for much more. PSP has undertaken similar projects in Australia<\/a>, California<\/a> and Brazil<\/a> \u2014\u00a0often at the expense of Indigenous communities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To many community members, the battle is about much more than agriculture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"BoardBoard of Land and Natural Resources Chair Dawn Chang was replaced in December by Ryan Kanaka\u2018ole, who took over as acting chair and director of the department. Later, Gov. Josh Green announced that Chang was retiring on July 1, and Kanaka\u2018ole would take over. (Kevin Fujii\/Civil Beat\/2023)<\/p>\n

Chang, the outgoing land board chair, proposed issuing Mahi Pono a 30-year lease once before, in 2024, but community members pushed back, Mayor Richard Bissen got involved<\/a>, and the proposal was voted down<\/a> by the board. The following year, Green appointed three new members to the BLNR and Chang brought a similar proposal back to the table.<\/p>\n

During the same period, the East Maui Water Authority, a county entity created through a charter amendment supported by over 64% of Maui residents, was taking shape. Guided by Aha Wai O Maui Hikina<\/a>, a board made up of Native Hawaiians, farmers and local community members, the authority was explicitly created to manage the East Maui water system.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Representatives from the water authority and Mahi Pono have been meeting monthly since early 2025 and while they say they have worked together amicably and come to better understand one another\u2019s perspectives, the process hasn\u2019t ended in anything close to a compromise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the land board\u2019s April meeting, Mahi Pono\u2019s attorney Calvert Chipcase said<\/a>, \u201cWe, at the end, see things differently.\u201d He added that the company\u2019s goal is to remain the long-term licensee from the state, while ensuring \u201cthe continued safe, efficient, and complete delivery of water to the county right now, for its needs, at a cost that is less than the actual cost of the delivery of that water.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JonathanJonathan Likeke Scheuer chairs the board overseeing the East Maui Water Authority. (Cory Lum\/Civil Beat\/2022)<\/p>\n

Mahi Pono would like to see a contested case move forward. When asked about the potential for a public-private partnership, Chipcase said, \u201cit just isn\u2019t a space where there\u2019s an opportunity to cooperate, because we each seek to do the same things.\u201d<\/p>\n

EMWA Executive Director Gina Young, Aha Wai O Maui Hikina Chair Jonathan Likeke Scheuer and James \u201cKimo\u201d Landgraf, deputy director of the Maui County Department of Water Supply, also presented<\/a> at the April meeting about how the county has positioned itself to begin repairing an aging system in need of maintenance. That includes doubling the EMWA staff, planning for new positions in the Department of Water Supply, and securing public and private funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Landgraf said while the work to take on the system could be done quickly, it would be ideal if it were to happen gradually. \u201cWe can run if we have to, but we\u2019d rather walk,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mahi Pono currently pays about $3 million in total for its revocable permit and the cost of maintaining the ditch system through EMI.\u00a0That works out to an estimated 26 cents per 1,000 gallons of water, or about half of the average cost<\/a> most farmers pay.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Young told Civil Beat that the county wants to see Mahi Pono \u2014\u00a0and agricultural operations in general \u2014\u00a0succeed. The county isn\u2019t looking to profit, she said, but it would charge the company more for the water it plans to use.<\/p>\n

\u201cWater delivery pricing would reflect not only the direct costs of operating the system, but also the long-term investment needed to maintain and improve reliability,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If Mahi Pono were to shoulder a greater portion of the cost to shore up the system it would also upend an age-old pattern where agriculture companies in Hawai\u02bbi extract more from these systems than they give back, said Wendt, former executive director of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe voters of Maui agreed that they want this public trust resource to be managed by a public entity, for the public,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"The view from Na Moku\u2019s community center, that overlooks kalo fields in Ke\u02bbanae. (Marina Starleaf Riker\/Civil Beat\/2022)<\/p>\n

Private operators have obligations to their shareholders, Young said, while municipalities are directly accountable to the public. With the help of Aha Wai O Maui Hikina, the water authority also hopes to reinstate cultural values and practices that could help the next generation shoulder the burden of climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In an April letter<\/a> to Kanaka\u2018ole, Young, Bissen and Josiah Nishita, the county\u2019s managing director, pointed to a 2021 instance in which DLNR representative\u00a0Ian Hirokawa \u201cnoted the importance of addressing County interest prior to moving forward with a public auction process.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, at that point, it didn\u2019t seem at all controversial that the county would get the first right of refusal. But that might have been easy to say when there wasn\u2019t yet a water authority in place to take him up on it.<\/p>\n

Scheuer, a land and water rights consultant who has been working on water rights in Hawai\u02bbi for decades, said the vast majority of water<\/a> that is delivered to Mahi Pono comes off of state-owned lands \u2014\u00a0and yet that fact is rarely discussed by land managers. At the meeting, he pointed to the Public Trust Doctrine<\/a>, established in the 1970s, which affirms that the state holds all public natural resources in trust for the benefit of its people. For that reason, he said, there should be no such thing as \u201ccompany-owned water.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEither the state indeed owns the vast majority of the system, which should change the entire discussion \u2026 or somewhere in the last few decades, the state gave away an asset that Mahi Pono claims is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, so that\u2019s also probably worthy of investigation and consideration,\u201d Scheuer said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mahi Pono, which declined interview requests for this story, disagrees with that analysis. In a letter to BLNR, the company wrote, \u201cEMI owns the ditch system and has no intention of selling it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Less Water Overall<\/p>\n

East Maui is typically wetter than many parts of Hawai\u02bbi, but in recent years it has also seen its share of drought conditions. Chris Shuler, a hydrologist who lives in Ha\u02bbik\u016b and works for the University of Hawai\u02bbi M\u0101noa, said the region sits on a gradient between the leeward and windward sides of the island so the farther east you travel, the wetter it tends to be.<\/p>\n

Last fall the East Maui streams were reduced to their lowest level in decades and land managers declared an extreme drought<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The island has been getting drier overall for the last 100 years, Shuler said, but the trend has been much more extreme over the last 20 years. One theory is that the trade winds are shifting direction, he said, and that may be causing the line that separates the dry portion of the island from the wet portion to move east.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cEven without that long-term effect of the diversions, some of these streams would be intermittent anyway,\u201d Shuler told Civil Beat.<\/p>\n

\"WaterMahi Pono\u2019s environmental impact statement lists the total water potentially available for Central Maui agricultural fields at 85 million gallons per day \u2014 more than three times what the company is currently using. (Kevin Fujii\/Civil Beat\/2024)<\/p>\n

In the monthly stakeholder meetings, the ongoing impact of severe drought in the region seems to be one of the only issues that everyone agrees on. According to the end of year report<\/a> on the stakeholder process that EMWA\u2019s Young published last December, Mahi Pono said it had stopped planting trees for a stretch last fall due to lack of water. At the time, executives from the company said they were pumping an average of 17 million gallons of groundwater a day in addition to the surface water they use.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s not a ratio that we feel is feasible in the long term,\u201d said Grant Nakama, senior vice president of operations for Mahi Pono, in one meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In another, Mark Vaught, director of water resources at Mahi Pono, said, \u201cI have never seen it this dry in my 33-year career.\u201d<\/p>\n

While members of the community board argued in the meetings that the environmental conditions have changed significantly since the initial Environmental Impact Statement<\/a> was done for A&B \u2014 warranting a new study \u2014 the Mahi Pono executives disagreed.<\/p>\n

\"Ryan
Ryan Kanaka\u2019ole officially takes the helm as director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources on Wednesday. He\u2019s served in an acting capacity since December. (DLNR\/2024)<\/p>\n

\u201cOur conclusion is that we are in a drought period as of the last 5-10 years, but that is too short of a period to draw any long-term conclusions from,\u201d Nakama said.<\/p>\n

The EIS lists the total water potentially available for Central Maui agricultural fields at 85 million gallons per day \u2014 more than three times what the company is currently using.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lucienne De Naie, long-time Sierra Club member and East Maui resident, said that number doesn\u2019t reflect the current reality. \u201cThe streams just don\u2019t have that much water anymore \u2014 except during really rainy events,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2018, the state Commission on Water Resource Management ruled to restore 10 of the 25 key streams in East Maui after a petition from Maui Tomorrow, a citizen advocacy group representing Huelo area stream users and Na Moku Aupuni O Ko\u2018olau, a group of Ke\u2019anae-Wailuanui kalo farmers, fishermen and hunters, petitioned to see streamflows restored.<\/p>\n

As a result the kalo farmers living near the base of the streams have had access to more water in recent years. But even streams that are restored on paper often run dry. And East Maui area residents have often bemoaned millions of gallons of water lost or wasted<\/a> every day due to cracks and other damage to the aged system.<\/p>\n

East Maui isn\u2019t one of the state\u2019s designated water management areas<\/a>. If it was, water users there would have to go through a much stricter permitting process that would require them to prove their use is beneficial, reasonable and doesn\u2019t infringe on Native Hawaiian communities\u2019 rights to practice their cultural traditions or the Department of Hawaiian Home Land\u2019s right to water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t have that permitting process, but they still have those legal obligations,\u201d Scheuer said. \u201cAnd BLNR hasn\u2019t established a process to ensure that any of that is happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Transition Ahead<\/p>\n

The state land board doesn\u2019t need a contested case hearing to vote on a set-aside via a governor\u2019s executive order. And the fact that the previous chair pushed for such a hearing over the last few years led many water advocates to infer that her ultimate goal was to issue Mahi Pono a long-term lease.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kanaka\u2019ole, like Chang, is a Green appointee. So it\u2019s not clear whether he will have any more latitude to take a different approach.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, 1st Circuit Environmental Court Judge Lisa Cataldo, who ruled to cap Mahi Pono\u2019s stream diversions earlier this year, could also force BLNR to hold a contested case over the revocable annual permits. If she does that, it could stall the process further.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Regardless of the result, Young, Scheuer and members of Aha Wai O Maui Hikina intend to continue building a water authority designed to one day run the system.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not just their entire lives, but their parents\u2019 lives, their grandparents\u2019 lives and their great grandparents\u2019 lives,\u201d Scheuer said of the members of the community board he leads. \u201cSo yes, there\u2019s frustration, certainly, but there\u2019s also an acknowledgement that it took 150 years to get here. We\u2019re not going to solve it in a day, and we\u2019re not going away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHawai\u2018i Grown<\/a>\u201d is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawai\u2018i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation. Civil Beat\u2019s reporting on fresh water issues is funded in part by the Ulupono Fund at the Hawai\u2018i Community Foundation; coverage of climate change and the environment is supported by The Healy Foundation, the Marisla Fund of the Hawai\u2018i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.<\/p>\n

\"Civil<\/p>\n

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