The future of water in West Maui: community voices, part 3

Community-led water policies — no more unaccountable government

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The problem:

Maui County controlling a water system doesn’t, on its own, guarantee better water use policies — especially when the government has historically been a big part of the problem.

Everyone we spoke with said Maui County owning the water infrastructure has inherent advantages over private ownership:

• For the people: Government is (in theory) supposed to serve the public good, not private investors’ financial interests.
• Better accountability and transparency potential: elected officials can be voted out, and government agencies are subject to public meetings and open-records laws.
• Government powers:  Maui County has access to unique policymaking, financing, physical assets, human expertise, and other resources that private companies don’t.

However, our sources also acknowledged that private interests’ infiltration of — and influence over — government in Hawaiʻi has meant that government has historically been a key part of the problem, creating deep distrust among communities and especially among many Native Hawaiian communities.

Centuries before companies like Maui Land & Pineapple arrived in West Maui, the Hawaiian system of laws, kānāwai (itself literally named after the word for water: wai) revolved around care for a shared irrigation system — not ownership — and where taking more than your fair share was punished harshly, even by death in some cases.

That changed dramatically after plantation owners took over, prioritizing private property (even when property was illegally or illicitly taken) over environmental and social impacts.

Some in government, like Emma Kaʻilikapuolono Metcalf Beckley Nakuina, who served as Commissioner of Private Ways and Water Rights from 1892 to 1907, continued trying to manage water according Hawaiian values.

But the pro-business officials who dominated the government for most of the 1900s enacted water use policies that have overwhelmingly benefited industries like export agriculture, tourism, and the military.

Only in the 1970s, with the Hawaiian renaissance and Constitutional Convention that led to the current water code, did things start to meaningfully shift — and even then, private interests held strong influence over the Commission On Water Resource Management until recently.

In 2024, when the committee in charge of appointing water commissioners nominated a new loea (a legally required expert in traditional Hawaiian water management practices), Governor Josh Green tried to bypass the committee’s recommendations, and only backed down after community groups sued. Green also oversaw the reassignment of CWRM Deputy Director Kaleo Manuel following the Lāhainā fires after large landowners spread disinformation about Manuel in what our experts said was a thinly-veiled water grab.

Those we’ve spoken with about Manuel’s tenure were universal in praising his leadership of the agency, and said that his departure from CWRM has been a major factor behind the water use permit application (WUPA) backlog it’s still working through three years later.

Maui County’s recent track record has been mixed, with many praising the Bissen administration’s progress reacquiring control of water systems in Wailuku and East Maui, and its creation of groups like the Kahuwai Coalition.

However, they said that other entities, including the county council and the planning commission, have often been antagonistic to upholding public trust law and community interests.

In February, Maui County Council Vice-Chair Yuki Lei Sugimura raised eyebrows when she tried to hold up the allocation of $10 million to the Department of Water Supply. When pressed by fellow council member Tamara Paltin about why, Sugimura acknowledged she had meet privately with individuals involved with the “Kapalua [and] Maui Land & Pine” discussion, but wouldn’t say what their concerns were or why those didn’t individuals didn’t testify when the funding proposal was heard publicly in committee.

The solution:

Maui County (and the state) must put clear policies and structures into place that ACTUALLY ensure community-led decision making, transparency, and accountability.

Our experts said that, in negotiations with MLP and West Maui Land Co. and beyond, both Maui County and the state need to create stronger and more explicit policies and mechanisms that ensure community — especially lineal descendants and experts in traditional Hawaiian knowledge — are centered in decision making about water use.

Maui communities fought for decades to help pass a law that allows counties to set up community water authorities, like the one created in East Maui — a model that research consistently says works — and many said a model like this could work, if locals opt for that approach.

Additionally, multiple experts said that CWRM also needs to finish reviewing and making decisions on water permit applications in West Maui, while not giving fast-lanes to private entities by prioritizing them on meeting agendas over local communities.

Overall, our experts were clear on several things that must be part of water policies moving forward:

• Public trust uses must be prioritized as required by law
• Lineal descendants and ancestral knowledge must be meaningfully consulted and trusted — not just as a “box checking” exercise
• More transparency is needed at all steps of water use decision-making processes
• More culturally rooted water expertise is needed throughout government — especially within entities like the Maui County Council and Planning Commission, and the state Land Use Commission and Public Utilities Commission
• Strong enough enforcement to actually deter bad actors — rather than the extremely minor fines companies are often able to negotiate

The stakes:

Mayor Bissen said he’s committed to “long-term water stewardship for future generations,” but words alone don’t prevent abuse of county control by other officials or future administrations.

Harmful water use policies have wreaked havoc on Maui for more than a century, contributing to climate change that has already claimed lives, and will almost certainly claim more.

For too long, our experts said, local government has been at best complicit — and, at worst, an active cause of those policies.

Only recently has it become more common for elected officials to publicly acknowledge the challenges Maui faces around water, let alone talk explicitly about fundamentally changing who water benefits, who controls it, and who makes those decisions.

The distrust still runs deep, and while our experts seemed generally supportive of the way the Bissen administration has engaged with community, they remained cautious, saying that the next administration could always cause things to regress, and they’re demanding protections that last beyond one election cycle.

The Bissen administration told Kaheāwai Media that it doesn’t expect to reach a final “acquisition order” (a final deal that the county council would vote on) before the election, meaning the mayoral race will likely be a key factor in whether and how the deal proceeds.

The community voices:

“Our trust must be earned through demonstrated action, not assumed simply through public ownership.” 
~ Nā Mamo Aloha ʻĀina o Honokōhau

“Even if the county take over, it’s not like we can kind of kick back and kick up your feet and you just watch TV. You got to stay vigilant. The only difference is… they bound by law… at least in that sense, maybe we have a little bit more bite when we dealing with them. But for sure, we not going to let them make all the decisions. The county ain’t going to make the decisions without us. The reason why the county was able for get this opportunity to probably acquire this system is because of all our years of hard fought battles that we had to go through.”

“While the County’s MOU with Maui Land & Pine appears to be a promising response to our community’s long-standing calls for putting the system in public hands, we are only cautiously optimistic. Our trust must be earned through demonstrated action, not assumed simply through public ownership. 

Transparency should be at the forefront. We are disheartened by the fact that Honokōhau community members, who rely entirely on this stream for our daily water needs and are directly affected by the diversions, were never consulted by either the County or MLP about this agreement.”

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“No government or corporation will ever save us. They never have. It’s the power of the people and the power of us to organize and unite.”

“MLP didn’t wake up one day and say: ‘Let’s just sell this back to the county.’ It’s putting pressure, constant pressure on them. Everything that the government has been doing lately is on behalf of motivated by public pressure from the people. It may be a step in the right direction, but it’s up to us to be makaʻala (vigilant) and to continue to hold them accountable and to continue to put that pressure on them to do what is right. Because the worst case scenario is that they just take the place of Maui Land and Pine and continue to service the same people with the same amount of water that they have been doing and then nothing changes. It’s all of us together and that’s the only way things will change.”

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“They could set up the Maui Komohana [West Maui] Water Authority, just like we have the Maui Hikina [East Maui] Water Authority. This is something that restores my trust in government because the board is full of people who actually live in the area and have knowledge of the area and are trusted by other people in the area. The director [Gina Young] is a person who is trusted by people, the board officers are people who are trusted by people. In fact, people had to fight to get them in [those positions] because they didn’t want people… who merely were representing a corporate interest.”

“The majority of people on this board need to be people who are actually on the land, interacting with the land, and can report back on what the land and water situation is and how best to manage it. And so there is a model for that.”

The Bissen administration:

“We have been community led, government supported from the very beginning, and we worked hard, very hard, to earn the trust of our community, and we’re not about to do anything to lose that trust.”
~ Mayor Bissen

Richard Bissen, Mayor:

“We have been community led, government supported from the very beginning, and we worked hard, very hard, to earn the trust of our community, and we’re not about to do anything to lose that trust.”

Josiah Nishita, Managing Director, Maui County Department of Management:

“As we went through the entire recovery process [after the 2023 Lāhainā fire], there have been long discussions historically about water and ownership of water systems… Those conversations continued as we developed a long-term recovery plan… we’ve held over 150 community meetings in Lāhainā. So there have been many, many discussions, maybe not specifically about the acquisition of MLP systems, but about returning those assets back into the public trust.”

“The MOU itself is non-binding — it doesn’t adhere either party to anything. It’s setting forth the assets the county is looking at to potentially acquire. I’d say this is a more transparent process than a typical acquisition, because normally negotiations happen privately between the landowner and the county, and only after that would we come to council with an acquisition agreement — that’s usually where public dialogue occurs. This is setting forth a framework for those discussions to happen out in the open.”

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Check back tomorrow for the next story in this series, where we’ll dive into the details of the proposed deal between Maui County and MLP, and what our experts said to look out for.