Hawaii First Water

Ige On Water Protection: Don’t Stop At Papahanaumokuakea

September: Nathan Eagle/Civil Beat:

Gov. David Ige welcomed a major environmental conference to Hawaii on Thursday by committing to protect more of his state’s watersheds and nearshore ocean waters.

Ige spoke to several thousand people at the opening of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress, which will continue through Sept. 10 at the Hawaii Convention Center.

He announced the state’s commitment to protect 30 percent of its highest priority watersheds by 2030 and to “effectively manage” 30 percent of its nearshore ocean waters in the same time frame.

“We are a microcosm of our planet Earth,” Ige said during opening ceremonies at the Blaisdell Center. “We cannot afford to mess this up.”

(Comment:  Although a majority of the opening speakers addressed ocean issues, our governor opened his welcoming comments which a statement which directly concerns freshwater supplies on our islands.)

For the rest of the article and all of Civil Beat’s excellent coverage of the World Conservation Congress which is ongoing in Honolulu see this link

He Lono Moku

August: This week the IUCN World Conservation Congress will be held in Honolulu, Hawaii to further the cause of world environmental concerns.  A Hawaii based Environmental Funders Group published what will become an annual report on the state of Hawaii’s environment.   I will be attending the Congress and reporting on any interesting findings which are particularly focused on fresh water issues on Hawai’i and other Pacific Islands.  (By Larry Kobayashi)

Here is the preface and the link to actual report.

The State of the Environment: HAWAI‘I 2016

With the IUCN World Conservation Congress being held in the United States for the first time, Hawai‘i’s environment and sustainability efforts are on the world stage. He lono moku recognizes this global momentum and highlights priorities for environmental equilibrium in Hawai‘i. This state of the environment report shares our advances in freshwater security, renewable energy, and community-based marine management—and is candid about where our efforts are falling well short.

Each year, he lono moku will track and share progress across a variety of environmental topics. At the center of the world’s largest ocean and with a tourism economy directly linked to our environment, we cannot afford to overlook our precious natural resources. As the voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a returns home after circumnavigating island earth, the Hawai‘i Environmental Funders Group joins the global call to embrace a “mālama honua”—care for the earth—mindset to ensure that our Islands thrive for generations to come.

Progress must be real—we cannot fool Mother Nature. The traditional Hawaiian proverb rings even more true today than centuries ago when first uttered: “He ali‘i ka ‘āina, he kauwā ke kanaka.” The land is a chief, man is its servant.

 

And here is the link to their report…

Researchers reveal cost-effective path to drought resiliency

July 2016

(Kobayashi Comment:  This intriguing Stanford study may offer an answer to Hawaii’s future freshwater shortages…  Imagine routing Hawaii’s torrents of stormwater into the ground aquifers instead of washing brown water pollution onto our beaches and recreation areas…)

Strained by drought in recent years, California desperately needs more resilient water supplies. An affordable solution that provides a wide range of benefits is within reach, according to a new Stanford study.

“We find that MAR is an effective and affordable way to balance local groundwater decisions with regional and statewide management,” said study co-author Debra Perrone, a postdoctoral scholar with Stanford’s Water in the West program.

Many local communities rely on statewide infrastructure to supplement their water supply. This water is costly and limited in supply, raising a need for cost-effective local storage options.

Managed aquifer recharge allows for local water storage, access and management to a much greater extent than large surface water reservoirs, which are often managed by state and federal entities. Although excess surface water can be limited in some regions of California, treated wastewater and urban stormwater offer sources for MAR that aren’t fully utilized by centralized surface water storage infrastructure.

MAR is particularly well suited to more populous and developed areas that can take advantage of large quantities of treated wastewater and stormwater runoff collected by extensive infrastructure for use in recharge. In more rural areas, MAR using excess surface water can still play an important role in replenishing groundwater basins and guarding against dry times.

“Every year, California lets 1 million acre-feet of treated wastewater flow to the ocean,” said co-author Melissa Rohde, previously a researcher with Water in the West. “Our research shows it would cost the state about $870 million to build the necessary MAR facilities to recover and store this water. That’s not a lot of money compared to the cost and energy required to transport water from large surface water projects or to desalinate ocean water.”

A water enigma

Groundwater supplies up to 60 percent of California’s water supply during dry years. Despite its crucial role in slaking the Golden State’s thirst, groundwater went largely unregulated until the 2014 passage of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Therefore, statewide data on groundwater management generally and managed aquifer recharge projects specifically has been sparse or proprietary, generally not shared publicly.

This lack of information was highlighted with the 2015 passage of California’s largest-ever water-related proposition — the $7.5 billion Proposition 1. The bond promises almost $3 billion for water storage projects. Without data on relative costs and benefits, state and local water managers are hard pressed to make informed decisions on MAR projects.

In addition to new funding opportunities, the 2014 law puts the burden on local agencies for sustainably managing groundwater. So, local communities have more reason than ever to bank water sustainably. Managed aquifer recharge allows agencies to do that in ways tailored to a community’s resources.

Perrone and Rohde set out to identify costs and benefits of MAR projects around the state by mining applications for general obligation bonds from ballot propositions. In these publicly available forms, the researchers identified proposed economic costs and anticipated MAR project benefits. Then, they surveyed the projects’ managers to compare initial estimates with actual costs, and to identify advantages and limitations.

Looking to the future

As a changing climate, growing population and other factors put increasing pressures on water supplies, California’s need for long-term resilience will only intensify, the study noted. Conservation will only go so far. Flexible water storage options that can address changing conditions are essential. Therefore, it is likely that more water agencies will adopt MAR as a local management tool.

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Stanford University. The original item was written by Rob Jordan. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

  1. Perrone, Debra; & Merri Rohde, Melissa. Benefits and Economic Costs of Managed Aquifer Recharge in California. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed Science, July 2016

(Big Island’s) Pohakuloa Training Area told to replace cesspools

June 2016, By Graham MilldrumWest Hawaii Todaygmilldrum@westhawaiitoday.com

KAILUA-KONA — The Army is paying $100,000 for keeping eight large capacity cesspools open a decade after the EPA ordered the closure of all cesspools of that size.

And it could be fined more if it keeps the cesspools open passed certain deadlines.

In a consent agreement announced Tuesday, the EPA said the cesspools can handle waste from 20 or more people a day, have an open bottom and may have perforated sides. They are distinct from the ones used in homes, and the EPA ordered all such large capacity cesspools closed by April 5, 2005, as “untreated sanitary waste from cesspools can enter ground water and contaminate drinking water sources.”

The cesspools provide no treatment for the waste and allow nitrates and human fecal bacteria into groundwater, the agency wrote.

The agreement says there were 12 cesspools active after the required closure date: four at Wheeler Army Airfield/Schofield Barracks on Oahu, and six at Pohakuloa Training Area and two at Kilauea Military Camp on the Big Island. The Army closed the ones at Schofield before the agreement.

The EPA says cesspools are more widely used in Hawaii than any other state, and the EPA has closed about 1,100 of the large capacity cesspools statewide.

Under guidelines published by the EPA, a replacement wastewater system has to be designed by a professional engineer and installed by a licensed contractor.

The cesspools on PTA’s land are to be closed by Sept. 30.

See the rest of the article here…

UNEP: Global Environment Outlook: GEO-6 Regional Assessment for Asia and the Pacific, Excerpt on Water Use…

As published May 2016:

1.2.4 Water use is increasing and intensity remains

high Asia and the Pacific accounts for more than 50 per cent of

the world’s water use, and it is increasing. Water intensity in

the region’s developing countries has decreased sharply but

is still very high and, for the region as a whole, it is more than

double the world average.

Water use in the region grew from around 1.5 cubic kilometers in 1970 to 2.1

cubic kilometers in 2015.  Total water withdrawals for the region as a whole

grew very slowly, at an annual rate of 0.6 per cent per year

for 1970 –2010 (UNEP 2015).

The per person use of water fell in all sub-regions, especially

between 1970 and 1990, as a result of improved agricultural practices and

industrialization.  The Pacific and Northeast Asia have the lowest per person

water use in the region and Australia and New Zealand have the highest.

Water intensity has decreased rapidly in developing

countries in the region, with a sharp decrease of an average

of 4.4 per cent per annum in Southeast Asia, 3.4 per cent

in Northeast Asia and 3.3 per cent in South Asia compared

to the rest of the world average of 2.4 per cent per year.

Impressive improvements in water efficiency have reduced

water use per US dollar of gross domestic product (GDP) by

90 per cent in developing countries in the region. However,

water intensity in Asia and the Pacific region was almost double the world

average in 2015.

This high water intensity has been recorded mainly in South

and Southeast Asian sub-regions, where economies are

dominated by agriculture, which requires higher volumes of water.

Copy of the Full Report is available here

National Park Service: We need existing flows at (Kailua-Kona’s) Kaloko-Honokohau

May 2016, By Bret YagerWest Hawaii Todaybyager@westhawaiitoday.com

KAILUA-KONA — The National Park Service didn’t provide a requested gallon figure for how much water it needs at Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park to sustain its ecosystems and the cultural practices that surround them. But the Park Service did bring the state Commission on Water Resource Management up to speed Thursday on the species that it feels would be threatened by any changes in water salinity due to future pumping of the Keauhou aquifer, which drains to the sea beneath it.

Striped mullet, the damselfly — a candidate for listing under the endangered species act — and rare water birds could all lose habitat if salinity in ponds changes, hydrologist Paula Cutillo said.

The park is experiencing saltwater intrusion, declining rainfall and increased contaminants, Cutillo said.

“Preserving freshwater flows is a natural defense against these changes,” she said.

The National Park Service in 2013 petitioned to designated the aquifer a state water management area, saying that the county does not have adequate controls over pumping to assure that the supply is not over-taxed. The county, lawmakers up to the federal level and local businesses have strongly opposed the designation, saying the aquifer uses are well below its sustained yield, and that adding the extra layer of state red tape isn’t warranted.

Last year, CWRM asked the park to be more specific about its water needs. NPS hydrologists stated at the time that the fishponds and nearshore reefs simply needed all of the water they were currently getting.

See the rest of the article here

UH Gets $20 Million to Study Fresh Water Aquifers

13 May 2016, By Burt Lum, Civil Beat

You won’t find any argument among scientists, policy makers and the general public that fresh water is an extremely important natural resource.

I would argue that clean water is more important than oil, right up there next to clean air. And in Hawaii, we are especially blessed with some of the best water in the world.

Barry Usagawa, the administrator of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply’s Water Resource Program, told me, “Oahu’s drinking water quality is one of the best in the nation. Our fresh water comes from basal groundwater that is naturally purified, has high clarity and low mineral content, (is) very stable and needs very little treatment.  Oahu’s drinking water is as nature provides it to us.”

Our mauka forests and volcanic soil are well suited as a filtration system for rainwater, as it seeps through to underground freshwater aquifers. This process is slow, taking about 25 years for the rain water to journey through the mountain to form pools, or lenses, on top of salt water pools.

The added salts and minerals in ocean water makes it denser than fresh water, enabling fresh water to float on top of the salt water. That is why it is much easier to swim, float and tread water in the ocean than in a pool. The Honolulu Board of Water Supply pumps the water from these aquifers and distributes it to communities on Oahu.

I, for one, take a lot of this for granted. Turn on the faucet and out comes fresh, clean, spring-like water. The water from my home’s tap tastes like bottled water, so I rarely buy it unless I am prepping for hurricane season. I hardly give our fresh water a second thought and always expect it to be there. But water is a very precious natural commodity.

The National Science Foundation recognized this and awarded the University of Hawaii a five-year, $20 million grant to study the freshwater aquifers. This grant is part of the foundation’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research.

See the rest of the column here

 

Most Islands Are Too Small to Register In Climate Models, but They’re in Trouble

Newsweek, 4/12/2016

For people living on the thousands of islands that dot the seas, climate change isn’t just a threat. Sea level rise is already eating their land from the coast lines inward, and in some cases threatening to sink them entirely. But new research suggests that by mid-century, 73 percent of all islands may have drinking water shortages to contend with too. That means 18 million people might not have enough freshwater to drink. And that not-so-small detail is not currently included in our global climate models.

For example, the tiny island of Nauru in the North Pacific has no drinkable groundwater nor any rivers or streams to provide safe drinking water. Changes in rainfall and increased evaporation due to a warming climate make it particularly vulnerable to drought, and more than half of Nauruans report worrying about their near-future water supply.

But the scale of global climate models means that a lot of granular information like the potential for climate change to come down hard on a small speck of land like Nauru simply gets left out. It’s akin to when the pixels in a digital image are too big to capture small details, like freckles on a person’s nose, explains Kris Karnauskas, an oceans and climate scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder. In fact, in the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, maps showing changes in groundwater leave the oceans almost completely blank—the climate models do not get to resolution high enough to capture the tiniest islands. So these islands and their populations are “computationally disenfranchised,” in their exclusion from global data, Karnauskas said in a statement.

Karnauskas is the lead author on a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday that looked at this massive information gap, and estimated that 73 percent of the world’s islands, representing about 18 million people, are threatened with climate-induced drought and aridity in the near-term, and impact that isn’t accounted for in climate models. That’s up by large margin from the previous 50 percent estimate, which only looked at how changes in rainfall would affect freshwater supply; Karnauskas’s model also included how much evaporation would change under a warmed climate, which could accelerate the drying-out of the majority of islands by 2050.

For the rest of the article see here…

 

Warming up: As droughts continue, Hawaii must protect its freshwater

(April 2016, Editor Comment:  This is a timely and well presented editorial by Senator Gabbard and Rep. Yamane of the problems facing the island’s fresh water future.   We applaud the legislature’s 2015 water bills and look forward to the new session’s legislation.  The new bills must begin to address both conservation and reuse on the islands to get ahead of future scarcities.)
Honolulu Star Advertiser – March 27, 2016
By: Sen. Mike Gabbard and Rep. Ryan Yamane

Last October, after an unseasonable and unprecedented rainy summer, the U.S. Drought Monitor declared that for the first time since April 15, 2008 no part of our island chain was suffering from drought.

For seven long years, our farmers, ranchers and citizens had endured a prolonged dry period throughout Hawaii that caused cattle herds to be thinned, crops to suffer and spiked our rate of forest fires. Unfortunately, our relief was short-lived.

Today, just five months later, 54 percent of our island area is again locked in “moderate drought” and 100 percent of our islands are “abnormally dry.” As we live through one of the largest El Niño events on record, our islands may get even drier through 2016.

Why is this happening now? Long-term climate change trends seem to be bringing drought to Hawaii more frequently. Over the past 30 years as temperatures have risen, our average annual rainfall amount has fallen by a staggering 22 percent. Our beloved tradewind days have declined by 28 percent — from an average of 291 trade wind days in 1973 to only 210 in 2009. And when we do get rain, increasingly it tends to come in large — even epic — events where several inches may fall in just a few hours, causing stormwater runoff instead of the soft, gentle rains that slowly seep into the soil and our precious island aquifers for later use.

The Legislature understands that water is the lifeblood of our society, and long-term fresh water security is a key element to our economic health and our unique quality of life. Even as we address critical issues such as homelessness and health care this session, we acknowledge the need to work proactively to protect our fresh water supply.

We have watched the sobering experience of California as it suffered through $2.74 billion in damage to its economy in 2015 alone as a result of the ongoing drought and water supply problems — and the clear lesson is that a few ounces of prevention are far better than many tons of cure. We are moving to preserve our supply of the best drinking water in the world with innovative new solutions and policies.
Last year in 2015, the Legislature passed several key bills signed by Gov. David Ige that will help enable water infrastructure upgrades, encourage water recycling at state facilities, and capture stormwater runoff before it enters our oceans.

This legislative session we are building on this foundation with another comprehensive package of fresh water bills that will decrease water system leaks (House Bill 2041); foster public-private partnerships to reuse, conserve and recharge our water (House Bills 2029 and 2040); commit to statewide water reuse and recycling (House Bill 1749); improve storm water retention and capture (House Bill 1750); and provide incentives to residents who adopt water-saving devices in their homes (House Bill 2042).

In concert with these policy changes, the independent, nonprofit Hawai‘i Community Foundation recently released a report from a blue-ribbon commission that said to ensure water security, Hawaii must secure 100 million gallons a day in additional, reliable fresh water supply by 2030 even as less rain falls on our Islands.

We have embraced this challenge and will continue to improve our water policies in ways that move us toward this shared statewide goal.

While these policy changes are an important start, all of us need to work together planting trees, turning off the tap, and — most importantly — teaching our keiki the value of wai in order to truly protect our shared water future.

New Cesspool Construction Bill

March 2016, By COLIN M. STEWART Hawaii Tribune-Herald

HILO — The state has taken an important step toward addressing water pollution, according to some isle scientists.

A statewide ban on new cesspool construction approved Friday by Gov. David Ige came despite protests from seven Hawaii Island legislators, who claimed the ban would place undue financial burdens on local homeowners who might not be able to afford more expensive sewage systems.

The new rules also implement a 2015 law providing a tax credit of up to $10,000 for cesspools upgraded to sewer or septic systems during the next five years, limited to $5 million or about 500 cesspool upgrades a year. Under the law, owners of cesspools located within 200 feet of the ocean, streams or marsh areas, or near drinking water sources, can qualify for the credit.

In announcing the ban, Ige said Hawaii had been the only state in the union that allowed the construction of cesspools.

“Today’s action banning new cesspools statewide would stop the addition of pollution from approximately 800 new cesspools per year,” he said.

here is the link to the rest of the story in the Hawaii Tribune Herald