Posted on: Monday, August 5, 2002

EDITORIAL
Kamehameha makes good water decision

Trustees of Kamehameha Schools, now painfully aware of how sensitive their role can be, made a wise decision last week to drop efforts to use Waiahole water for a Leeward subdivision project.

The withdrawal of the request for a 4.2 million-gallon diversion avoids a fight with Hawaiians and others who believe Waiahole water belongs in Windward streams.

The move should help heal wounds left open when trustees decided to admit a non-Hawaiian student to their Maui campus without fully consulting beneficiaries, including parents, faculty and Hawaiian organizations.

In that sense, the withdrawal could be seen as a "strategic" or political move by trustees anxious to re-establish their credibility with their beneficiaries.

But it was also the right decision strictly in terms of use of Waiahole water.

When sugar production ended in Central O'ahu, a decision had to be made about what to do with some 27 million gallons of water that flowed daily out of the Windward mountains and into Leeward O'ahu. Until the Waiahole Ditch was built, the water would collect in natural cells within the mountains where most of it would eventually flow back into Kane'ohe Bay.

With the death of sugar, Windward farmers and others argued the water should be allowed to return to its natural course and the ditch shut down. Leeward interests wanted to keep it flowing, both for diversified agriculture and for other forms of irrigation.

Eventually, the Commission on Water Resources Management decided that 14 million gallons would continue to go to Leeward, for agriculture, while the remainder would be returned to Windward streams.

The state Supreme Court stepped in two years ago, however, to say the commission had to revisit its decision. Returning water to its natural site is a legitimate "use" under the constitution and must be given as much weight as other uses such as agriculture, the court said.

It was against that backdrop that Kamehameha Schools had gone in with a request for 4.2 million gallons that would be used for golf course irrigation and dust control. It is difficult to see how the commission could have approved the request, given (a) that it was not for agriculture and (b) the Supreme Court's admonition.

Still, that request would have set up an unwanted and unnecessary confrontation for Kamehameha Schools. And it helps establish the principle that the Waiahole water is a resource that cannot, and will not, be taken casually.