KAHULUI - In 52 years of dealing with soil and water conservation issues, David "Buddy" Nobriga has been involved in dozens of programs designed to protect communities from losses, helped by old landowners and government leaders willing to take action.

This week, he warned that the attitudes of new landowners and laggard county officials are threatening to cut off millions of federal dollars needed to protect Lahaina town from the threat of floods, The Maui News reported today. The community needs to act within a year on the Lahaina watershed protection plan or risk losing the biggest portion of federal funding for the project, he said.

The hang-up, from his point of view, is the reluctance of West Maui Land Co. and Makila Land Co. to give up a strip needed for the seaward end of the drainage structure coupled with the slowness of the county to act to condemn the land.

Those hang-ups, in turn, would never have arisen if the Puamana condominium owners had agreed to the original drainage scheme. But they didn't, which meant redesigning the project to extend another 4,000 feet to an outfall near Launiupoko.

And, if you really want to go back to the beginning, if Pioneer Mill hadn't quit growing sugar cane, the flood threat to low-lying portions of Lahaina wouldn't be as serious as it is today.

The West Maui Soil & Water Conservation District honored Nobriga last week with a testimonial dinner on his retirement as a veteran of the mostly volunteer agency. He took the opportunity to make some pointed remarks about how things have changed since he joined the board of the then-new district in 1956.

In an interview at his office at Maui Soda & Ice Works later, he expanded on that warning. Not a shovelful of dirt has been moved, although at one time $11 million in Natural Resources Conservation Service funding was within reach. The Public Law 566 program is empty of money now, but Sen. Daniel Inouye has said he probably can restore the money, but only if the county - which is managing the project - can get hold of all the land it needs.

Nobriga's father was a founding member of the West Maui SWCD, but decided he was too busy and told Buddy he'd have to take on the volunteer job. In those old days, Nobriga said, it was different. If the district needed 2 acres of Maui Land & Pineapple Co. land, Nobriga would ask ML&P Chairman Colin Cameron, and he would get the land. If the amount needed was 32 acres, he would ask and get the land.

With Amfac, the former operators of the Pioneer Mill and developers of the Kaanapali Beach Resort, he said he got the land, but the county had to pay for it.

With West Maui Land, the project is not only not getting the land, for love or money, partner Peter Martin has offered $500,000 for the project to go away - or, more precisely, to go back to its original concept, which would not cross West Maui Land-Makila Land boundaries.

In a telephone interview from Aspen, Colo., Martin said he was "uncomfortable not to support the project; I've had to wrestle with it quite a bit." In the end, he's convinced that for environmental and other reasons, the old design is the right one.

Joe Kruger, the project engineer handling the program at the county Department of Public Works, said he has asked the Corporation Counsel to move toward acquiring the land via eminent domain. Some $5 million is available in state matching funds allocated through the State Transportation Improvement Program, and if the national government could be tapped for another $11 million, that would cover much of the estimated $15 million to $20 million cost of the entire project.

The county would be expected to kick in the rest. In the complicated regulations that surround the U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, there are some necessary elements that federal money cannot be used for.

If the Lahaina watershed project could be built, that would complete a half century of attempts to provide erosion and flood control in West Maui, where in the past, floods have swept through hotels and muddied the ocean with millions of tons of dirt and debris.

Debris basins and channels have controlled flooding at Honokowai and along Kahoma Stream, but the low-lying areas around Wainee in Lahaina still suffer from periodic floods.

Nobriga laughs about some of the turns his efforts have taken. After building detention basins to intercept runoff, "there were complaints that the ocean was 'too clean,' the turtles weren't coming any more."

Nobriga rejects the idea that the ocean can be too clean.

But there is an alternative viewpoint. Rory Frampton, a planner with Makila Land, said one reason Martin worries about moving the outfall south nearly a mile to Kauaula Stream is that the natural outfall at Puamana would be starved of the rocks and dirt that come down in freshets. Puamana has suffered erosion of its shoreline and, despite the objections of the owners there, Martin and Frampton believe they would be better off in the long run if the eroded material were not diverted.

The flooding danger is elsewhere, in low-lying parts of Lahaina. When the land was in cane, Nobriga says, runoff from steep Mount Ball (where the Lahainaluna "L" adorns the slope) was largely intercepted by berms and other fieldworks installed by Pioneer Mill. Water was checked and persuaded to infiltrate the soil.

Now, it rushes down to flood houses in the vicinity of Prison and Shaw streets.

The solution is to build a waterway, largely grassed, that will begin on Lahainaluna Road and carry water south, with two detention basins to strain out the rocks and logs that can turn the floodwaters from a nuisance into a potential killer.

After numerous public hearings, informal meetings and two environmental impact statements, the final design - at least from Nobriga's viewpoint - requires an additional 4,000 feet of sluiceway to carry the waters to Launiupoko.

Frampton describes that last segment - which would be the first to be built - as akin to a "canal" along Honoapiilani Highway, which would not only be unattractive but would interfere with moving the highway back from the shore or developing parks. It would "box in" the area, the way the Ala Wai Canal does Waikiki, he says.

Nobriga is more mindful of the consequences of doing nothing. He recalls not only the flooding from Kahoma Stream that ruined equipment at the Baldwin Packers cannery (where Lahaina Cannery Mall is now), but the earlier floods that wrecked Napili Kai Beach Club. The Kahoma floods, he said, "could have killed people."

* Harry Eagar can be reached at heagar@mauinews.com.