Lahaina, HI —

West Maui residents and their allies joined public health officials at the Lahaina Civic Center to discuss the future of nearshore pollution control and water recycling in the Lahaina area on Tuesday. The public hearing was hosted by the Hawai‘i Department of Health to receive public comments on the draft Clean Water Act permit for the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility.

The proposed National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit is the result of a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of ocean advocates that affirmed that the Clean Water Act regulates pollution discharges that reach surface waters through groundwater. For decades, the County has disposed of treated “R-1” wastewater by dumping it into the facility’s injection wells, where the groundwater carries the treated wastewater to emerge in reef areas just offshore of Kahekili Beach Park, a popular recreation area known traditionally as Hā‘enanui. The R-1 water is high in nutrients like Nitrogen and Phosphorus and, because it is made up of fresh water, is more acidic than ocean water. These nutrients and acidity are disastrous for the reef, causing smothering algal blooms and coral bioerosion.

Ocean protection groups including Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club, Surfrider Foundation, and West Maui Preservation Association have advocated for years to reduce pollution of the nearshore waters. The groups, represented by Earthjustice, went to court in 2012, and the Clean Water Act was upheld time after time. In 2021, the Hawai‘i federal district court reaffirmed that the Lahaina injection well discharges must be regulated by an NPDES permit. The draft permit was published last summer.

“Ultimately we should be phasing out the use of these injection wells altogether, but until then, we need to make sure this permit does everything possible to stop killing the reef,” said Hannah Bernard of Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund. “It took consistent community pressure to get us to this point, and we will need to continue that pressure to ensure that the R-1 is reused as much as possible and the allowable limits on nitrogen and phosphorus discharges are set low enough for the reefs to recover.”

Before the collapse of sugar plantations in West Maui, the facility’s R-1 water was reclaimed for agricultural purposes via a system of pumps, pipes, and reservoirs. Today, only a small fraction of the available R-1 waste is reused, and much of the R-1 infrastructure has fallen into disrepair. The same nutrients in the R-1 water that are killing the reef — Nitrogen and Phosphorus — are also fundamental to healthy vegetative growth on land, and can provide additional fresh water resources to offset the amounts of water that are currently diverted from streams or pumped from wells.

“This is liquid fertilizer that could be used up mauka to directly offset stream diversions, but, for the reef, it’s liquid death,” said Earthjustice attorney Mahesh Cleveland. “This valuable resource must not continue to be wasted in this destructive way.”

At the hearing, Lahaina community members urged the Department of Health to include stringent limits on nutrient pollution at Hā‘enanui, and to quickly maximize the community’s access to R-1 water resources and put them to beneficial use for irrigation and fire control. Participants included multiple generations of West Maui community leaders and environmental advocates from across Maui. Across the board, testifiers called for more aggressive reduction of nearshore pollutants, coupled with prompt expansion of R-1 water availability.

“This is a chance for government officials to come together around an obvious win-win solution, instead of just rubber-stamping status quo pollution levels, as this draft permit does,” said Hanna Lilley of Surfrider Foundation. “Being able to address nearshore pollution at the same time as mitigating fresh water shortages is an opportunity we can’t pass up. This is what the community needs, and we believe the state and county can make it happen.”

The Department of Health now has the opportunity to revise the draft permit in response to public input and concerns.