Kapalua Golf Course Not Authorized to Irrigate With Drinking Water 

Yesterday the state water commission’s acting chair Ryan Kanaka‘ole issued a letter confirming that the Kapalua Bay and Plantation Golf Courses are not authorized to irrigate their turf grass with drinking water. In his letter sent to the golf course owner, TY Management Corporation, and its water providers, Hawai‘i Water Service and Maui Land & Pineapple, Inc., Chair Kanaka‘ole clarified that, under Hawai‘i law, the burden of establishing a water use within a management area “rests with those who seek to benefit from it.”  

As Earthjustice explained in its November 17, 2025 letter to the commission, TY has not met its burden of showing it had an “existing use” of groundwater when the commission designated West Maui as a water management area in 2002. Under the law, an existing use may be allowed to continue while the commission processes water use permit applications. But without an existing use, TY must file an application for a new use of groundwater and join everyone else requesting a water use permit.  

“For too long, our calls for action from this commission have fallen on deaf ears. Chair Kanaka‘ole’s letter showed us that finally someone is listening to the community. Setting this golf course issue straight is an important first step toward the commission fulfilling its constitutional duty as kahuwai pono. Now it’s time for them to act on our permits,” said Karyn Kanekoa of Hui Na Mamo Aloha ‘Āina o Honokōhau. 

Kanaka‘ole’s letter comes the following week after the commission’s February 24, 2026 meeting, during which West Maui community members insisted that, before moving forward to process permit applications, the commission must first rescind former chair Dawn Chang’s prior correspondence purporting to recognize TY’s groundwater use. After a question was raised whether the action of rescinding the correspondence was included in the meeting notice, the commission suspended the public meeting to confer privately. It then voted to move forward with processing permits but did not address what to do about Chang’s correspondence. 

“With the rest of West Maui living under water restrictions, the former chair threw public trust priorities out the window. She let a golf course, without a valid application, cut in line in front of everyone else, take drinking water for its grass, and take up all the commission’s attention,” said Dru Hara, an attorney with Earthjustice’s Mid-Pacific Office. “By correcting this misstep and putting the law and the kamaʻāina community first, Chair Kanaka‘ole has set the commission back on track toward pono stewardship of Maui’s water resources.” 

The commission designated West Maui surface and groundwater resources for regulation in 2022, and the one-year deadline to submit permit applications to continue an “existing use” at the time of designation was August 7, 2023. Since then, applicants have waited nearly three years for the commission to start processing and issuing permits. But neither TY, nor the companies supplying the water, included any groundwater use on the Kapalua courses in their permit applications, so by law any claim for an existing use of groundwater was abandoned. As Kanaka‘ole’s letter explains, should TY wish to resume watering its golf turf with drinking water, it must first submit a proper request to the commission.