‘We Cannot Afford To Be Careless’: Lahaina Residents Want More Water Oversight 0 Locals are asking state regulators to do more to protect the supply of water for future generations.
Dozens of people filed into the Waiola Church in Lahaina on Tuesday evening, clutching pieces of paper on which they’d written everything they wanted to tell regulators about whether the state should more carefully manage West Maui’s most precious resource: water.
In a rare move, the state Commission on Water Resource Management is pushing to make the Lahaina aquifer sector, which supplies West Maui’s water, a “surface and ground water management area.” It’s the technical term that means, if future water supplies might be in jeopardy, state regulators can decide who can use water and how much they can take from wells and streams.
Right now, the Iao aquifer and the streams that feed it are the only other water resources on Maui that fall under such protections, so the state held the meeting in Lahaina to find out what the community thought about the idea. Over the course of almost four hours, 60 people, ranging from school children to kupuna, shared their thoughts. A slim minority spoke against the proposal, saying that it was “premature” and could bring unintended consequences, like slowing permits and stalling housing development.
