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Water commission
tackles Hamakua
Coast issues

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By Rod Thompson
Big Island correspondent

HONOKAA, Hawaii -- On the Big Island's Hamakua Coast, the catfish will be coming soon, but the waterfall will have to wait.

The state Commission on Water Resource Management yesterday wrestled with a group of problems related to former Hamakua Sugar Company irrigation systems and came up with some partial solutions.

In 1989, to protect the damaged Lower Hamakua Ditch, Hamakua Sugar illegally diverted water from a stream that flows into Waipio Valley, drying up Hakalaoa Falls. The company went out of business in 1994, and Kamehameha Schools bought most of its land, including the 24-mile-long tunnel and ditch system.

Since then, the Waipio Valley Community Association has been trying to get the waterfall restored. Ranchers and farmers along the ditch have succeeded in delaying restoration, which would send water crashing onto a temporary repair in the system, ending their water supply.

Kamehameha Schools also bought the one-mile-long Lalakea Ditch located upstream from the dried-up waterfall.

Businessman Lawrence Balberde, operating on a short-term "license" from Kamehameha Schools, has invested more than $200,000 preparing a catfish aquaculture project which depends on the Lalakea system. Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund objected, saying the catfish project wastes water.

The water commission yesterday ordered Kamehameha Schools to report by Dec. 1 on a long-term agreement with Balberde, to have a water meter installed, and to give a detailed accounting of the water he uses.

Meanwhile, Balberde plans to begin stocking catfish fingerlings in ponds just below the reservoir at the end of the ditch.

The problem of the waterfall wasn't so easy.

In a fifty-fifty cost sharing, the state and federal governments have provided $1.6 million to dig a new tunnel behind the falls, said Dudley Kubo of the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service.

But only one company, James W. Glover Ltd., is preparing a bid on the project, and the company wants a 60-day extension for the bid deadline.

The tunneling has to be done inside a rock cliff face, 1,200 feet above the Waipio Valley floor.

"All of us underestimated the complexity of the tunneling," said James Nakatani, head of the state Department of Agriculture, which is in charge of the project.

"It's quite dangerous," he said.

The water commission agreed to delaying the start of repairs until next spring, with a new completion deadline of Dec. 31, 2001.

Longer-term plans call for replacing 25 of the most leaky flumes, out of a total of 50, which carry water across gullies once it leaves the tunnel and enters the ditch portion of the system. No funding is available for that yet.

The ditch now carries a minimum of 19 million gallons a day, but farmers use only 7.2 million a day on average, a commission staffer said.

The staff proposed reducing water taken into the ditch to 7 million gallons per day, restoring the remainder to four streams flowing into Waipio Valley.

But Earthjustice staffer Marjorie Ziegler said the law calls for considering how much water the streams need to remain natural, not how much water farmers need. Five studies of the streams are now under way, she said, urging a delay until the results are in.

The commission voted to grant the delay.