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Big isle farmers
won’t soon get
irrigation help

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By Rod Thompson
Big Island correspondent

PAAUHAU, Hawaii -- With luck and some help from Gov. Ben Cayetano, Hamakua Coast farmers desperate for water could get some relief in a few months.

An emergency meeting of the advisory board on the Hamakua Ditch irrigation system yesterday made clear that no help will be coming right away.

Farmers and ranchers at the end of the 24-mile system have had no water for months.

"What are we going to do immediately? What are we going to do tomorrow?" asked farm cooperative head Walker Sanders.

State agriculture official Paul Matsuo responded, "There isn't really a good answer."

The state has responsibility for the crumbling 91-year-old system, which it took over following the 1994 close of the Hamakua Sugar plantation.

An overall plan has been adopted to repair the system, and some federal money has been approved.

U.S. Department of Agriculture official Douglas Toews told farmers that $3 million obtained by Sen. Daniel Inouye in December can be used for emergency repairs.

But it must be matched with state money, which would require an emergency declaration by Gov. Cayetano. State officials were skeptical that Cayetano would make such a declaration.

People's lives or personal safety must be in danger for such a declaration, Matsuo said.

Cayetano made such a declaration after one of the flumes in the system collapsed last year.

There is nothing as dramatic now, just the continuing rotting of wooden flumes, crumbling of the concrete base of the ditch, and disappearance of water into the ground below it.

Even with the governor's emergency declaration last year, repairs to just one flume took several months.

Cattle feedlot owner Gene Aguiar said as little as $5,000 to $8,000 in repairs might be enough to get water to the end of the ditch.

Ideas for cheaper fixes were considered and discarded. Flumes cannot be lined with plastic, said maintenance official Ernest Alfonso Jr. of Wai Engineering Inc. The wood is too rotten to hold nails or staples to keep the plastic in place.

Water used to be supplied to different areas on alternate days, Sanders said. Alfonso said there was more water then. With a drought on, pipes would dry up when water is turned off, then crack and leak when it is turned on again, he said.

Matsuo said Rep. Dwight Takamine and Sen. Lorraine Inouye will attempt to get money from the Legislature. That is a solution that puts repairs months away, at best.

In the end, farmers and officials agreed only on a list of priorities for the long-term, federally funded repairs. Those are a study of where the leaks are, fixing pipes that take water from the ditch to farmers, and lining the bottom of a now-dry reservoir with waterproof material.