Big Island water
emergency declared

HILO » Big Island Mayor Harry Kim declared a state of emergency yesterday due to an islandwide drought.

The declaration is technically the reissuing of a declaration made in 1998, amended several times since but never rescinded.

Rainfall is 50 percent of normal or less, the declaration said. In fact, it is much worse in places.

The Pahoa rainfall gauge south of Hilo showed 5.6 inches of rain in April, equal to 40 percent of the normal 13.9 inches for that month.

For this month up to yesterday morning, the total at Pahoa was only 1.66 inches, just 16 percent of the normal 10.5 inches for May.

Unlike Hilo, where homes have county water, most of the more than 11,000 households in the Puna district around Pahoa depend on rainwater catchment for their home water systems.

Mike Moylan, one of several private water haulers in Puna, said he has a one-week waiting list for water deliveries to home tanks, despite working six days a week up to 14 hours a day.

"I'm pretty burned out," he said.

Some homeowners whose tanks have gone dry are offering him twice his normal fee if he will make an immediate delivery, he said.

Farms and ranches are also feeling the dry weather, the emergency declaration said. One example is drying pastures on the upland slopes of Mauna Kea, said interim Civil Defense chief Lanny Nakano.

The county Department of Water Supply has issued water conservation notices to customers in seven of the county's nine districts, the declaration said.

The emergency declaration bans open fires except cooking and camp fires.