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How Last Year’s Wildfires Reignited a Battle Over Water Rights on Maui

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Friday, September 6, 2024

Native Hawaiians have always understood the value of water. In the Hawaiian language, the word for fresh water is “wai”—and the word for wealth is “waiwai.” An essential asset, water was a resource Hawaiians shared, and they made sure to return what they didn’t use back to the stream. But the 19th-century sugar barons who diverted water to irrigate their plantations did not share those traditions. On Maui, the most important was Alexander & Baldwin, founded in 1870 by the sons of missionaries, which wielded great political and economic power for more than a century. At its height, it sustained its operations by draining plentiful streams of 165 million gallons a day to irrigate its plantation in Maui’s central plain, moving it through 70 miles of tunnels, ditches, flumes, and reservoirs. As stream levels dropped and taro patches dried up, Native Hawaiians, unable to grow their own food, were forced to move. The network became a subsidiary company—East Maui Irrigation—which still controls this water diversion system. Today, EMI is jointly owned by Alexander & Baldwin and agribusiness company Mahi Pono. EMI has been the source of long-running legal battles on Maui, as farmers and environmental groups seek to stop it from sucking up fresh water from the island’s streams. “For more than two decades, Native Hawaiians and the environmental community have been using legal avenues to try to restore at least some flow to these streams,” says Sierra Club attorney David Frankel. “At every turn, A&B and [the Board of Land and Natural Resources] have worked hand-in-hand to thwart those efforts.”   An A&B spokesperson disputes this. “There are laws and statutes in Hawaii that govern the flow of water in streams and these legal processes were followed by the BLNR, A&B, and the Native Hawaiian and environmental communities,” the spokesperson says. “Significant amounts of water have been restored to East Maui streams. A number of priority streams…have been permanently and fully restored and will not be diverted in the future.” The battle over Maui’s water supply intensified last August, when wildfires tore through the island and devastated the community of Lahaina. Earlier that summer, EMI’s legal opponents had scored a victory when a state court reduced the amount it could suck up from Maui’s streams by a quarter. But a day after the historic town was all but wiped out, the state of Hawaii petitioned its Supreme Court to stop the court order and increase the amount of water diverted, ostensibly for the purpose of fighting fires in Upcountry Maui. The state’s petition seemed like a backdoor way to reverse the earlier ruling against EMI, especially when it soon became clear there was more than enough water available to fight the Upcountry fires. And it raised local suspicions that the state was doing the bidding of corporations. Frankel called the effort a “brazen attempt to capitalize on tragedy to subvert the judicial process.” The state Supreme Court ultimately denied the petition. But a year after the Maui fires, the fight at the heart of that case—over who controls the island’s water supply, public or private interests—remains as fierce as ever. The hall of historic Waiola Church in Lahaina and nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission are engulfed in flames in 2023.Matthew Thayer/The Maui News/AP Hawaii’s sugar plantations started closing one by one in the 1950s, as production moved to countries where costs were lower. The last of them, A&B’s Central Maui sugar operation, shut down in 2016. The company is now in the commercial real estate and development business, with a portfolio spanning 39 properties and 3,500 acres across Hawaii. On Maui, A&B’s legacy remains complicated. For some it is an extractive force that has denied Native farmers their cultural lifestyle. For others, it is a benevolent presence that provided jobs, medical care, housing, and scholarships for students. “A&B was a major employer on Maui for over a century,” says Lucienne de Naie, the chairperson of Sierra Club Maui Group. “There were people who were very grateful to A&B. They gave immigrants a chance to work in the fields.” But cross the company, de Naie says, and “you were blackballed. It was hard to get any kind of job on Maui.” Because of its history on the island, any issue having to do with A&B, including water, has deeply divided the island community. “While we can’t speak for our predecessors, we are encouraged by the re-emergence of taro cultivation as a cultural practice and important food source in East Maui,” says an A&B spokesperson. De Naie lives in Huelo, a small town in northeastern Maui, where there is no public water supply. Residents retrieve water from streams or through water catchment. If those sources are dry, they have to purchase water. “We live in an area where our water is taken for other people to use, but we have to buy water from people that come in trucks and deliver it,” de Naie says. Hawaii’s constitution declares that water is a public trust for the benefit of all citizens, and the state government is the only entity that can administer this resource. But there’s a loophole: Businesses, such as A&B, can control and sell the use of their water diversion systems. “The operators of the diversion system end up having a significant amount of leverage over who gets how much water,” says Jonathan Scheuer, co-author of the book Water and Power in West Maui. “This is partly because of the amount of information they have available on how the system operates. Other players have to trust them often when they say this is how much water is available.” The state leases water rights to EMI and other companies. For decades, EMI has received one-year revocable permits from BLNR to divert water from Maui’s streams. In exchange for the use of water for its own purposes, EMI must deliver water to rural residents in Upcountry Maui, for which it is paid 6 cents per thousand gallons by the Maui Department of Water Supply. In 2018, the newly incorporated company Mahi Pono bought 41,000 acres of former plantation lands from A&B for $262 million, making it Maui’s largest landowner. The deal also included a 50 percent interest in EMI for $2.7 million. The company currently employs 350 Maui residents. By the end of 2024, it projects it will complete planting 14,830 acres with a variety of crops, including citrus, coffee, macadamia nut, watermelon, and onions. Though Mahi Pono’s name is Hawaiian—it means “to grow responsibly”—the company is not. It is majority owned by Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP), which manages approximately $200 billion in assets and has been buying up water rights worldwide as long-term investments. “It makes perfect sense for them to invest in water,” says Shay Chan Hodges. She served as vice chair of the Maui County Board of Water Supply from 2018 to 2019, and chair from 2019 to 2021. “Obviously there’s value to 40,000 acres of land, but the real value is the water attached to that land.” Water moves slowly through Lowrie Ditch in 2016 as it passes through a Haiku weir on its way to a siphon on the island of Maui.Matthew Thayer/Maui News/AP That’s something A&B and Mahi Pono evidently agree on, too. Per their sales contract, if A&B is unable to secure water leases with the state of at least 30 million gallons per day or if it’s unable to secure a long-term water lease of 30 years, it must pay Mahi Pono rebates of up to $62 million. Indeed, Mahi Pono’s allocation had been cut below that contractual threshold shortly before the state and A&B petitioned to increase the water usage of the East Maui Irrigation System last August in the wake of the Lahaina blaze. “If Mahi Pono can obtain a 30-year lease from the state allowing for tens of millions of gallons a day (upwards of 90 mgd), the lease itself is an asset that can be monetized and potentially transferred or sold. This adds significant value to Mahi Pono’s holdings,” says Hodges. After the Mahi Pono deal, A&B moved quickly to pursue a 30-year lease to divert up to 92 million gallons per day from Maui’s streams, with 85 mgd earmarked for Mahi Pono’s agricultural holdings. As part of its lease application, EMI filed an environmental impact statement that made plain the Faustian bargain at the heart of Maui’s water system. If it was not granted water rights, its water deliveries “would terminate,” a prospect that would leave tens of thousands of Maui residents without access to fresh water. This language predictably caused local alarm, and the Maui County Board Department of Water Supply created a Temporary Investigative Group in 2019 to research the feasibility of purchasing and maintaining the EMI system. “The Temporary Investigative Group believed that public ownership of the system was necessary for protecting the public health,” says Hodges, who was part of the group. “Because why are we being held hostage? The basic message was, ‘if you don’t do what we say, you won’t get any water.’” Hodges and her colleagues recommended either purchasing or condemning the EMI system, or for the mayor to step in to acquire the long-term leases and give control back to the government, but nothing came of it. For years, A&B and Mahi Pono have sought to influence local politics. “These corporations’ executives have held a number of influential positions in both the state and county governments,” says Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, a member of the Maui County Council. “A&B and Mahi Pono have long donated tremendous amounts to elected officials’ campaigns.” Hannibal Tavares, one of Maui’s former mayors, was a veteran of the sugar industry and an employee of A&B prior to winning office in 1979. The current vice president of A&B also served on the state’s Commission on Water Resource Management (the arm that decides how much water companies can divert) from 2002 to 2005 while working for A&B. Another sugar industry leader twice served on the commission. Since 2006, A&B and its top executives have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to state and county politicians. They’ve donated more than $10,000 to Gov. Josh Green in the past two years. Mahi Pono’s executives began donating to political campaigns in 2020. Thousands of those contributions flowed to Green, too. “This is a case of our elected leaders choosing to be beholden to a private entity,” Hodges says. Workers cut sugar cane at Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar, the state’s last sugar plantation, in this 2010 file photo.Audrey McAvoy/AP Even before last year’s wildfires reinvigorated the fight over Maui’s water supply, activists had begun to gain some ground in their effort to wrest control from A&B and Mahi Pono. Since the former and present mayor didn’t step in, in 2022, voters approved the creation of the East Maui Community Board water authority, which gives the people the power to negotiate water leases with the state. Hodges says she was surprised there was no pushback from corporations when it was put on the ballot, but there was some controversy with the appointment of its 11-member board. After the deadline to apply had closed, the county council received requests to open the process up again. When the county did so, new applicants included a former Mahi Pono executive and former Mayor Alan Arakawa, who had opposed the water authority and said it would “kill Mahi Pono.” (When the 11-member board was eventually approved, it included Arakawa, taro farmers and several water resource experts, including Scheuer, who became the chair.) Delayed by the fire, the water board began holding bimonthly meetings in February, and the director seat will soon be filled. But whether the community water authority and board successfully take East Maui water leases out of the hands of A&B and Mahi Pono, or if more challenges emerge, remains to be seen. If successful, it would be the first time in more than 100 years that the people of East Maui, and not a private corporation, will determine how its water is divided and shared. It could prove to be a model for the rest of the island, where other corporations hold its own separate systems. Currently, EMI has a one-year lease from the state covering 2024, allowing 31.25 million gallons per day to be diverted from East Maui’s streams to Mahi Pono’s land—and the Sierra Club Maui is keeping a sharp eye as its legal battles continue. It’s fighting to stop the issuance of one-year leases, which avoids the rigorous review afforded to long-term leases. De Naie says these court battles will make a difference for the future. “Eventually…we will see a standard set for trusteeship of public resources that should have been in place in the first place.”

Native Hawaiians have always understood the value of water. In the Hawaiian language, the word for fresh water is “wai”—and the word for wealth is “waiwai.” An essential asset, water was a resource Hawaiians shared, and they made sure to return what they didn’t use back to the stream. But the 19th-century sugar barons who […]

Native Hawaiians have always understood the value of water. In the Hawaiian language, the word for fresh water is “wai”—and the word for wealth is “waiwai.” An essential asset, water was a resource Hawaiians shared, and they made sure to return what they didn’t use back to the stream.

But the 19th-century sugar barons who diverted water to irrigate their plantations did not share those traditions. On Maui, the most important was Alexander & Baldwin, founded in 1870 by the sons of missionaries, which wielded great political and economic power for more than a century. At its height, it sustained its operations by draining plentiful streams of 165 million gallons a day to irrigate its plantation in Maui’s central plain, moving it through 70 miles of tunnels, ditches, flumes, and reservoirs. As stream levels dropped and taro patches dried up, Native Hawaiians, unable to grow their own food, were forced to move.

The network became a subsidiary company—East Maui Irrigation—which still controls this water diversion system. Today, EMI is jointly owned by Alexander & Baldwin and agribusiness company Mahi Pono.

EMI has been the source of long-running legal battles on Maui, as farmers and environmental groups seek to stop it from sucking up fresh water from the island’s streams. “For more than two decades, Native Hawaiians and the environmental community have been using legal avenues to try to restore at least some flow to these streams,” says Sierra Club attorney David Frankel. “At every turn, A&B and [the Board of Land and Natural Resources] have worked hand-in-hand to thwart those efforts.”  

An A&B spokesperson disputes this. “There are laws and statutes in Hawaii that govern the flow of water in streams and these legal processes were followed by the BLNR, A&B, and the Native Hawaiian and environmental communities,” the spokesperson says. “Significant amounts of water have been restored to East Maui streams. A number of priority streams…have been permanently and fully restored and will not be diverted in the future.”

The battle over Maui’s water supply intensified last August, when wildfires tore through the island and devastated the community of Lahaina. Earlier that summer, EMI’s legal opponents had scored a victory when a state court reduced the amount it could suck up from Maui’s streams by a quarter. But a day after the historic town was all but wiped out, the state of Hawaii petitioned its Supreme Court to stop the court order and increase the amount of water diverted, ostensibly for the purpose of fighting fires in Upcountry Maui.

The state’s petition seemed like a backdoor way to reverse the earlier ruling against EMI, especially when it soon became clear there was more than enough water available to fight the Upcountry fires. And it raised local suspicions that the state was doing the bidding of corporations.

Frankel called the effort a “brazen attempt to capitalize on tragedy to subvert the judicial process.” The state Supreme Court ultimately denied the petition. But a year after the Maui fires, the fight at the heart of that case—over who controls the island’s water supply, public or private interests—remains as fierce as ever.

A house and palm trees burn in a massive wildfire.
The hall of historic Waiola Church in Lahaina and nearby Lahaina Hongwanji Mission are engulfed in flames in 2023.Matthew Thayer/The Maui News/AP

Hawaii’s sugar plantations started closing one by one in the 1950s, as production moved to countries where costs were lower. The last of them, A&B’s Central Maui sugar operation, shut down in 2016. The company is now in the commercial real estate and development business, with a portfolio spanning 39 properties and 3,500 acres across Hawaii.

On Maui, A&B’s legacy remains complicated. For some it is an extractive force that has denied Native farmers their cultural lifestyle. For others, it is a benevolent presence that provided jobs, medical care, housing, and scholarships for students. “A&B was a major employer on Maui for over a century,” says Lucienne de Naie, the chairperson of Sierra Club Maui Group. “There were people who were very grateful to A&B. They gave immigrants a chance to work in the fields.” But cross the company, de Naie says, and “you were blackballed. It was hard to get any kind of job on Maui.”

Because of its history on the island, any issue having to do with A&B, including water, has deeply divided the island community. “While we can’t speak for our predecessors, we are encouraged by the re-emergence of taro cultivation as a cultural practice and important food source in East Maui,” says an A&B spokesperson.

De Naie lives in Huelo, a small town in northeastern Maui, where there is no public water supply. Residents retrieve water from streams or through water catchment. If those sources are dry, they have to purchase water. “We live in an area where our water is taken for other people to use, but we have to buy water from people that come in trucks and deliver it,” de Naie says.

Hawaii’s constitution declares that water is a public trust for the benefit of all citizens, and the state government is the only entity that can administer this resource. But there’s a loophole: Businesses, such as A&B, can control and sell the use of their water diversion systems.

“The operators of the diversion system end up having a significant amount of leverage over who gets how much water,” says Jonathan Scheuer, co-author of the book Water and Power in West Maui. “This is partly because of the amount of information they have available on how the system operates. Other players have to trust them often when they say this is how much water is available.”

The state leases water rights to EMI and other companies. For decades, EMI has received one-year revocable permits from BLNR to divert water from Maui’s streams. In exchange for the use of water for its own purposes, EMI must deliver water to rural residents in Upcountry Maui, for which it is paid 6 cents per thousand gallons by the Maui Department of Water Supply.

In 2018, the newly incorporated company Mahi Pono bought 41,000 acres of former plantation lands from A&B for $262 million, making it Maui’s largest landowner. The deal also included a 50 percent interest in EMI for $2.7 million.

The company currently employs 350 Maui residents. By the end of 2024, it projects it will complete planting 14,830 acres with a variety of crops, including citrus, coffee, macadamia nut, watermelon, and onions.

Though Mahi Pono’s name is Hawaiian—it means “to grow responsibly”—the company is not. It is majority owned by Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP), which manages approximately $200 billion in assets and has been buying up water rights worldwide as long-term investments.

“It makes perfect sense for them to invest in water,” says Shay Chan Hodges. She served as vice chair of the Maui County Board of Water Supply from 2018 to 2019, and chair from 2019 to 2021. “Obviously there’s value to 40,000 acres of land, but the real value is the water attached to that land.”

Water moves through an aqueduct in a field.
Water moves slowly through Lowrie Ditch in 2016 as it passes through a Haiku weir on its way to a siphon on the island of Maui.Matthew Thayer/Maui News/AP

That’s something A&B and Mahi Pono evidently agree on, too. Per their sales contract, if A&B is unable to secure water leases with the state of at least 30 million gallons per day or if it’s unable to secure a long-term water lease of 30 years, it must pay Mahi Pono rebates of up to $62 million. Indeed, Mahi Pono’s allocation had been cut below that contractual threshold shortly before the state and A&B petitioned to increase the water usage of the East Maui Irrigation System last August in the wake of the Lahaina blaze.

“If Mahi Pono can obtain a 30-year lease from the state allowing for tens of millions of gallons a day (upwards of 90 mgd), the lease itself is an asset that can be monetized and potentially transferred or sold. This adds significant value to Mahi Pono’s holdings,” says Hodges.

After the Mahi Pono deal, A&B moved quickly to pursue a 30-year lease to divert up to 92 million gallons per day from Maui’s streams, with 85 mgd earmarked for Mahi Pono’s agricultural holdings. As part of its lease application, EMI filed an environmental impact statement that made plain the Faustian bargain at the heart of Maui’s water system. If it was not granted water rights, its water deliveries “would terminate,” a prospect that would leave tens of thousands of Maui residents without access to fresh water.

This language predictably caused local alarm, and the Maui County Board Department of Water Supply created a Temporary Investigative Group in 2019 to research the feasibility of purchasing and maintaining the EMI system.

“The Temporary Investigative Group believed that public ownership of the system was necessary for protecting the public health,” says Hodges, who was part of the group. “Because why are we being held hostage? The basic message was, ‘if you don’t do what we say, you won’t get any water.’”

Hodges and her colleagues recommended either purchasing or condemning the EMI system, or for the mayor to step in to acquire the long-term leases and give control back to the government, but nothing came of it.

For years, A&B and Mahi Pono have sought to influence local politics. “These corporations’ executives have held a number of influential positions in both the state and county governments,” says Keani Rawlins-Fernandez, a member of the Maui County Council. “A&B and Mahi Pono have long donated tremendous amounts to elected officials’ campaigns.”

Hannibal Tavares, one of Maui’s former mayors, was a veteran of the sugar industry and an employee of A&B prior to winning office in 1979. The current vice president of A&B also served on the state’s Commission on Water Resource Management (the arm that decides how much water companies can divert) from 2002 to 2005 while working for A&B. Another sugar industry leader twice served on the commission.

Since 2006, A&B and its top executives have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to state and county politicians. They’ve donated more than $10,000 to Gov. Josh Green in the past two years. Mahi Pono’s executives began donating to political campaigns in 2020. Thousands of those contributions flowed to Green, too.

“This is a case of our elected leaders choosing to be beholden to a private entity,” Hodges says.

Three workers stand in a sugar cane field with machetes, chopping the cane.
Workers cut sugar cane at Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar, the state’s last sugar plantation, in this 2010 file photo.Audrey McAvoy/AP

Even before last year’s wildfires reinvigorated the fight over Maui’s water supply, activists had begun to gain some ground in their effort to wrest control from A&B and Mahi Pono.

Since the former and present mayor didn’t step in, in 2022, voters approved the creation of the East Maui Community Board water authority, which gives the people the power to negotiate water leases with the state. Hodges says she was surprised there was no pushback from corporations when it was put on the ballot, but there was some controversy with the appointment of its 11-member board. After the deadline to apply had closed, the county council received requests to open the process up again.

When the county did so, new applicants included a former Mahi Pono executive and former Mayor Alan Arakawa, who had opposed the water authority and said it would “kill Mahi Pono.” (When the 11-member board was eventually approved, it included Arakawa, taro farmers and several water resource experts, including Scheuer, who became the chair.)

Delayed by the fire, the water board began holding bimonthly meetings in February, and the director seat will soon be filled. But whether the community water authority and board successfully take East Maui water leases out of the hands of A&B and Mahi Pono, or if more challenges emerge, remains to be seen. If successful, it would be the first time in more than 100 years that the people of East Maui, and not a private corporation, will determine how its water is divided and shared. It could prove to be a model for the rest of the island, where other corporations hold its own separate systems.

Currently, EMI has a one-year lease from the state covering 2024, allowing 31.25 million gallons per day to be diverted from East Maui’s streams to Mahi Pono’s land—and the Sierra Club Maui is keeping a sharp eye as its legal battles continue. It’s fighting to stop the issuance of one-year leases, which avoids the rigorous review afforded to long-term leases.

De Naie says these court battles will make a difference for the future. “Eventually…we will see a standard set for trusteeship of public resources that should have been in place in the first place.”

Read the full story here.
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World’s ugliest lawn winner says she leaves watering to Mother Nature

New Zealand garden takes first prize in global competition designed to promote water conservationA sun-scorched patch of lawn near Christchurch, in New Zealand, has been crowned the ugliest lawn in the world.Now in its second year, the World’s Ugliest Lawn competition rewards lawn owners for not watering their parched yellow grass and patchy flowerbeds. Continue reading...

A sun-scorched patch of lawn near Christchurch, in New Zealand, has been crowned the ugliest lawn in the world.Now in its second year, the World’s Ugliest Lawn competition rewards lawn owners for not watering their parched yellow grass and patchy flowerbeds.The winning lawn in the settlement of Birdlings Flat belongs to Leisa Elliott, and is kept closely cropped by harsh coastal winds and little rainfall.“I live in a small coastal community,” Elliott said. “Our drinking water is pumped from a well in nearby Kaitorete Spit. In my mind, drinking water is drinking water, not watering-the-lawn water.”Leisa Elliott’s winning lawn is in Birdlings Flat in the Canterbury region of New Zealand. Photograph: Leisa ElliotThe contest began in the Swedish municipality of Gotland as a stunt to promote water conservation on the island. An irrigation ban in 2022 due to water shortages led to a competition between residents, which quickly gained global recognition.Elliott said: “I have aimed at creating a garden that primarily looks after itself, making its own natural rhythm.” Bushes of stout, verdant cacti surround the lawn, and are perfectly suited to the hot weather.“Mother Nature does the watering here,” she said. “When the rain comes, the transformation is stunning. An oasis after a desert is a sight to behold.”Wildlife is left to thrive undisturbed, often congregating by Elliott’s pond. “Many varieties of birds drink and bathe in it. Bellbirds, fantails, silver eyes, different types of finches, blackbirds, starlings. The list goes on. Bees and geckos also call this place home.”Elliott found out about the competition in February through a morning breakfast show. “We were experiencing above-normal summer temperatures and my lawn sure fitted the competition bill.”The jury, composed of Gotland residents, voted unanimously for Elliott’s lawn after an hour-long deliberation. “Her lawn may not win beauty contests, but it wins hearts for its message of sustainability and adaptability,” they said. “The ground, parched and textured by the elements, is dotted with natural, weather-carved indentations and adorned with the muted colours of a landscape that thrives without human interference.”skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionMimmi Gibson, the brand director at tourism agency Region Gotland, who helps organise the contest, said competition for the title was fierce. “I mean, they’re all so bad,” she said. “They’re so terrible.”Gibson said she hoped the annual contest would continue to provide people with optimism and ideas for small, meaningful actions they can take during the climate crisis. In Gotland, the contest and other initiatives have reduced water consumption by 5% to 7% each year since 2022.“We all have to channel this anxiety about environmental issues and the challenges we’re facing as a global population,” Gison said. “And this is one way to do that, not by making people feel bad but making them feel good.“At first you stand and you laugh and it’s like: ‘God, what is this?” Then you start thinking. It’s not just a fun thing, it’s actually saving water. I think people like that.”

California wildfires: Water supply becomes flashpoint in Trump-Newsom fight

The blazes burning across the Los Angeles region are not only devastating property and lives, but also fueling political argument over how to fight the fires, with President-elect Trump blaming state officials for a dearth of available water supplies. A social media brawl began on Wednesday after Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADPW)...

The blazes burning across the Los Angeles region are not only devastating property and lives, but also fueling political argument over how to fight the fires, with President-elect Trump blaming state officials for a dearth of available water supplies. A social media brawl began on Wednesday after Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADPW) efforts to fill three 1-million-gallon storage tanks left some Pacific Palisades fire hydrants high and dry. Extreme water demand had surpassed the speed with which the higher-elevation tanks could be replenished, according to LADPW. Trump soon after took to Truth Social, blaming the insufficient supply on Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), whom he accused of blocking efforts to pump more water from Northern California to the Los Angeles region. But experts maintain that moving more water in this manner would be impractical from an infrastructural perspective, as well as wholly unnecessary. "Would that have made any significant difference in terms of what we're experiencing right now with these forest fires and the damage they're creating?" asked Kurt Schwabe, a professor of environmental economics and policy at University of California Riverside. "I would say no," he told The Hill, noting that reservoirs statewide are currently in good shape. "There is this level of dryness in Southern California, but you're not going to irrigate all the forests." Trump on Wednesday night called for Newsom to resign, following up on an earlier post in which he slammed the governor for failing to sign a declaration that would have "allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way." The governor's office quickly decried the accusations as "pure fiction," writing on the social platform X that "there is no such document as the water restoration declaration" and that Newsom "is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need." Trump was likely referring to water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the "Bay-Delta"), which supplies drinking water to nearly 27 million residents through the State Water Project, according to the California Department of Water Resources. But the City of Los Angeles actually gets much of its water elsewhere, with about 38 percent of drinking water in 2023 — the most recent year with data available — coming from the Los Angeles Aqueduct, according to LADPW. The Aqueduct shuttles water from the Owens River Valley in the Eastern Sierra Nevada to the city, rather than from the Northern California Bay-Delta. Another 9 percent of the city's 2023 drinking water came from local groundwater and 2 percent from recycled wastewater, while 51 percent was imported from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Only 30 percent of Metropolitan's water originates in the Northern Sierra, as 20 percent comes from the Colorado River and 50 percent form a mix of other resources. On Wednesday night, Newsom announced that the state was mobilizing up to 140 water tanker trucks to help fight the Eaton and Palisades fires. The 2,500-gallon vessels were joining about 23 that were already on the ground, according to his office. In the same announcement, his team noted that "the state started tracking this weather event closely over the weekend and began prepositioning resources on Sunday." The governor, his office added, is in constant touch with local, state and federal leaders, including President Biden. Earlier in the day, Biden had approved Newsom's request for a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration, which made federal assistance available to bolster emergency response costs. Daniel Swain, a University of California Los Angeles climate scientist, addressed the issue of preparedness in a webinar the same day, noting that "there was a lot of pre-positioning of resources, which likely saved lives." "This event scared people as much as a week before it occurred in terms of the weather forecasting world," he said. "In fact, it is possibly only because of those dire prognostications that things weren't even worse." "I am pretty sure there are people who are alive right now, who would not have been alive, had those pre-positioned resources not been in place," Swain added. Nonetheless, Trump followed up with additional criticism on Thursday morning by denouncing the "gross incompetence by Gavin Newscum and Karen Bass," referring to the mayor of Los Angeles, while adding that "Biden’s FEMA has no money — all wasted on the Green New Scam!" The Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) has authorized the use of federal funds to assist California in combating multiple fires in the Los Angeles area, and said it is making assistance available to people impacted by the blazes. As far as pumping more water from north to south is concerned, Schwabe, from UC Riverside, stressed that doing so "would have had virtually no impact on what we're experiencing right now." Instead, Schwabe described the ongoing crisis as "a local preparedness issue," in the sense that cities need to account for the "changing climate regime" in the future planning and placement of resources. For example, he suggested that rather than just relying on three tanks in Pacific Palisades, officials could form partnerships with adjacent communities that might be able to share tanks during times of crisis. Repositioning and diversifying supply sources, Schwabe explained, would be more strategic than increasing the amount of water flowing to the region. He likened the situation to a household fire, in which the residents have only one garden hose and ask their neighbors to borrow another one. Similar to that household, Schwabe explained, Southern California will probably need "more garden hoses and bigger garden hoses" in the future. Patrick Reed, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University, echoed these sentiments, identifying a division between two elements of Los Angeles's water management: the "crisis response and long-term planning." The Pacific Palisades water tank situation was "reflective of the extraordinary demands" that local officials were facing in managing the immediate crisis, Reed said in an emailed statement. "Long-term planning of city water supplies would not typically assume they are going to be used to fight large-scale wildfires in heavily populated urban areas," he continued. The "surprising shocks" caused by the ongoing fires and resultant stress on water usage surpass any "peak demand scenarios that would be used for planning," according to Reed. Nonetheless, he emphasized that such a short-term disaster can bring long-term impacts, in the form of lives lost and property damages. Los Angeles, Reed explained, is coping with a situation in which known climate change risks "have manifested into the type of extraordinary extreme event that we are struggling to address in our long-term planning.” Going forward, Schwabe said that he could see the value in pausing to reevaluate crisis management plans under new climate scenarios — not just in Southern California, but in other areas across the U.S. West. "If you're not, you're assuming that these are just kind of really infrequent events, and you're basing your decisions on past data and evidence about climate," he said.  "Then you're likely going to continue to make these mistakes," Schwabe added.

In Los Angeles, Water Runs Short as Wildfires Burn Out of Control

By Jackie Luna, Kanishka Singh, Jonathan Allen and Hannah LangLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Crews battling multiple wildfires that raged across Los...

By Jackie Luna, Kanishka Singh, Jonathan Allen and Hannah LangLOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Crews battling multiple wildfires that raged across Los Angeles on Wednesday were up against a near-perfect storm: intense wind, low humidity and, most troubling for residents, inadequate supplies of water to contain the blazes.Los Angeles authorities said their municipal water systems were working effectively but they were designed for an urban environment, not for tackling wildfires.On Wednesday, at least three major blazes burned in LA County communities simultaneously, including a fire in the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood, an area west of downtown LA dotted with multimillion-dollar celebrity homes built along steep canyons.Jay Lund, a professor in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California Davis, said city water tanks are typically designed to be able to put out localized fires, not widespread fires like the ones blazing in Los Angeles."It's not a matter of there's not enough water in Southern California, it's a matter of there's not enough water in that particular area of Southern California just for those few hours that you need it to fight the fires," Lund added.Across the county, more than 70,000 people were ordered to evacuate and at least five were left dead as fierce winds fueled the fires, which have burned unimpeded since Tuesday. The fires have destroyed hundreds of buildings."A firefight with multiple fire hydrants drawing water from the system for several hours is unsustainable," said Mark Pestrella, director of Los Angeles County Public Works.Janisse Quinones, CEO and chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said the demand for water to fight fires at lower elevations was hampering the city's ability to refill water tanks at higher elevations.The lack of water hampered efforts particularly in Pacific Palisades, an upscale coastal enclave where a wildfire has consumed nearly 12,000 acres (4,856 hectares).The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said that in advance of the windstorm, it had filled all available water tanks in the city, including three 1-million-gallon (3.8-million-litre) tanks in the Palisades area.The area had exhausted the three water storage tanks by early Wednesday, Quinones said in a press briefing."We're fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging," she added, noting that Pacific Palisades experienced four times the normal water demand for 15 hours as firefighters battled the blaze.The department urged Angelenos to conserve water, and said it had deployed 18 water trucks of 2,000 to 4,000 gallons since Tuesday to help firefighters.Lund said the nature of the fires was such that it was nearly impossible to arrange enough water in advance."If everything catches fire at once, there's not going to be enough water for everybody," he said."There's just no way that you could fit the pipes to work to move that much water across that area in a short period of time."Gregory Pierce, director of the UCLA Water Resources Group and an adjunct professor at the Department of Urban Planning, said the fires were unusually intense even by Southern California standards. His brother's house burned down, he said.He said the problem was not a lack of water so much as the difficulties in rapidly getting large amounts of water to a specific point where it was needed, which would entail major investments in power and infrastructure.Sanah Chung, a Pacific Palisades resident who spoke to a reporter while hosing down hedges and trees in his front yard, said governments at all levels should have been more proactive in preparing for the fires."There must be some things we can do to try to mitigate this. Please. Fire hydrants are empty. Firefighters are doing everything they can, but we need to do things more proactively before," Chung, 57, told Reuters.(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington, Jonathan Allen and Hannah Lang in New York and Jackie Luna in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty, Paul Thomasch and Lincoln Feast.)Copyright 2025 Thomson Reuters.

People are flocking to Florida. Will there be enough water for them?

Climate change, a development boom, and overexploitation of groundwater are draining the Sunshine State.

While wading through wetlands in the headwaters of the Everglades, where tall, serrated grasses shelter alligators and water moccasins, agroecologist Elizabeth Boughton described one of Florida’s biggest environmental problems: There’s either too much water, or too little.  An intensifying climate, overexploitation of groundwater, and a development boom have catalyzed a looming water supply shortage — something that once seemed impossible for the rainy peninsula. “It’s becoming more of an issue that everyone’s aware of,” said Boughton, who studies ecosystems at the Archbold Biological Station, a research facility in Highlands County, Florida, that manages Buck Island Ranch. The ranch — a sprawling 10,500 acres of pasture lands and wildlife habitats across south-central Florida — both conserves water through land restoration while also draining it as a working cattle ranch. “You kind of take water for granted until you realize, ‘Oh my gosh, this is something that is in danger of being lost.’” An entrance to Buck Island Ranch, a 10,500-acre working cattle farm in Highlands County, Florida (left). Agroecologist Elizabeth Boughton gestures to a grassy field of bluestems and sedges on Buck Island Ranch on December 16, 2024. Ayurella Horn-Muller / Grist Like many places worldwide, the dwindling freshwater availability in Florida is being exacerbated by a warming atmosphere. Sea levels in the state’s coastal regions have already risen dramatically in the last few decades, pushing salt water into the groundwater and creating an impotable brackish mixture that is costly to treat. A report released last summer by the Florida Office of Demographic Research found that the state may experience a water supply shortage as soon as this year, with the problem escalating in coming decades. Florida’s groundwater supply is the primary source of drinking water for roughly 90 percent of the state’s 23 million inhabitants, and is vital for agricultural irrigation and power generation. Public use by households, municipalities, and businesses accounts for the largest depletion of groundwater in Florida, while agriculture is responsible for at least a quarter of withdrawals.  Virtually all of Florida’s groundwater comes from the state’s expansive network of aquifers, a porous layer of sediment that underlies the peninsula. When it rains, water soaks into the ground and gets trapped in gaps in the rock formation — providing an underground reserve of fresh water that humans can tap into with wells and pumps.  But most Floridians live near large population centers — like Miami and Tampa — where the freshest aquifer water is too deep to access or too salty to be readily used. With nearly 900 people moving to Florida each day, the Sunshine State is only continuing to grow, fueling a thirsty rush for new housing developments.  Clayton Aldern / Grist The future of the state’s water has long looked bleak, and a ballooning population is ramping up an already-fraught situation. As leading policymakers push pro-development agendas and parcels of agricultural land are sold to the highest bidder, districts are grappling with political demands to advance water permits — often at the cost of conservation. The Florida Office of Demographic Research report found that the conservation, infrastructure, and restoration projects necessary to tackle the incoming water deficit will cost some $3.3 billion by 2040, with the state footing over $500 million of that bill. But according to Florida TaxWatch, a government-accountability nonprofit, current water projects and sources of funding aren’t coordinated or comprehensive enough to sustain the state’s population growth.  Global warming has changed the nature of rainfall in Florida, increasing the likelihood of extreme rain events in swaths of the state, but even torrential bouts of rain won’t replenish drained aquifers. Intensified hurricanes are primed to overwhelm wastewater systems, forcing sewage dumps that contaminate the water supply, while rising sea levels and floods further damage public water infrastructure. Higher temperatures that drive prolonged droughts also contribute to groundwater scarcity: Florida has experienced at least one severe drought per decade since the onset of the 20th century.  Such climate-borne crises are already playing out across the United States, and beyond. Roughly 53 percent of the nation’s aquifers are drying up as global water systems confront warming. Compared to places where groundwater is already severely depleted, like California, Mexico, and Arizona, Florida has the luxury of one of the highest-producing aquifers in the world, and more time to prepare for a dearth of supply. Still, adaptation will be necessary nearly everywhere as the Earth’s total terrestrial water storage, including groundwater, continues to decline. Record-breaking temperatures and crippling droughts wrought havoc on the world’s water cycle last year, according to the 2024 Global Water Monitor Report.  Read Next Three-quarters of the world’s land is drying out, ‘redefining life on Earth’ Ayurella Horn-Muller Sarah Burns, the planning manager for the city of Tampa, home to half a million people on the Gulf Coast, expects water supplies will continue to face a number of climate pressures like drought and rising sea levels. But one of the biggest factors in the city’s looming water crisis is population growth — and a hard-to-shake abundance mindset.“It’s all a challenging paradigm shift,” Burns said, noting that many Floridians take pride in lush, landscaped lawns, and an influx of new homes are coming to market with water-intensive irrigation systems pre-installed. This can be seen in Tampa, where roughly 18 percent of residents use 45 percent of the city’s water. Tampa already exceeds its 82 million-gallons-per-year limit that it can directly provide without paying for more from the regional provider, at a higher cost to residents. In November 2023, the Southwest Florida Water Management District instituted a once-a-week lawn-watering restriction for households in the 16 counties it oversees, including Tampa. In August 2024, the Tampa City Council voted to adopt the measure indefinitely — a move that has already saved them billions of gallons of water.  Read Next The US is finally curbing floodplain development, new research shows Jake Bittle As newcomers flock to affordable housing within commuting distance of Tampa, once-rural areas are also feeling the squeeze. The nearby city of Zephyrhills — known for a namesake bottled water brand — has temporarily banned new developments after it grew too quickly for its water permit. “Water is the hidden problem that really forced our hand,” said Steven Spina, a member of the Zephyrhills City Council who proposed the restriction. “It is ironic that we’ve been known as the ‘City of Pure Water’ and then we’re in this predicament.” Perhaps nowhere in Florida is more at the crux of water issues than Polk County in the center of the state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2023, more people moved to the former citrus capital than anywhere else in the nation, with subdivisions “springing up right and left.” The growth the county is seeing “has created a need to find additional water supplies,” said Eric DeHaven, the executive director of Polk Regional Water Cooperative. The entity was created in 2017 after Polk County’s worries became so acute it prompted more than a dozen local governments to assemble to protect their future water supplies. Between 2002 and 2015, Polk County’s farm bureau reported 100,000 acres — about a third of the county’s total agricultural land — had been converted for development. Florida farms are a crucial part of the U.S. food system, but struggles from extreme weather, citrus diseases, and economic issues are driving farmers out of the industry. By 2040, half of an estimated 1 million additional acres of developed land could take the place of farms. This would further magnify Florida’s water supply issues — in 2020, public utilities were estimated to have overtaken farming as the biggest drain on groundwater resources.  A farmworker checks the irrigation lines in an orange grove in Polk County, Florida, in 2022. Paul Hennessy / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images “Imagine if you own this land,” said Boughton, the agroecologist. Farmers are hard-pressed to refuse offers as high as six figures per acre from developers, she noted. ”There’s so much pressure from urban development … that opportunity is hard to pass up.”  “Things are definitely changing because of climate change, but it’s also because of this,” said Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson, gesturing to new houses built across the road from her home in Columbia County, in the north of the state. As the founder of the nonprofit Our Santa Fe River, Malwitz-Jipson has spent the last two decades fighting to save the crystal-blue springs that feed it.  Collectively, the state’s springs have lost over a third of their historic flow levels, while 80 percent are severely polluted. Last year, Blue Springs, a locally beloved landmark, collapsed entirely. Because these springs are directly connected to the aquifer, says Malwitz-Jipson, such signs are omens of declining groundwater health.  Local water-conservation activist Merrillee Malwitz-Jipson points to watermarks on a tree on the banks of the Santa Fe River near her home in Florida. Sachi Kitajima Mulkey / Grist It wasn’t long ago that she devoted years to try and prevent the renewal of a controversial 1 million-gallons-per-day groundwater permit for bottled water for BlueTriton — formerly a subsidiary of Nestlé — in nearby Ginnie Springs. When the effort failed, she switched gears and now advocates for adding conservation conditions to water-use permits. A 2019 report from the Florida Springs Institute found that restoring springs to 95 percent of their former flow levels would require curbing regional groundwater extractions by half. Matt Cohen, a hydrologist who leads the University of Florida’s Water Institute, says the “devil is in the details” when it comes to permitting. “It’s very much where the implementation of those kinds of sustainability measures would be realized,” Cohen said, adding that state water management district authorities often convince applicants to use “substantially less” water. Other measures include offering alternatives to groundwater, like using reclaimed wastewater and surface water supplies. Coordinating such conservation efforts across Florida’s five water management districts and 67 counties will take a concerted statewide approach. In November, the state unveiled its 2024 Florida Water Plan — which includes expanding conservation of agricultural lands, and investing millions into infrastructure and restoration projects, such as Buck Island Ranch — among other measures.   Still, in the face of the population boom, advocates like Malwitz-Jipson wonder if it will be enough. “I don’t know why the state of Florida keeps issuing all these permits,” she said. “We are not ready, y’all. We do not have enough water for this.”  This story was originally published by Grist with the headline People are flocking to Florida. Will there be enough water for them? on Jan 8, 2025.

Curbing irrigation of livestock feed crops may be vital to saving Great Salt Lake: Study

Reducing the amount of water used to irrigate livestock feed crops may be critical to revitalizing the dried-out Great Salt Lake, a new study has found. About 62 percent of the river water heading toward the lake in Utah ends up rerouted for human purposes, with agricultural needs responsible for almost three-quarters of those diversions,...

Reducing the amount of water used to irrigate livestock feed crops may be critical to revitalizing the dried-out Great Salt Lake, a new study has found. About 62 percent of the river water heading toward the lake in Utah ends up rerouted for human purposes, with agricultural needs responsible for almost three-quarters of those diversions, according to the study, published on Tuesday in Environmental Challenges. The Great Salt Lake, which relies on mountain snowpack for much of its replenishment, is the biggest saline lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth largest on the planet, the study authors noted. The lake is also a biodiversity hotspot that houses critical habitats and sustains migratory birds, while also supporting area jobs and $2.5 billion in economic activity. At the same time, however, the basin has lost more than 15 billion cubic yards of water over the past 30 years and is now getting shallower at a rate of 4 inches per year, the researchers explained. And as the lake has gotten smaller, area residents have increasingly endured respiratory problems from the fine particulate matter kicked up in the form of wind-carried dust. “The lake is of tremendous ecological, economic, cultural and spiritual significance in the region and beyond,” co-author William Ripple, a professor of ecology at Oregon State University, said in a statement. “All of those values are in severe jeopardy because of the lake’s dramatic depletion over the last few decades." About 80 percent of the diverted agricultural water ends up irrigating alfalfa and hay crops, according to Ripple. With the goal of helping stabilize the lake and bolstering its restoration, Ripple and his colleagues proposed decreasing human water consumption in the area's watershed by 35 percent. These conservation efforts would include a sizable reduction in irrigated alfalfa cultivation, fallowing of irrigated hay fields and taxpayer-funded incentives for farmers and ranchers who lose income as a result. To draw their conclusions, the researchers employed data from the Utah Division of Water Resources to create a comprehensive water budget for the Great Salt Lake basin for 1989 through 2022. They found that on average, water flowing into the lake trailed behind consumption and evaporation by 500 million cubic yards per year. Going forward, the authors suggested a range of conservation measures, including crop shifting, decreasing municipal and industrial use, and leasing water rights from irrigators. But they emphasized that farmers and ranchers who lose income should be compensated at a cost ranging from $29 to $124 per Utah resident per year. “Revenues from growing both irrigated alfalfa and grass hay cattle feed in the Great Salt Lake basin account for less than 0.1% of Utah’s gross domestic product,” Ripple said. “But our potential solutions would mean lifestyle changes for as many as 20,000 farmers and ranchers in the basin.” Yet although the necessary adjustments would be significant, Ripple stressed that they would not be insurmountable. “With the right policies and public support, we can secure a sustainable future for the Great Salt Lake and set a precedent for addressing water scarcity globally," he added.

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