After last year’s deadly wildfires in Lahaina, Archie Kalepa returned to the smoldering ruins of his hometown and immediately set up an emergency center at his home. Since then, the legendary waterman has dedicated himself to the recovery of Lahaina and its people.

He has also been thinking about what’s needed for long-term recovery. In his view, it’s all about rethinking how we use our natural resources. “Twenty years ago, the most precious thing in Hawai‘i was land,” he says. “Today, the most precious thing on our islands is water.”

Famed Waterman Archie Kalepa, who has helped lead recovery efforts in Lahaina, says he is also committed to finding ways to reuse wastewater that will benefit the land, ocean and community.

Kalepa’s family has lived in West Maui for nine generations and once presided over large taro patches that helped feed Lahaina when it was the capital of the Hawaiian kingdom. Water had been the essence of Lahaina, and there were so many canals and wetlands that it was once known as the “Venice of the Pacific.” But that landscape was transformed over time.

Kalepa sees the increasing threats of wildfire caused by droughts, climate change and poor land management, and he believes that two solutions are needed: one based on indigenous wisdom and the other on modern technology.

The first involves bringing back the wise use of water that his Hawaiian ancestors practiced, which will help create local farms and restore the life of the land.

The second option involves the innovative reuse of treated wastewater. Millions of gallons of highly treated effluent are currently pumped into the ground via injection wells on Maui, without beneficial purposes. But a local lawsuit based in Lahaina that went to the U.S. Supreme Court is forcing counties to find more beneficial uses, such as fire suppression.

Together, traditional water management and modern wastewater reuse could help restore Lahaina and protect all of Hawai‘i, Kalepa says. But to understand why, he says, it’s important to understand how water resources were radically changed over the last two centuries and how treated effluent could help transform all of Hawai‘i’s future.

Rise and Fall of “King Cane”

The Pioneer Mill Co. was created in Lahaina in 1860, and the sugar plantation became one of the most successful and longest running in Hawai‘i (finally closing in 1999). Sugarcane was profitable, and plantations sprung up all over the islands.

With the rise of what author John Vandercook called “King Cane,” a network of sugar barons would transform Hawai‘i’s economy, landscape and culture, and lead to the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893. During that time, plantation owners used thousands of immigrant workers to build a massive network of dikes and canals to divert streams across the state to their plantations to feed their water-hungry crops.

The redirected flow of water caused many perennial streams to dry up, leading to the decline of traditional taro farming and the livelihood of many Native Hawaiians like Kalepa’s ancestors.

The gradual decline of sugarcane production during the late 20th century motivated many plantation companies to shift their focus to real estate development. Though no longer producing crops, they still retained the water rights. Streams that once fed taro farms were now irrigating golf courses, hotels and housing. Much of what was undeveloped was left as dry, fallow fields.

Threat of Unmanaged Grassland

Invasive grasses took over the fallow fields and became fuel for an increasing number of wildfires. According to Clay Trauernicht, a plant science and wildfire expert at UH Mānoa, wildfires across the state burned an average of about 5,000 acres a year for most of the 20th century. But in the last 20 years, that figure shot up to 15,000-20,000 acres per year and is still rising.

Nani Barretto, co-executive director of the Hawai‘i Wildfire Management Organization, has seen the damage that wildfires have done. She says most housing developments in Hawai‘i were neither designed nor built with fire prevention in mind.

“We did not have fires like we do now back when most of our subdivisions were built,” Barretto says. Developers, architects and contractors in Hawai‘i weren’t focused on using fire-resistant building materials, landscaping or evacuation routes to reduce the risk of wildfires.

She says we need to retrofit old developments and design new ones to counter the increasing threat of fires, which costs the state more money than hurricanes, flooding and tsunamis combined.

Hawai‘i must also better manage the fallow lands that fuel wildfires. “Until we rethink what we’re going to do with them,” Barretto warns, “the risk is going to return.”

The state’s largest private landowner, Kamehameha Schools, recently announced plans to expand agriculture and forestry operations on roughly 960 acres above Lahaina. KS also committed to creating new residential, commercial and recreational developments on about 190 acres, parts of which border neighborhoods destroyed by the fires.

“Our vision is to see Lahaina flourish again as a place of abundance,” said CEO Jack Wong in announcing the plans.

The Rebirth of a Stream

Before the advent of sugar cane plantations and large ranches, there were many perennial streams, native forests and wetlands that kept land in Hawai‘i fertile and moist. To illustrate the effects of modern development, Kalepa shares a story about his ancestral farmlands near Lahaina.

“We have some family land in Lahaina, and the stream was dry for 130 years during this Westernized time,” he says. It turned out that Kahoma Stream was managed by Kamehameha Schools, and a coalition of community members approached the trust about restoring the stream. Kalepa advocated for restoring the water rights because he wanted to resume growing taro on his family’s lo‘i kalo.

After six years of negotiations, the community won the rights to restore the stream and, after much hard work preparing the land, it began flowing once again from mauka to makai for the first time in more than a century.

“Veins of the earth that are fertile with water, allow our earth to heal,” Kalepa said at a celebration with the community and Kamehameha Schools in 2017.

“That stream was dry for 130 years, but watching the transformation in the last six years blew me away,” Kalepa says now. What once seemed dead is now full of new life. He saw native fish come back and witnessed the coral reefs blooming again offshore.

“When you see the change come back from what was almost extinct, it really changed my perception,” he says. “I began to pay really close attention to the healthiness of the streams and the reefs.”

Restoring stream flows and water rights to local farms could transform the landscape and culture of Hawai‘i, Kalepa says. Along with reducing the amount of natural fuels for wildfires, he says, we also need to reimagine the ways we reuse our wastewater resources.

Lahaina Injection Wells Case

While working with his community to restore Kahoma Stream, Kalepa also became involved with a local water quality lawsuit. Environmental groups had formed a coalition to stop Maui County from injecting treated sewage into deep injection wells at its Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility.

The group formed the DIRE Coalition – standing for Don’t Inject, REdirect – to get the County to stop injecting treated sewage into the ground but instead to use the treated wastewater for more beneficial uses like irrigation or fire prevention.

After Maui County rejected their requests, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit on behalf of four nonprofits: Hawai‘i Wildlife Fund, Sierra Club-Maui Group, the Surfrider Foundation and the West Maui Preservation Association. (The writer worked for The Surfrider Foundation at the time.) The groups said the treated wastewater was polluting the near-shore ecosystem and seriously threatening water quality at Kahekili Beach.

Kalepa supported the cause and joined a separate complaint against Maui’s mayor to settle the case. “What’s killing our reef is these injection wells,” Kalepa says. “This is about our future … about us having healthy reefs, a healthy community, a healthy environment.” The county was pumping 3 million to 5 million gallons of treated waste into underground injection wells each day at the Lahaina facility. They tried to argue that the effluent wasn’t affecting the near-shore ecology; and even if it was, they weren’t directly responsible because the pipes weren’t connected to the ocean.

The lawsuit gained national attention and would eventually go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Earthjustice lawyer David Henkin argued the case in November 2019 and said the county’s logic was absurd. “According to Maui County, a polluter can avoid the law by taking a pipeline that discharges waste directly into the ocean and cutting it 10 feet short of the shoreline,” Henkin said.

On behalf of four environmental nonprofits, Earthjustice sued Maui County, alleging that its wastewater treatment system was polluting the near-shore ecosystem. Lawyer David Henkin argued the case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the environmental groups in 2020.

In spring 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Earthjustice and the environmental plaintiffs.

“Because the county forced us to go to the Supreme Court,” Henkin says, “we ended up getting a ruling that applies broadly across the country and makes it clear that polluters cannot avoid the Clean Water Act by using things like injection wells that then use groundwater as a sewer to transport pollution into the ocean.”

The Maui County Council has since committed to upgrading its wastewater infrastructure to a higher level of treatment and to reuse the treated wastewater for golf courses, agriculture and landscaping. The council also worked with the new Mayor Richard Bissen to pass Bill 52, which requires that all of the county’s wastewater be disinfected to meet Hawai‘i State R-1 reuse water standards by Jan. 1, 2039.

Earthjustice recently won a similar lawsuit against Hawai‘i County, saying their Kealakehe Wastewater Treatment Plant in Kona was polluting nearshore waters in Honokohau Harbor.

Thinking Outside the Box

The reuse of treated wastewater for fire prevention is a relatively new concept, but it’s gaining ground. A promising new pilot project is being developed in Mā‘alaea, the second most vulnerable area for wildfires on Maui after Lahaina, according to a 2019 report by the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization.

The harbor community, bordered by fallow lands that once grew sugarcane, has been repeatedly threatened by wildfires over the last 20 years.

Mā‘alaea has ten condo buildings, a few small businesses, a marina and the Maui Ocean Center. For decades, these buildings have been pumping millions of gallons of partially treated sewage waste into eleven injection wells along the coast. During that time, the water quality of Mā‘alaea Bay has deteriorated rapidly, and the EPA has listed it as an impaired body of water – one of hundreds across Hawai‘i.

The once thriving reefs off Mā‘alaea have declined from 78% coral coverage a few decades ago to a low of 8% currently. To visualize this decline, visitors can check out the Maui Ocean Center, which has the largest living tropical reef aquarium in the Western Hemisphere, to see what healthy colorful reefs look like. Then, a quick snorkeling excursion in Mā‘alaea Bay will reveal the gray rubblescape that remains. Without remediation, the area will continue to decline.

Healthy corals can be seen at the Maui Ocean Center in Mā’alaea, but most of the coral in the nearby Bay has died. | Photo: Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) / Tommy Lundberg, courtesy: Maui Ocean Center

Motivated by the Lahaina Injection Wells case, community leaders at the Mā‘alaea Village Association (MVA) proposed replacing the injection wells with a decentralized wastewater treatment facility. The new facility would then use the highly treated wastewater to irrigate a green belt of trees around the community. The green belt would also create a fire break, wind break and a way to reduce erosion and runoff into the bay.

Momentum and support for the project are growing under the leadership of MVA board members Peter Cannon, a longtime resident and businessman, and Tapani Vuori, the president and general manager of the Maui Ocean Center. Applying on behalf of the community, the MVA group has received state and federal funding to do engineering and site planning for the green belt design, which would be a buffer zone between the community and the fallow cane fields.

Tapani Vuori, president of the Maui Ocean Center, is one of the leaders of a proposal to irrigate a green belt of trees using highly treated wastewater.

“This could be a model for the rest of the state when we look at the cesspool situation for decentralized solutions,” says Vuori. “It’s probably four or five times less expensive than centralized treatment facilities. We feel this is a much more cost-effective solution.”

As an example, the nearby subdivision of Maui Meadows has more than 700 cesspools that are discharging over 440,000 gallons of untreated waste into their groundwater each day. Instead of homeowners paying $30,000 to $50,000 each to convert their cesspools, the community could work with the Maui County Council to create a more affordable, efficient and environmentally friendly solution.

Currently, local advocates John Laney and Caleb Harper, who live in the area, are working to create a sewer improvement district that could be financed by monthly payments. They are exploring decentralized wastewater treatment options, as well as a green belt to protect their community from future fires.

“We’ve got to think outside the box,” Kalepa says about the rebuilding of Lahaina. Along with restoring streams and converting old sugarcane fields into fertile farmland, he is also committed to “finding better ways to utilize our wastewater resources.” Reusing treated effluent for irrigation of green belts could be a key component in preventing wildfires.

The center can be seen among other buildings in the town of Mā’alaea. | Photo: Getty Images

Kalepa says Lahaina and the state need to come up with a new plan to guide us into the future. He believes that plan needs to be inclusive of all people but based on traditional Hawaiian values. “We live in a modern time, but we can still have these values that can keep our islands healthy and alive for the next 10 generations.””