Panel: Decision strikes a balance between values, responsibilities
By ILIMA LOOMIS, Staff Writer
The state Commission on Water Resource Management on Thursday ordered 12.5 million gallons of water per day be allowed to flow in the Na Wai Eha streams in the West Maui Mountains, about one-third of the amount that had been proposed.
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The commission majority said the decision represented a balance between the values and responsibilities the law required them to consider. Chairwoman Laura Thielen said in a statement that even if 100 percent of the water were diverted, it would still not be enough to meet demands.
But contested hearings officer Lawrence Miike, also a commission member, issued a scathing dissenting opinion that accused the water panel’s majority of protecting the interests of private corporations over the public streams.
"By its decision, the majority has failed in its duties under the constitution and the state water code as trustee of the state’s public water resource," Miike wrote.
HONOLULU (AP) – Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. has hired Anna Skrobecki to be the company’s senior vice president for factory and power plant operations. HC&S General Manager Christopher Benjamin said in a statement that Skrobecki has extensive experience in industrial processing plants.
Benjamin said this will help the sugar plantation as it researches alternative processing methods for biofuels.
The Navy and U.S. Department of Energy earlier this year announced they would spend several million dollars researching biofuel production at HC&S’ sugar cane fields on Maui. Skrobecki most recently was operations vice president at Wausau Paper in Wisconsin.
She also worked for Weyerhaeuser and James River Corp.
June 3 (Bloomberg) — Inside an industrial warehouse in South San Francisco, California, Harrison Dillon, chief technology officer of startup Solazyme Inc., examines a beaker filled with a brown paste made of sugar cane waste. While the smell brings to mind molasses, this goo, called bagasse, won’t find its way into people-pleasing confections.
Instead, scientists will empty it into 5-gallon metal flasks of algae and water. The algae will gorge on the treat — filling themselves with fatty oils as they double in size every six hours, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its July issue.
Down the hall, past a rainbow of algae strains arrayed in Petri dishes, Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Wolfson shows off a gallon-size bottle of slightly viscous liquid. After drying the algae, wringing out the oil and shipping it to a refinery, this is the prize: diesel fuel that Wolfson says is chemically indistinguishable from its petroleum-based equivalent and which has already powered a Jeep Liberty and a Mercedes Benz sedan.
“We’ve produced tens of thousands of gallons, and by the end of 2010, I hope I can say we’ve produced hundreds of thousands,” Wolfson, 39, says. “In the next two years, we should get the cost down to the $60 to $80-a-barrel range.”
At that price, Solazyme’s algae fuel would compete with $80-a-barrel oil.
PAIA — State Commission on Water Resource Management members reached a historic compromise late Tuesday night, returning some water to six East Maui streams, but leaving both sides in the water dispute dissatisfied.
Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar General Manager Chris Benjamin called it "another bite from the apple," noting that the commission’s action came in addition to losing millions of gallons a day in eight other streams in a commission decision two years ago. HC&S also is awaiting a contested case ruling that could mean that Hawaii’s last sugar producer will lose another 34.5 million gallons a day in the Central Maui Na Wai Eha, or four great streams, debate.
The complainants’ attorney, Alan Murakami, of Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., immediately called for — and had recognized — a contested case hearing request the moment the proceedings ended. That means the plaintiffs will seek binding arbitration for another, more favorable result.
The commission voted to restore water to four streams only in the wet season, Waikamoi, West and East Wailuaiki and Waiohue, with 1.68 million gallons per day, 2.46 mgd, 2.39 mdg and 2.07 mdg, respectively. In the dry season, West and East Wailuaiki and Waiohue will get 0.26 mgd, 0.13 mgd and 0.06 mgd, respectively.
WAILUKU – Nearly six months after recommending that Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. restore water to only one of 19 streams in East Maui, staffers for the state Commission on Water Resource Management have changed their minds – at the direction of balance-seeking commissioners in the heated controversy.
If commissioners follow the advice signed off by Deputy Director Ken Kawahara, HC&S will have to return water to a total of 14 of 27 streams in the East Maui watershed. Kawahara’s 64-page staff report advocates that six streams get some of their water back, totaling 10.46 million gallons a day.
The report was issued in time for a meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Paia Community Center, where a number of decisions could be made. It’s a continuation of a meeting held in December when commissioners asked the staff and different sides to come back with more information and new compromises.
Since the public will be given an opportunity to testify and all the sides are asked to give presentations about their own recommendations, two additional meetings are scheduled for June 16 and June 21. The last meetings drew more than 100 speakers a day.
PAIA – The state Commission on Water Resource Management will take up a petition next week to set new instream-flow standards for 16 East Maui streams.
The panel will meet at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the Paia Community Center, where it could render a final decision in the ongoing dispute over East Maui stream water, much of it now diverted by ditches to irrigate Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. fields in Central Maui.
The meeting will continue hearings held in December to determine how much water the sugar plantation and Maui County can continue to take from the East Maui watershed. The county Department of Water Supply takes the water for domestic use by residents.
Decisions that come out of the meeting could have long-lasting impacts on all the parties involved. Previously, commissioners had asked the sides to come up with compromises to share the surface water resource, such as fixing leaky ditches and restoring water to streams in the rainy winter months.
The agenda for Tuesday’s meeting sets aside time for presentations from the state water commission staff, the Nahiku Community Association, Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., HC&S and county Department of Water Supply.
The commission, which is part of the Department of Land and Natural Resources, also will accept public testimony. If there is not time on Tuesday to make a final decision, the commission is tentatively scheduled to reconvene on June 16 and July 21, according to the agenda released Wednesday.
The long-fought battle over East Maui’s stream water has pitted environmentalists and Native Hawaiian taro farmers against HC&S, Maui County and Upcountry farmers and ranchers.
The water commission has already required HC&S to partially restore millions of gallons a day to several streams on the western half of the East Maui watershed.
With Maui still in a 3-year-old drought, HC&S has said that further claims on available surface water would hurt the company and jeopardize more than 800 agricultural jobs.
