LIHUE — A petition requesting the county planning commission reconsider its recent decision to shut down a Koloa water bottling company has garnered support from dozens of Kauai residents who say the business was denied land-use permits without justification.
The owners of Kauai Springs, Jim and Denise Satterfield, have been involved in a dispute with the Kauai County Planning Commission over permits to bottle water on a plot of land they have leased in Koloa for over a decade. Until last month, Kauai Springs bottled its water by tapping a gravity-fed private water system that once supplied the Koloa Sugar Plantation with 300,000 gallons of potable water a day.
In 2006, when the planning commission notified the Satterfields it was revoking the permits it had issued them just two years prior, it sparked a legal battle that rose from county government offices to the highest court in the state.
The Hawaii Supreme Court handed down an opinion that essentially left the issue of the permits up to the county planning commission, which ordered the Satterfields to cease operations earlier this year and fined them $10,000 a month later when they initially refused to do so.
“One of our major concerns here is public trust and how this has a potential impact upon present and future generations in the utilization of water and conservation of water, and how this has an impact upon the public trust responsibilities that we, here, have,” said Commission Vice Chair Glenda Nogami Streufert, as recorded in the minutes of the June 26 meeting. “So that was the primary thrust of our deliberations.”
In April, the Satterfields finally shut down their business. Last month, one of their former customers, Paul Lucas, started a petition asking the planning commission “to review, reconsider and reverse the decision to shut down Kauai Springs.”
Lucas has so far collected over 50 signatures from people hope to once again someday have access to the spring water and, according to the petition, “depend on this natural resource for our health and well being.”
Anyone who would like to join the petition can call or text Lucas at 639-9797.
Lucas said a gofundme page is in the works to help the Satterfields pay the $10,000 fine and the legal fees they have accumulated during their decades long court dispute .
