LIHUE — Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, filed a petition Wednesday accusing a farmers’ cooperative and a state-run corporation of excessively diverting water from Waimea River and wasting some of it. The complaint filed on behalf of Poai Wai
LIHUE — Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm, filed a petition Wednesday accusing a farmers’ cooperative and a state-run corporation of excessively diverting water from Waimea River and wasting some of it.
The complaint filed on behalf of Poai Wai Ola/West Kauai Watershed Alliance alleges the Kekaha Agricultural Association and its landlord, Agribusiness Development Corporation, have not taken measures to reduce the amount of diverted water from being dumped after Agribusiness assumed control in 2003 of 12,592 acres of former sugar plantation lands.
“We’re seeing a continuous decline in the health of the Waimea River,” Poai Wai Ola member Kaina Makua said in a July 24 statement. “It is basically dying, while precious river water is being dumped and wasted. The Water Commission must step up, stop the waste, and let Waimea River flow again.”
The complaint was filed with the state Commission on Water Resource Management.
The land and the two ditches — Kekaha and Kokee Ditches — named in the complaint were owned by Kekaha Sugar until it closed operations in 2001.
Earthjustice attorney Isaac Moriwake said this is the first legal action against the state-run corporation Agribusiness Development and the farmer’s co-op Kekaha Agriculture Association on diverting water from the Waimea River.
The Kekaha Agriculture entered into an agreement with Agribusiness in 2007 that delegated the management of the ditch and drainage infrastructure to the farmers’ co-op.
According to Agribusiness ditch flow reports to the commission from 2010 to May 2013, Kekaha Ditch diverted an average of 31.3 million gallons of water per day from the Waimea River, while Kokee Ditch took an average of 7.6 million gallons per day.
“While some reduction in reported ditch flows appears to have occurred over the years, there has not been a change in ditch operations or design commensurate to the collapse of water demand from the demise of sugar cultivation,” the petition to the commission read.
Agribusiness Executive Director James Nakatani said he understood and concurred with some of the specific points outlined in the petition. He added the company will begin conducting further research to investigate the complaints.
“They pointed out some good things — we shouldn’t be wasting water that we’re not using,” Nakatani said Wednesday. “The ditch does provide a lot of important water for the companies and farmers down there.”
Kekaha Agricultural Association did not returned a request for comments before press time.
