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Lahaina Fire Prompts a Shift in Maui’s Long-Running Water Fights [1]
['Michael Corkery', 'Mike Baker', 'Shawn Hubler', 'More About Michael Corkery', 'More About Mike Baker', 'More About Shawn Hubler']
Date: 2023-08-20
Hours before the wildfire became an inferno that wiped out the historic Hawaiian town of Lahaina, officials at the West Maui Land Company reached out to the state with an urgent request.
The company, a real estate developer that supplies water to areas southeast of Lahaina, took note of the dangerous combination of high winds and drought-parched grasses Maui was facing. It asked for permission to fill up one of its private reservoirs in case firefighters needed it.
But there was no active wildfire in the area at that time, and state officials, apparently concerned that the diversion could affect water allocations to a nearby farmer, took several hours to approve the request, according to the company. In the interim, a brush fire that had been contained that morning flared up once again and swept through Lahaina, burning everything in its path.
It is unlikely that filling up the private reservoir would have changed the course of the Lahaina wildfire, state officials say, and winds were so high that day that helicopter crews would have been unable to reach it. But the incident is causing a political uproar, the latest in a long-running debate over how Hawaii’s water is doled out among the state’s competing interests — real estate companies, large farms, tourism facilities and residents.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/20/us/maui-hawaii-water-supply.html
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