Neglected North Shore Plantation Waterways Fueled Damaging Hawaii Floods

Sarah Ghio leans on the rear bumper of her dead silver SUV, taking a sip of juice to wet her chapped lips. It’s her sole alternative since she returned to her flood-stricken North Shore Oʻahu farm, where tap water remained unsafe to drink. You can see the exhaustion in her face, hear it in her voice.

Ghio lives off the grid on leased land once owned by Dole Food’s sister company Castle and Cooke, a small piece of more than 300 acres still framed by the pineapple plantation’s century-plus-old irrigation ditches. Invasive weeds have, over time, strangled that ditch system, which merges with natural streams to carry water through farm fields and out to the ocean. If the Kona low storms of recent weeks are any indication, they’re no longer up to the job.

For years the region’s waterways have been neglected. Waialua farmers and residents say that while last weekend’s historic rainfall was not avoidable, the extent of the damage was. They blame the culverts, ditches, bridges and overgrowth that became dams for the detritus carried downhill by the stormwater, which together blocked some key drainage systems.

Many don’t know who’s at fault. They say government departments refer them to other county and state agencies – what some describe as a goose chase. As tempers rise amid the wreckage, North Shore residents are demanding answers from large uphill landowners, government officials and Dole, which has sold off thousands of acres in recent decades.

“These guys made money off these systems for years. Then when they aged out, they neglected them,” Ghio said. “I don’t hate them. I just know we have to manage the problem when they start turning things over: Who’s responsible for this canal and what are the roles and responsibilities, and are there gaps and who’s accountable? We definitely aren’t.”

But the laws are actually pretty explicit: Landowners must manage waterways on their land, including culverts, ditches, bridges and their surroundings. On public lands, it’s up to state and counties.

In theory the Commission on Water Resource Management regulates all of Hawaiʻi’s ground and surface water, but the patchwork of other responsible state and county groups makes everything difficult to navigate — to regulate too.

If and when any of the waterways leading to the North Shore were last inspected to identify problem spots remains something of a mystery, for instance. There is no record of enforcement actions in the water commission’s bulletin for irrigation systems on the North Shore. Inspections are driven by complaints and permit applications.

Disclosure requirements dictate that upkeep of waterways — ditches included — must be communicated at the point of sale. But many property owners and farmers like Ghio appear unsure of where their duties lie with respect to maintenance. In some cases, it’s been up to the new owners to figure it out and just do the work.

When plantation companies sell off their “assets,” Ghio said, using her fingers to indicate air quotes, more information and better planning is needed to smooth the transition.

“We’re in a floodplain. We know that. We’re not dummies. That’s the reason I have this stupid, souped-up, pretty truck,” Ghio said. “We’re farmers, but even farmers need to not drown to death, right?”

A Mosaic Of Ownership And Needs

Natural drainage patterns on Oʻahu’s North Shore were dramatically altered in the late 1800s, as plantations constructed more than 30 miles of irrigation ditches, dug at least 15 smaller reservoirs, and drilled into the aquifer to create a complex web of wells and waterways to irrigate its sugarcane and pineapple crops.

Ditches were added around the same time as the Wahiawā Dam, between 1900 and 1906, to transport billions of gallons of water.

With the closure 40 years ago of Waialua Sugar Company, a Dole subsidiary, the corporation’s need for water waned and, with it, its reliance on a system that stretched from Wahiawā to the North Shore, between Mokulēʻia and Waimea Bay.

The property it crisscrossed would become a mishmash of land ownership, home to small farmers, subdivisions and tracts of fallow land.

Today, more than 150 farmers tend to crops on small plots of the former Dole plantation. They occupy a trapezoidal patch of land north of Farrington Highway, purchased in 2022 by developer Peter Savio and leased to farmers. A neighboring subdivision, bought from Dole five years earlier, includes at least 25 more part-owners, who either lease to farmers or farm themselves.

Agrichemical and seed corporation Corteva Agriscience sits on the south side of Farrington Highway, using 2,300 acres of former Dole land for corn and sunflower seed development since purchasing it in 2008.

In the 18 years ending in 2022 alone, Dole land sales for the area totaled at least $43 million.

Dole has been trying to offload the water infrastructure, too, for more than a decade. At least 3 of the 30 miles of irrigation infrastructure still owned by the corporation were found in disrepair in a 2014 state report, due to age, damage by animals and overgrown vegetation. The repairs would cost more than $8.3 million, according to a subsequent appraisal.

The company has done little to improve the Wahiawā reservoir’s spillway and dam, including since it was fined $20,000 by the Department of Land and Natural Resources in 2021 for failing to address deficiencies identified 12 years earlier— a massive project about to be inherited by the state and estimated in the tens of millions. The dam triggered a second evacuation order for Waialua and Haleʻiwa during the inundation when its height reached levels the county warned could lead to catastrophic collapse.

The state land board agreed to acquire the Wahiawā reservoir — also known as Lake Wilson — on Friday and the state Agribusiness Development Corp. is slated to start negotiating for the dam, spillway and irrigation system this week.

As land changes hands, Isaac Moriwake, managing attorney of Earthjustice’s Mid-Pacific Office, said “usually what happens is the irrigation infrastructure continues to get maintained because people see it as a resource.”

That isn’t what’s happened in Waialua.

The small farmers there generally irrigate their crops with Dole well water, according to Zaz Dahlin, a member of the Mill Camp farmers’ committee, making it unfair to expect them to maintain a ditch system they don’t even use.

Is It A Stormwater System Or Not?

Downstream of Mill Camp farms, the ditch system meets the ocean on white sands next to Kukea Circle, one of the hardest-hit in the recent storms. Several residents believe the water, which flowed in rapidly from their backyards, came directly from the overwhelmed ditches.

“The government says it’s the farmers’ responsibility, and I disagree. The water is not coming from the farmers’ land,” developer Savio said.

Mismanagement of water infrastructure upstream is to blame, he said, whether that’s from other farmers or ranchers who haven’t maintained their berms and ditches, or landowners who have filled them in entirely.

State Rep. Amy Perruso, who represents the area, said there’s plenty of blame to go around.

“The whole water system is connected,” she said. “All of these failures to act are compounded.”

The City and County of Honolulu recognized the area as among those underserved by its stormwater resources in its 2023 strategic plan. Its focus was primarily on shoring up urban areas and the miles of irrigation ditches on Oʻahu were not specifically mentioned. Streams were, though, and the county recognized “the patchwork of ownership … is one of the primary challenges for achieving consistency and continuity in stream maintenance.”

The ditches around Waialua were described as elements of a flood control system by the state Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity in a 2019 report, which said the Wahiawā system’s “inactive ditches are used to control and store stormwater runoff.”

But on Friday, during a Board of Land and Natural Resources meeting, state engineers said the system was never designed to mitigate floods.

“There may have been some thoughts for flood control but in general their purpose was for irrigation,” said Edwin Matsuda, head of the Flood Risk Management Section. “So we don’t allocate any flood mitigative or flood control benefits to them.”

‘You Don’t Let It Flow To The Next Guy’

Standing in the back of a black pickup truck, Dahlin counts culverts, streams, drains and driveways along Farrington Highway. She holds her Haleʻiwa Rainbow Bridge hat as her husband, Kanoa, drives from Mokulēʻia. She scrutinizes the grass, the trees and the trash. She counts close to 20 drains.

They stop at streams, Polipoli, Makaleha, Kapala‘au and others. Under the bridges are downed trees, sediment and occasionally larger pieces of trash – a bike, an air-conditioning unit. The culverts offer evidence of their disfunction during the storm, with water still backed up or surrounded by drying debris, so they didn’t drain properly. The roadside ditch is strangled by California grass and stands of haole koa, kiawe and other invasive species.

The two-lane road was the only outlet for water. On the night of March 19, to ease water flow and protect homes, residents used a digger to destroy a driveway off Farrington Highway, cutting through to another Savio subdivision — at the same time the government warned people to not use heavy machinery to clear waterways.

The 20-odd drainage points Dahlin identified on the couple’s drive are a key issue she wants to see addressed because they all have two things in common: they start at Farrington Highway, which swept trash and vegetation downhill, lifted up vehicles and clogged drains before slathering the land north of the road in silt; and they all seem to funnel into one outlet, namely a beach access next to Kiapoko Place.

The water commission and state Department of Transportation did not respond to interview requests. It is unclear whether the state inspected or worked on the highway ditch, drains and culverts between the three major floods this year, on Feb. 21, March 14 and March 20.

During a community board meeting last week, local residents shared their grievances with Mayor Rick Blangiardi. They said Kaiaka Bay must be dredged, stormwater drains should be cleared and upstream landowners have to be held accountable for negligence.

Drone footage reviewed by Civil Beat shows about 10 landslides along the banks of Kaukonahua Stream, about 3 miles upstream of Otake Camp where two homes were swept into flood waters. When those landslides happened is uncertain, whether they might have contributed to the flood unknown.

“The old rule was you retain the water on your property, you don’t let it flow to the next guy and the next guy and the next guy,” Savio told Civil Beat. “The point I’m trying to make is, we think it’s all the ditches’ fault, the ditches weren’t working. And it’s much more complex than that.”

The North Shore has faced chronic flooding for years, but none have been as devastating as those in recent weeks. Lawmakers have sporadically sought solutions since at least 1993, mostly proposing dredging the state-owned tracts of streams, such as Kaukonahua and Paukauila, which run through private, county and state land.

Honolulu’s 2019 strategic stormwater plan emphasized a serious maintenance backlog islandwide and the need for significantly more funds than the then-$97 million annual budget. It was also framed as the kickoff to more years of planning.

All the while, residents of the North Shore say, the situation has continued to get worse.

What About The Future? The Answer Is Messy

Mud cakes the straps of Ghio’s slippers. She puts on her gray zip-up hoodie, then takes it off. She’s hot and cold and overwhelmed by the situation.

She speaks quickly. She’d like a shower, like she had while sheltering at a church during the latest flood. She’s lost two minimally insured vehicles, newly planted crops. She’s thankful her home — built on 3-foot stilts — suffered little damage, at least in comparison to others.

She’s trying to raise money for her farmer neighbors, and worried about what needs to be done to get ready for future floods. That includes building real, functional stormwater infrastructure.

“We really need to work as a state and need to make the systems function better and make sure they’re adequate,” Ghio said. “These old ditches were during the plantation, or they had huge equipment, and they had labor cheap, and they could maintain that system, but it’s a huge burden for city, county, state, DLNR, to try to do that, even to keep up with the inspections or just trying to keep the vegetation down.”

Like many in the area, Ghio only became aware after the floods that landowners are the ones legally responsible for their own section of the waterways. But “we all knew the ditch needed to be cleaned out and dredged,” she said.

It’s a laborious task which can require delicately scraping sediment from plantation-era concrete channels or digging up large trees. It often means using heavy equipment that small farmers cannot afford.

No one seems to have ever been held accountable for anything related to the ditches, let alone the streams that run toward Waialua. Farmers don’t recall any inspections, violations or even communication from the government.

Perruso said Dole’s mass land sell off contributed to the confusion, and the flooding, along with new housing developments that failed to include effective water infrastructure. Part of the problem, she said, is the county Department of Planning and Permitting has failed to stop the spread of residents “who say they’re farming, but they’re living, and they’re living illegally ” on agriculturally zoned land.

“They don’t have water, they don’t have cesspools, they’re building unpermitted structures,” Perruso said. “Some of the same folks are diverting waterways. A lot of the big players are also diverting waterways. It’s a multi-faceted problem.”

The Honolulu planning department says that it investigates all requests and complaints involving agricultural properties. But, in a statement, it added another wrinkle, saying state condominium and subdivision laws have at times conflicted with county rules, allowing projects to move ahead without the department’s oversight. That, the agency added, means developments may “lack the basic framework” to support so many homes.

Bringing these properties into compliance requires “careful case-by-case evaluation, coordination, and, in many instances, corrective action over time,” the department’s statement said.

The laws are not the problem, Perruso said, it’s the implementation. The state water commission is underpowered and underfunded, and there’s a general lack of political will to increase enforcement. So, at least among Perruso’s constituency, she said, “it’s 100% the wild, wild west.”

Other flood-prone states have created flood authorities, which typically transcend county and state jurisdictional lines to manage all kinds of waterways and infrastructure. In Florida, water management districts are funded by the state and property taxes, and play a key role in reducing the impacts of flooding.

Honolulu studied how such an entity would function on the island in 2020. According to a related report, the county’s stormwater program “operates in an ‘emergency’ and reactive mode and has little capacity to perform work beyond permit compliance.” That report also highlighted a general lack of secure funding for stormwater control.

Taking a watershed approach, akin to states like Florida or Texas or some California counties, might help remove confusion and create better management standards, said Dave Dutra Elliot, executive director of Agriculture Stewardship Hawaiʻi.

“The farmers are doing a lot. They’re willing to do more, but it’s unfair. They produce food for the public good, the environmental stewardship they exercise is a public good,” Dutra Elliot said. “We need the government to step forward and work alongside them, and there are big gaps that need to be addressed for that.”

Last Tuesday, Daryl Robertson arrived at the Mahiko Farm Lots to help Ghio move her SUV out of the road bisecting the agricultural plots. He and Ghio are still bemused by his 20-foot shipping container, which flooding drove more than 100 yards onto his neighbor’s plot.

“Uncle and I were joking,” Ghio said, “God was out here rearranging the furniture.”

Robertson would know, having worked with heavy equipment for a majority of his 69 years of life. He remembers when sugarcane was at the heart of the community, when the irrigation ditches pumped the crop’s lifeblood. So he cleared a nearby ditch culvert with a backhoe after the second of the major floods this year, he said, but the third time around “it was just overwhelmed.”

Even after a far smaller rain, Robertson said, that ditch needs clearing.

“ Hawai‘i Grown ” is funded in part by grants from the Stupski Foundation, Ulupono Fund at the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.Civil Beat’s coverage of climate change and the environment is supported by The Healy Foundation, the Marisla Fund of the Hawai‘i Community Foundation and the Frost Family Foundation.

This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.