Dear Friend,

Due to the devastating fires on Maui, the Hawai’i Department of Health extended the comment period for the Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility’s Clean Water Act permit. We’re working to protect the coral reef off Kahekili Beach, an area traditionally called Hāʻenanui, from contaminated water.

You can submit your comment calling for the strongest possible clean water protections by clicking here.

TAKE ACTION: [link removed]

The recovery on Maui is underway, but private interests are using the crisis as an opportunity to challenge longstanding environmental standards and values that put both local communities and critical protections for both land and water at risk.

If you’re able, please support local organizations that are leading recovery efforts on Maui and pushing back on corporate interests. You can find one here.

SUPPORT THE RECOVERY: [link removed]

Sincerely,
Mahesh Cleveland
Senior Associate Attorney
Mid-Pacific Office

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From: Earthjustice Alerts <[email protected]>
Subject: Hawaiʻi needs environmental protection now more than ever
To: <[email protected]>

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Dear Friend,

It is heartbreaking to see the extensive wildfire damage in Kula, Kihei, and especially Lahaina. Please join us in sending love and support to our friends, family, clients, and partners as they evacuate to safety. We have provided suggestions below for local groups to support if you would like to do so. Climate change makes hurricanes, flooding, and wildfire emergencies like these more frequent and more extreme in Hawaiʻi and around the world. It is more important now than ever to strengthen environmental protections that will help make ecosystems more resilient against natural disasters. This is why we work so hard to uphold environmental protections.

We have long fought alongside the communities of Maui. Right now, we have an opportunity to support Maui residents in their decades-long effort to uphold the Clean Water Act. Since the 1980s, Maui County’s Lahaina Wastewater Reclamation Facility has discharged millions of gallons of treated sewage into groundwater every day that reaches the coral reef off Kahekili Beach, an area traditionally called Hāʻenanui. In 2012, Earthjustice and our partners sued the county under the Clean Water Act to hold Maui County accountable for its pollution.

The county claimed it didn’t need a permit to pollute the water because it was discharging pollution underground into groundwater — rather than directly to the Hāʻenanui reef — even though the county knew the injected wastewater would end up in the ocean.

Over the next eight years, the case worked its way up to the Supreme Court, where it became a broader question about how the Clean Water Act should be interpreted. We won — the Supreme Court affirmed that the county couldn’t get away with polluting the ocean just because it wasn’t doing so directly.

Following this win, the case worked its way back to the Hawaiʻi Federal District Court, which applied the Supreme Court ruling to the question that started it all — ultimately concluding that Maui County must secure a Clean Water Act permit for its Lahaina discharges. The Hawaiʻi State Department of Health has now drafted a permit in response to the court rulings.

This permit will be the first of its kind in Hawaiʻi to regulate ocean pollution through underground injection wells, which are used throughout the islands for wastewater disposal. We need your help to ensure this precedent-setting permit is the best it can be.

This is not a problem we can leave unaddressed. The treated wastewater has high levels of nutrients and freshwater that destroy coral reef ecosystems by eroding corals from the inside out and blanketing them with harmful algae. The waters of Hāʻenanui moreover provide important feeding areas for the critically endangered honu ʻea (hawksbill sea turtle). Honu ʻea depend on healthy coral reefs for food. The shoreline also provides resting areas for ʻīlio holo i ka uaua (Hawaiian monk seal), one of the most endangered seal species in the world.

Since this permit is the first of its kind in Hawaiʻi, we need to make sure that the regulators know that the public backs the strongest possible clean water protections. Tell the Hawaiʻi State Department of Health to clean up our water.

TAKE ACTION: [link removed]

Sincerely,
Mahesh Cleveland
Senior Associate Attorney
Mid-Pacific Office

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