Water Security

Water is basic to all life. Water and quality and water quantity are integral to issues such as energy, land use, and maintenance of a healthy environment for plants, wildlife and humanity. Proper management of water is essential so that present and future generations may survive and flourish. 

Oahu is experiencing a range of water quality, flooding, fresh water supply, and pollution issues related to storm water management, climate change and sea level rise. At the same time, federal requirements under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Water Act are imposing increasingly stringent permit requirements for storm water runoff management that the City must meet, or face severe fines and penalties. The City recognizes the need to take steps to strengthen and expand its storm water management services, and to work with property owners and developers to improve storm water management on private lands.

Conservation

Programs should be pursued to improve the water retention capacity of the land, reduce water consumption, and promote water recycling. Allocations, building codes, metering, and pricing should aim to encourage conservation. All water users, including beneficiaries of federal water projects, should pay the full cost of water deliveries. States should have comprehensive water conservation plans as a condition to any funding by the federal government.

Urban Water Systems

Urbanization and an increase of hard surfaces that don’t absorb water means much of this water runs off the mountains and land, rather than percolating back into the soil, robbing our island’s groundwater supply of replenishment. This excess runoff can create localized drainage flooding issues.

Water resource public works funding priorities should be shifted to those projects and programs that would conserve existing water supplies. These would include municipal pipeline maintenance and leak repair, installation of redundancy and bypass capacity in conveyance systems, reuse and reclamation of storm water and sewage effluent, and other structural and nonstructural conservation measures for urban water systems.

Stormwater Utility

Each time it rains, millions of gallons of water flushes down rooftops, streets and other hard surfaces collecting dirt, debris, trash, and more pollutants along the way. Then, as storm water, it makes its way into ditches, drains, and canals that flow into streams and the ocean.

Storm water utilities provides municipalities with dedicated, fee-based funding available exclusively for storm water management purposes.