The new head of the state Commission on Water Resource Management could be looking for steeper penalties for water code violations and quicker responses to water emergencies.
First Deputy Ciara Kahahane, who Gov. Josh Green appointed to the commission in August, recently informed commissioners of potential measures she wants to include in the governor’s legislative package for the upcoming session.
One proposal would give CWRM the ability to declare a water emergency or shortage. Kahahane said that would allow the commission to respond more quickly to water-related emergencies — compared to the current rulemaking process, which requires public input.
“We're sort of flipping the existing processes under … the water code in a way that we hope will front-end some of that community consultation so that we can have a faster and more decisive action when an emergency actually arises,” Kahahane told CWRM.
The other measure would set a minimum fine of $50 for those who violate the water code, which was established in the 1980s to protect and improve the quality of Hawaiʻi’s water resources.
Perhaps more noteworthy is the proposed change to the maximum fine. It’s currently $5,000 — and Kahahane said it hasn’t changed since 2004. But she wants to raise it to $25,000 and keep increasing the penalty ceiling every five years until it reaches $75,000 in 2040.
“ The factors to be considered by the commission, when imposing a penalty include the nature, circumstances, extent, gravity, history of the violation, the economic benefit to the violator or anticipated by the violator, the opportunity, difficulty, and history of corrective action,” Kahahane said. “The goal of this bill is to encourage compliance by disincentivizing violations of the water code and, of course, to clarify what a violation is and incorporate some changes in the law.”
Some of the measures are responses to recent water-related issues, Kahahane said, including the Lahaina fire last year and the jet fuel spill at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility.
Both measures have actually been introduced at the state Legislature before. House Bill 153, introduced in 2023, would have introduced a similarly revised penalty schedule for water code violations, although it didn’t have a stepwise increase and would have raised the maximum fine to $60,000.
That measure made it out of the Capitol, but Green vetoed it. In a news release at the time, he said the fines “may curtail and discourage housing developments across Hawai‘i. Boards of water supply across all counties would almost immediately apply such fines to developments guilty of over-pumping water. Without a graduated schedule or a set of guidelines for penalties and fines, this significant increase appears both arbitrary and discretionary.”
A similar measure died in the last session. A water emergency bill has also been introduced before, but it wasn’t able to clear all its legislative hurdles.
