Deputy Director of Hawaii’s Commission on Water Resource Management M. Kaleo Manuel delayed responding to a request to divert stream water to fill reservoirs for firefighting.
By the time the West Maui Land Company received the approval to use the water, five hours had passed.
By that time, “We were unable to reach the siphon release to make the adjustments that would have allowed more water to fill our reservoirs,” reads a letter from the company to Manuel.
The letter stated, “We watched the devastation unfold around us without the ability to help. We anxiously awaited the morning knowing that we could have made more water available to MFD if our request had been immediately approved.”
“In an emergency situation, or when an emergency is anticipated, a temporary reduction (not elimination) of water to one individual’s farm should not be prioritized over and delay efforts to save an entire community,” the letter asserts.
West Maui Land Co Letter by Nick Pope
Manuel, an Obama foundation Leader for the Asia Pacific Region, previously said that water requires “true conversations about equity.”
“I mean, to me it’s a shift in value set, and if we can start to really look at how we as humans, in an island, can reconnect to that traditional value set,” Manuel said. “So really my motto is always like, let water connect us and not divide us. Like, we can share it, but it requires true conversations about equity.”
Reporting from The Daily Caller:
Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) has moved Manuel to a different division, a move that “does not suggest that First Deputy Manuel did anything wrong,” DLNR said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The agency added that it encourages “the media and the public to avoid making judgments until all the facts are known,” and that it had no further comment on the matter. … The alleged hesitancy to divert the water joins the growing list of reported crucial failures of public and private institutions to respond to the crisis and mitigate its risks in advance. In addition to the alleged failure to immediately divert water, the Maui County crisis response official who did not sound emergency sirens had zero prior career experience in emergency management, the utility company whose downed power line reportedly sparked the fire reportedly focused on green energy while generally neglecting wildfire preparedness, the state had for years exercised questionable land management policies and the 911 system reportedly went offline .
