From the Maui News
The County Council Water Resources Committee heard public testimony Tuesday on proposed changes to the “Show Me the Water” ordinance, but the panel deferred action.
Committee Chairman Mike Victorino has called for changes to the ordinance that has required developers to show they have water available for project plans. Victorino’s proposed changes include allowing the ordinance to expire after two years, exempting large-lot subdivisions from its provisions and accepting a water meter, water meter reservation or an engineering report as evidence of a long-term water source.
Kula developer Charles Jencks said he would prefer to eliminate the “Show Me the Water” ordinance and make way for “work with the current administration in developing new water sources for our current community plan areas and provide incentives for the private sector to assist in development of that source.”
Jencks said the water availability ordinance “has had a deleterious effect on the ability (of developers) to finance and entitle development.”
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Kula resident Dick Mayer opposed Victorino’s proposed revisions to the ordinance, saying that instead of calling the bill “relating to water availability,” it should be renamed the “water unavailability” bill “because it will take away the certainty that water is available to homeowners and businesses.”
Mayer said that allowing engineering reports to be “accepted” in the revised legislation instead of “approved” as in the current ordinance would give no assurance that the document is professionally approved.
“It just means the document was ‘accepted,’ (or) filed with them and a receipt given out,” he said. “What happens if a subdivision then gets built and there is no water?”
He questioned whether the county would be liable.
Mayer also pointed out, under a section of what the water director needs to do, that changing a word from “shall” to “may” delegates to “the water director way to much arbitrary discretion to avoid looking at a number of important issues: water quality, kuleana water rights, impacts on existing residents, impacts on existing wells . . .”
“The water director could play favorites and give one developer an easier time than another,” Mayer said. “The word ‘may’ could open up the county’s legal liability to a discrimination lawsuit, it someone gets a tougher scrutiny than someone else. The proposed ordinance even gives the director the right to ignore the county’s General Plan and community plans. That is not pono.”…
Read the entire article at Maui News
Comment(1)
Anonymous says:
12/03/2011 at 10:51 amThis letter to the editor was posted here by someone not the writer:
As a farmer and a nearly 40-year resident, I was not surprised to read about a County Council member wanting to do away with the “Show Me the Water” bill (The Maui News, Nov. 20). What did surprise me was that the council member was Mike Victorino. I thought he had more sense than that. Apparently I was wrong.
The “Show Me the Water” bill was introduced under the Charmaine Tavares administration by Jo Anne Johnson and supported by Michelle Anderson. It was the most sensible legislation to come out of the county government since Mayor Elmer Cravalho’s moratorium on new water meters until there was a sufficient supply of water for the current users. It became law because any reasonable person can understand that you should not be subjecting current water users to mandatory cutbacks while handing out water meters to new applicants like they were Halloween candy.
There have not been any mandatory water use restrictions imposed since the passing of that bill, which proves that it works.
At the same time, development has slowed considerably because the developers had to drill wells at their own expense to supply water to their customers. This additional cost drives up the cost of the properties and cuts into the developers’ profits. Gee, I wonder if the developers would be grateful to Mike for making us taxpayers foot the bill for developing new water sources for their projects instead of them.
Stu Nicholls