KULA — After years of drought that dried up streams, stalled housing projects and forced residents to follow water shortage restrictions, water is shaping up to be one of the most important issues this election season for Maui County Council and mayoral candidates.

When asked how she would handle proposals to take more water from the Kama‘ole aquifer than the sustainable yield for developments in South Maui where she lives, County Council candidate Kelly Takaya King got right to the point.

“Just say no,” King, the former council chair, said to applause during a candidate forum at the Kula Community Center on Wednesday night. “That’s my philosophy. Let’s prioritize local affordable housing and agriculture for our water.”

Bobby Pahia, a kalo farmer who is running for the Upcountry seat on the council, said the solution to the lack of water “is the solution to address almost everything.”

“Creating a system to address fire mitigation, that goes straight back to water capacity,” he said during the forum. “Building more homes, that goes back to water capacity.”

After a year of severe storms and heavy rainfall, Hawai‘i is finally emerging from record-level dry conditions. Last fall, more than 94% of Maui County was under some version of drought. This week it was the opposite, with more than 90% of the county drought-free.

But the scarcity of water in recent years has pushed Maui County voters and elected officials to call for more public ownership of a public trust resource that’s long been privately controlled.

Mayor Richard Bissen, who is running for reelection, believes Maui County has “the least control of water compared to the other three counties.”

Maui was the last island with a working sugar plantation before Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. closed in 2016, and the extensive system of ditches and tunnels that took water from East Maui streams to feed sugar cane for over a century fell under another private company, Mahi Pono, when the former plantation was sold in 2018.

This year, Bissen has made it a priority of his administration to acquire key water systems. In May, the mayor announced an agreement with Maui Land & Pineapple Co. to purchase its ditch system in Honokōhau, increasing public ownership of water in West Maui from 45% to 93%.

In July, he unveiled a proposal to acquire Launiupoko Water and Olowalu Water companies’ assets. The county also has been working with Wailuku Water Co. for the past three years to try to acquire the 115-year-old plantation-era system, a goal of multiple previous administrations.

Bissen says more public control of water is also what residents want. In 2022, Maui County voters approved a measure to create an East Maui Water Authority with the purpose of obtaining water licenses and overseeing water management for the area.

Despite legal victories for kalo farmers that have restored water to many streams, East Maui water rights are still in dispute. Last month, the state Board of Land and Natural Resources shot down a proposal to put a 30-year East Maui commercial water license up for public auction while allowing a contested case over revocable permits held by Mahi Pono and East Maui Irrigation to move forward.

Ashley Awakea Lindsey, who is running against Marvin Moniz for the open Wailuku-Waihe‘e-Waikapū seat on the council, said she backs the county’s plans to buy Wailuku Water Co. It’s a critical system that draws from Nā Wai ‘Eha, “the four great waters,” which together provide 70% of Maui’s domestic water supply.

“I support the county acquiring that for sure because of how important it is to our community,” Lindsey said. “It impacts … almost everybody on this island daily.”

But Bissen’s opponent in the mayoral race, Council Vice Chair Yuki Lei Sugimura, has reservations about the county acquiring these extensive and aging systems. Sugimura wants more information first and said the county needs a “master plan for water so we understand what we’re going to do.”

“I am very concerned not only about the systems — will it provide more reliability, capacity and storage — but also the costs for it,” she said. “And as always, I worry about what is it going to cost you, the user.”

Sugimura holds the Upcountry seat on the council, and her district has felt the firsthand effects of the water shortages for years. Last fall, Upcountry was put under mandatory Stage 3 restrictions that curbed nonessential water uses, which is what happens when demand is expected to exceed supply by 31% or more.

Sugimura said one of the top questions she’s been asked during her decade in office is how the county will address the long list of Upcountry residents waiting for a chance at a water meter.

She said Wednesday that she had good news for people on the list — work on the Kamole Weir, Maui’s largest surface water treatment facility, should be completed soon, allowing the county to issue more water meters.

Replacement of the water filter, a top priority of the Department of Water Supply in its efforts to address Upcountry’s water needs, should be done by the end of October and will take about six months of testing, according to Bissen. The mayor said this will double Upcountry’s water capacity and added that two more wells are also being considered for the area.

Water is not only critical for homes and suppressing fire, but also for food security, Pahia said. He said the state lacks the “political will” to properly fund agriculture and wants to see more attention put toward recharging the aquifer and getting water back to the people.

His opponent for the Upcountry seat, John Yokouchi, agrees. Yokouchi said more reservoirs are needed Upcountry to capture and store rainfall, especially at a time when climate change is “coming on strong.”

“Water is very important to everyone up in Kula, and we don’t want to go through another fire again in the drought,” Yokouchi said. 

Council Member Tom Cook, who is defending his South Maui seat against King after narrowly beating her by 97 votes in 2024, said one of the main priorities he’s working on is getting the county to put millions of gallons of reclaimed wastewater to good use and capturing stormwater before it gets to the ocean. He said land upslope needs to be repastured to prevent the major flooding that South Maui sees in every storm. 

“I get crushed when I see all the sediment in all the gulches. It’s just such a waste,” he said. “I believe we have water resources and it’s a matter of managing them and developing them.”

Concerned about having enough water to go around, county officials have often debated whether projects should have infrastructure in place before they can be built.

Lindsey, who has reviewed many projects during her time serving on the Maui Planning Commission, said she understands both sides. The requirement for infrastructure to be in place prior to development can be a tricky “chicken and the egg” kind of situation. Developers need to sell homes to make money to pay for infrastructure, but homes can’t be sold without infrastructure, so there is motivation on both ends to get it done, Lindsey said.

“It’s definitely a case-by-case basis because it sets back a lot of housing, for example, for our local people if the development can’t go through,” Lindsey said when asked by moderators at the forum. “As long as it’s in the community’s best interest to build it, to have it, I think, give an inch. … But it’s not black and white or clear or easy.”

King thinks the current council has been too lenient on developers, approving luxury projects while not holding developers to conditions set years ago. She pointed to the heavily debated Honua‘ula project, formerly known as Wailea 670, which was originally proposed with 1,400 units that included 450 on-site and 250 off-site affordable homes in South Maui.

County affordable housing requirements were later lowered from 50% to 25%, and the overall project was scaled down to 1,150 units, including 288 affordable homes. It was approved by the council on a 5-4 split between the council’s moderate majority and progressive minority and signed by the mayor last year.

“Letting the developers out of the infrastructure issues is not right and it’s not good for the community,” said King, a progressive candidate. “We’re not building the community that we want to live in.”

King, who previously served on the council from 2017 to 2022, said she’s running for office again because “right now my community is not very happy at all with this current council.”

Cook, who is part of the moderate bloc and is finishing his second term, acknowledged that “I butt heads somewhat” with Kīhei community groups because the longtime contractor is seen as being pro-development in a place where people are wary of over-development. But Cook said these projects take years to build and are a way to create tax revenue over the long term for services like water and roads. He said he is optimistic that creative solutions can be found.

“Developing is not necessarily a bad thing,” he said. “We need to collectively work together to do it intelligently and sustainably.”